Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Single-sex classes give scores a boost

Freshmen taking part in a pilot study at Cheyenne High School where remedial students have been divided up by gender have shown a 15 percent improvement in mathematics grades -- a gain educators say bodes well for the future of the experimental program.

The pilot study, launched with the start of the academic year in August, is "an educational gamble" that appears to be paying off, Jeff Geihs, assistant principal at Cheyenne, said.

Geihs is encouraged by what he sees so far at Cheyenne, the first school in the Clark County School District to offer the program.

"Same-sex classes are not a magic bullet," Geihs said. "We're still in the very early days of this but what we're seeing so far is very promising."

Compared with last year's freshman class the average math grade for the first semester climbed 15 percent, Geihs said. English scores have stayed about the same, but the teacher of the single-gender classes, Rick Detisch, said he expects averages to rise by the end of the year.

"It's taken some getting used to for the kids," said Detisch, who is in his third year at the North Las Vegas high school and did his student teaching assignment at a single-gender school in New Zealand. "The boys and the girls are definitely more focused on the task at hand without the distractions that come from the opposite sex."

The lesson in Greek mythology in Detisch's Room 824 Wednesday looked like any freshman English class except -- as 14-year-old Christina Ibarra described it -- there were no boys to pull her ponytail, pass her notes or provide an excuse not to pay attention.

"I like it better without the boys here," said Ibarra, who is in Detisch's class and one of more than 300 students taking part in the pilot study. "I'd like it if all of my classes were like this."

With Cheyenne's venture, Nevada joins 24 other states with public schools offering single-gender education -- including California, Colorado, Florida, New York and Texas.

A decade ago only three public schools in the United States offered single-gender classrooms, compared with 88 schools for the 2003-04 academic year, said Dr. Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education.

The trend may be expected to continue. U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced Wednesday that he would seek a new regulation that would make it easier for public schools to offer single-gender classes using funding from the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

"While the research in this area is incomplete, it does indicate that single-sex educational programs produce positive results for some students in some settings," said Paige in a prepared statement. "For example, one study has found that single-sex education particularly helps children from underprivileged backgrounds."

Geihs said he and Cheyenne Principal Ronan Matthew, who initiated the study, want to expand the program for the 2004-05 academic year from the remedial program to all freshman English and math classes. The remedial single-gender classes would continue in the 10th grade, Geihs said.

In the long run Cheyenne, which has the district's largest population of black students, hopes to improve the students' standardized test scores next fall and also a higher graduation rate. A study released last week by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University chided the nation's public education system for neglecting minorities, noting that black and Hispanic students had only a 50-50 chance of earning a high school diploma.

Marsha Irvin, superintendent of the Clark County School District's northeast region, said she would likely support expanding the pilot study at Cheyenne.

Provided students are still offered the option of a co-ed class, district regulations allow school administrators to set up such studies without requiring approval from the School Board. But Irvin said the project would be brought to the School Board for review before it's expanded.

"We want this to be something supported by the community and not something controversial," Irvin said. "We always want to work within the guidelines of the district."

Irvin said she is monitoring the pilot study to ensure both boys and girls are receiving the same level of instruction and using the same curriculum.

Numerous studies both in the United States and abroad show single-gender classes benefit both boys and girls, said Sax, who is both a family physician and research psychologist.

Studies have shown boys in single-gender classes are more likely to pursue advanced level course work in languages, art and drama, Sax said. At the same time girls in single-gender classes are more likely to pursue college work in mathematics and science.

"We're not advocating going back to the way things were 30 years ago -- when boys went to woodshop because they were boys and girls to home economics because they were girls," Sax said. " We're saying that single sex education is actually a way of breaking down gender stereotypes."

Whitney Ransome, co-executive director of the National Association of Girls' Schools, applauded the Clark County School District for venturing into single-gender education.

"With single-sex classes, education becomes the sole focus," Ransome said. "Girls are not jockeying for attention with the boys and they're not demurring or holding back because of fears of how they'll be perceived."

For Cheyenne freshman Cynthia Delgado, the reasons behind her jump from a failing grade in eighth grade English to her current A average are obvious.

"I pay attention more to class and I don't talk to my friends," Delgado said. "School is a lot easier now."

Join the Discussion:

Check this out for a full explanation of our conversion to the LiveFyre commenting system and instructions on how to sign up for an account.

Full comments policy