More public schools splitting up boys, girls

[Starry Messenger]

14. Parents who choose schools are defacto more involved in their children's education.

This is a major factor. As stated, parents who wish to send their children to single sex environments can choose to do so. Parochial schools. Though again, the difference in outcome there will be the pre-selected factor-the parents will already be more involved in their children's schooling than parents who don't search out educational environments for their student.

http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/parent-involvement/

Parent Involvement

"When schools, families, and community groups work together to support learning, children tend to do better in school, stay in school longer, and like school more." That's the conclusion of a recent report from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory. The report, a synthesis of research on parent involvement over the past decade, goes on to find that, regardless of family income or background, "students with involved parents are more likely to:

Earn higher grades and test scores, and enroll in higher-level programs;
Be promoted, pass their classes, and earn credits;
Attend school regularly;
Have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school; and
Graduate and go on to postsecondary education" (Henderson & Mapp, 2002).

Also from the snippet you quoted:

She does, however, acknowledge that her data are compromised, as her highest-performing teachers and her most-motivated students have chosen single-sex.

http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-25/bostonglobe/30201500_1_brain-scan-boys-and-girls-neuroscience/2

The single-sex school myth
OP-ED | Gareth Cook
No scientific basis for teaching boys and girls separately, report says

Still, supporters of segregated classrooms now have a substantial academic record to confront. There are many hundreds of studies, of varying quality and with results across the spectrum. In the larger and better of these any apparent advantages tend to evaporate.

And we pay a price in segregating the sexes. Boys and girls learn from each other, and that prepares them for the world. Being separated cannot help but emphasize differences.

We need more experimentation in public schools, so perhaps there is a place for a small number of single sex classrooms or schools. But when they work, let’s at least be honest about the reason.

“We are not denying that there are some excellent single-sex schools,’’ says Halpern. “But their excellence does not come from the fact that they are single-sex.’’

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/10/17/single-sex-schools-separate-but-equal/what-our-research-on-single-sex-education-shows

What Our Research Shows

<snip>

Now these advocates are emphasizing “social justice” as their rationale, arguing that parents who cannot afford private, elite single-sex education deserve comparable educational options. But this argument is hollow given the evidence that single-sex schooling has nothing to do with a school’s success. Certainly, there is great social injustice in the quality differences between elite private schools and many public schools, but this injustice is never going to be remedied by segregating the sexes.

We and many other scientists and educators agree with the U.S. Department of Education’s demand for “educational practitioners to use ‘scientifically-based research’ to guide their decisions about which interventions to implement.” Anecdotes do not meet this standard but are frequently used to support single-sex schooling. If modern science has learned anything, it is to be highly skeptical of anecdotes.

The preponderance of scientific evidence indicates that single-sex education fails to produce academic benefits and inflates gender stereotyping.

For myself as an educator and an activist, I work for economic justice in the community. I don't think it is pointless to worry about it. It is all part of the same system.