Same Sex Schools?

Teaching Tolerance, an online newsletter of the Southern Poverty Center, addresses a growing trend in schools to segregate boys and girls into separate classrooms in an article, "Gender Segregation: Separate but Effective?" The practice is based on the work of  Dr. Leonard Sax, a child psychologist.  He cites significant differences between the learning styles of boys and girls as the reason to separate the sexes to optimize learning.

The number of public schools offering same sex classrooms grew from 11 in 2002 to over 550 in 2009.  Mobile, Alabama closed all 8 of its schools when confronted with a lawsuit on behalf of parents by the American Civil Liberties Union.  Parents questioned the efficacy of a program that withdraws children from real life environments, especially with Title 9 defining the rights of girls to receive and equal education.  At the same time, the article notes that there is little hard data to support the practice, beyond the collection of anecdotal feedback from teachers and parents, and the perception that same sex classrooms are working.

Is this the direction we need to be going?  Reviewing research online, I found that research shows the ration of boys to girls in special education is 2 to 1 or perhaps even 3 to 1.  Are more boys learning disabled than girls or are more female teachers identifying boys than girls because of behaviors?   Would single sex classrooms be more effective?

In my own experience, I believe that more boys than girls have learning disabilities as reflected in disparity between intelligence and achievement.  Is this a reflection of the failure of female first grade teachers to teach boys?  Is this a reflection of a developmental difference between boys and girls, or do more boys have specific learning disabilities?  Do all of these boys have classic dyslexic issues around reading print, or is it just that they have not been taught to read effectively?

I also wonder about the failure of schools to encourage more men to go into teaching.  Certainly, in my part of the country, salaries are good, so it isn't necessarily economics. Of course, there is also the growing  disparity between men and women graduating from college.

Are we happy with the trend?  Women marrying down?  Fewer and fewer high paying skilled trades jobs and more and more men underemployed?  Do we want to make the investment in changing it by providing young boys the support they need, or are we looking at a New World Order that is a Matriarchy?