Schools try to close an achievement gap with single-sex classes
The Boston Globe reports on public school experiments to return to all girl and all boy schools. It includes this snippet:
Enter the flirt-free zone at the Mario Umana Middle School Academy in East Boston, one of the few public schools in the state experimenting with single-sex classes as a way to tame raging hormones, refocus students on their studies, and begin addressing a worsening achievement gap between boys and girls.
Boys still will be boys - and launch their paper planes - but their antics have toned down, teachers said. Girls have stopped preening in class. And both groups appear to be more confident asking and answering questions.
Several achievement gap charts are provided and of course, the ACLU is up in arms.