Leonard Sax, a physician who has written books about gender differences, said his interest in the subject began when he saw a lot of 6- and 7-year-old boys coming to his Montgomery County office with notes saying they should be evaluated for attention deficit disorder. Brain research on gender, he believes, is complex and inconclusive. There is much variation among children, he said, and not all need single-sex classrooms or schools.
Lise Eliot, an associate professor in the department of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School, believes this rush to embrace single-sex education is based on very little good research data. Most studies on the impact of single-sex classes and schools do not follow the protocol acceptable for scientific work and do not consider other factors that may have influenced the rise of achievement, she said. Generally, she said, the impact is small and helps girls the most.
"There is a real retro philosophy behind this and no data to support it," Eliot said.
Single-sex education was the norm in 19th-century Baltimore. City College was founded in 1839, then came Polytechnic Institute in 1843, followed the next year by Western High School and the private Boys' Latin. A few decades later, the private Bryn Mawr School and the Gilman School were built.
In 1972, an eighth-grade girl named Martha Ricci applied to Poly. She wanted to be an architect and argued that crucial engineering and math courses weren't available at all-girls Western. At first she was allowed to leave Western and go next door only to take those classes, but eventually the walls fell.
No boy ever challenged Western's all-girl status, and it somehow remained single-sex, one of a very few in the country. Principal Eleanor Matthews said the school has added more math, science and technology classes so girls can get whatever they need. Whether it is related to the renewed local interest in single-sex schools is unclear, but enrollment rose from 790 to 851 students this year.
Parents and students are coming because they believe the school has an excellent college preparatory program, Matthews said. Girls leave Western unafraid to compete with boys and more willing to take on leadership roles, she added.
At Bluford Drew Jemison, boys who entered sixth grade last year had test scores good enough to meet federal standards under No Child Left Behind, making it one of only three free-standing middle schools in the city to meet those standards.
