Is That Legal?

Eric,

But what if kids are learning more without all that social goo?

Well, if a properly designed and implemented study confirms that they're learning more, and if the arrangement doesn't violate the Equal Protection Clause, I say: let's do it!

My point is that the current arrangement is no way for a school district to go about contemplating, testing, or implementing such a program.

And what if the study confirms that girls learn better in a segregated classroom and boys less well (or vice versa)? Then whatcha going to do?

If I may, let me expand on Eric's complaint here: what if the teacher's "theory (hypothesis)" was that girls and boys would learn better if the girls all wore burkas or if girls and boys would learn better if each lesson started with a Bible reading or smoking a joint or if each wrong answer was rewarded with a few lashes of a switch? The problem is not so much that the teacher had an idea, it's that the idea was implemented under the radar and it's an idea about which one could make a prima facie case that it's illegal to implement it.

Teachers are encouraged to experiment in their classes. Teacher research is one of the current trends in educational research; the UNC School of Ed has designed a masters level program around it.

However, this is beyond the scale of most teacher research and given the political overtones of it, I am amazed it hasn't been shut down. There's a long history of research on gender-specific classes. Some kids do better; some don't. My concern is that the real world doesn't segregate us. Why should the schools?

Does anyone want to entertain the possibility, however briefly, that there may be something learned from social interactions in youth that's not going to show up on a NCLB mandated test score?

That said, I don't think we're going to learn much of anything from this "experiment."

I agree with the notion that a properly designed experiment could indeed prove that the segregation does help learn more but I have a problem with the unilateral action. When teachers overstep their bounds and do things without the approval of a school board they are ignoring the reason the school board is there. The board is designed to do things with the best interests of the students in mind, when they are ignored there is no protection that the students are being served. Next time I think it would be prudent to at least notify them and go through the proper channels. In the meantime, I will be anxious to see the results.

What if they found out that kids learned better outside the institutional confines of state-sponsored compulsory schooling? Would they tell us?

And this is worse than any of the other unexplored social experiments going on in the public schools?

Eric and Jeff,

Sorry to provoke. I know what Eric was trying to say. I was more amused by the phrase "social goo" than anything else. We should all promise never to use that phrase again in relation to the mixing of the sexes.

Burkas? Bible readings? Illicit drugs and switches? Wow. Strident, over-the-top language! Well, it's all forgivable: I get carried away with my own visions of what is proper and improper in America, too. :)

Prima facie case? Maybe. But it would be good to emphasize the methodology angle rather than the constitutional one; when it comes to the education of children, constitutional concerns have met with mixed success.

At any rate, this promises to be an interesting controversy with possible national (and maybe even international) media coverage.

One can only hope.

I'm pretty sure that single sex education can be constitutional up until the post-secondary level; Ginsburg was happy to apply skeptical scrutiny ( United States v. Virginia et al. (94-1941), 518 U.S. 515 (1996).

The Women's Law Project differs: http://www.womenslawproject.org/testimony/Single_sex_comments.pdf.

Be that as it may, the teachers involved do seem to be relying on the revised guidlines on single sex classrooms issued by the Department of Education proposed here.

These state in part:

In order to ensure that participation in any single-sex class is
voluntary, a recipient should notify parents or guardians of their
option to enroll their children in a single-sex class on a voluntary
basis and receive authorization from parents or guardians to place their children in a single-sex class.

Of course,I'm so ignorant I think Ultra Vires is the technical term for Bird Flu.

Simon
p.s.
I can't seem to find the final version of the rule. Latest I can get is http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/08aug20051500/edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2005/julqtr/34cfr106.34.htm Can any CFR gurus tell me what I'm doing wrong, and what search engine to use? Thanks

It's always hard to predict what "the media" will decide to cover. I would have figured that an election getting cancelled in my hometown [Rosemead, about 12 miles east of downtown Los Angeles] would get some broader attention.

The election was cancelled because a federal district court judge decided that a Ninth Circuit opinion issued three months after we turned in our recall petitions for signature verification should apply to us. The decision, Padilla v. Lever, stated that recall petitions circulated by citizens groups are covered by sec. 203 of the Voting Rights Act [voting materials "provided" by the government], and so need to be circulated in "all applicable" languages [For Rosemead, that means English, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Chinese].

Our (monolingual) mayor [one of the targets of the recall] sued his own city to get this decision.

Is it not newsworthy when a mayor sues his own city to cancel an election in which he would be recalled? Is it not newsworthy when a decision cites the Voting Rights Act to cancel an election? Is it not newsworthy when a court decision is used to place another barrier against direct democracy tools like the recall or referendum? Apparently, it is not, because we haven't been able to get the L.A. Times to write about our election's cancellation.

You thought it was an interesting idea, until you found out that it was initiated by experienced teachers instead of by elected officials. So now you want it stopped immediately. Right.

Eric - That's such a *guy* reaction! :)

Hey, my son had Dorothy Works as a 6th grader. She is an exceptional teacher. He is now a college Junior, and still counts her as one of the best teachers he ever had...including his college experience. If I were one of "her parents" I would have no objection to this experiment. I think it says a great deal that the parents involved have not been howling at the school board. Because, if you know ANYTHING about the CHCCS, you know that, if the parents WERE unhappy, they WOULD be howling at the school board!

I've not spoken with anyone directly involved with this "experiment" (i'm out of the MS loop) but the scuttlebutt I've heard (aka gossip) is that it's getting good results. I wish parents of students currently involved would weigh in.

melanie

Some students who had never spoken up in class have become frequent hand-raisers, the teachers said. Works said they've noticed the strongest spike in girls-only science classrooms and boys-only language-arts classes. "I like the way it's worked out," said Ashley Arroyo, 13. "I think all of us can concentrate better."

All of that seems totally believable to me -- it's consistent with everything that I remember from middle school and everything that I see in middle schoolers today.

Anyone disagree?

Actually I'm a severe opponent of single sex educational institution. The main reason is that they are very distant from real life and do not represent the model of our society.