US principals’ attitudes about and experiences with single-sex schooling

Abstract

Despite a lack of scientific evidence supporting the use of single-sex education, the number of US public schools offering single-sex education has increased. However, our understanding as to why decision-makers have implemented single-sex education is lacking. To address this gap, we surveyed US public school principals and assessed their attitudes about and experiences with single-sex schooling. Sixty-seven principals from single-sex schools and 193 principals from co-educational schools participated. The results indicated that principals who had experience with single-sex schooling tended to have more positive attitudes about single-sex schooling, viewed it as more effective, and more often evoked gender-essentialist rationales for the use of single-sex schooling than did co-educational principals. However, both single-sex and co-educational principals noted issues with single-sex schooling. It was concluded that single-sex schooling is not a silver bullet to educational reform and that when single-sex schooling is implemented, one set of issues and problems is substituted for another.

Keywords:

• single-sex schooling
• co-education
• segregation
• principals
• educational reform

Additional information

Funding

Support for Richard Fabes was provided, in part, by grants from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development [grant number 1 R01 HD45816]; the National Science Foundation [grant number 0338864]. Support for Erin Pahlke was provided, in part, by a grant from the National Science Foundation [grant number DRL-1138114]. Support also was provided by the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics as part of the Lives of Girls and Boys Project (http://livesofgirlsandboys.org) and the Challenged Child Project. Richard Fabes is also a founding executive members of the American Council for CoEducational Schooling (http://coedschools.org).