Single-Gender Classrooms: Beneficial or Harmful?

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Recommended: debate points against single gender schools

With the passage of The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, the idea of single-gender classrooms has been on the rise. No Child Left Behind also included an amendment asking the U.S. Department of Education to set standards for experimentation with single-gender classrooms and schools. Since being made effective, many states have started such experiments with single-gender classrooms, so it made me start thinking. Would single-gender classrooms improve the quality of education in American public schools? While coming up with research, I found that the word “classrooms” is broad enough to include single-gender schools as well as coeducational schools where only some classes are taught separately so that more in-depth research could be evaluated. I have found that single-gender classrooms benefit students both scholastically and in later life success, they help students develop positive attitudes about education and about themselves, and are very desirable to students, parents, and teachers.
Through my research, I have found that single-gender classrooms benefit students scholastically, which results in life, marriage, and occupational success. Huffman said that The Riordan Study, done by Cornelius Riordan, used 58,270 randomly selected students to analyze the differences between mixed-gender schools and single-gender schools. In analyzing the data, the author put in “controls for parental structures, race, sex, family size, and socioeconomic backgrounds.” The longitudinal study of educational performance found that both boys and girls who went to single-gender schools outperformed mixed-gender schools by almost a full academic year and both went on in adulthood to have greater occupational success. In addition, the study found that g...

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...s." ASCD (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development). n.d. Web. 22 April 2014.
Huffman, Ronald J. Jr. "Single-Sex Schools and Classrooms as an Effective School Structure that will Promote an Effective Learning Environment, Without External Youth Subculture Distractions." Durham Public Schools. 15 October 2012. Web. 21 April 2014.
Linder-Altman, Dale. "Single-gender classes work, teachers and parents say." The Times and Democrat. 12 December 2010. Web. 20 April 2014.
Longley, Jennifer. "High school students say single-sex schools are an academic plus." Christian Science Monitor 7 July 1997: 13. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 April 2014.
"Single-sex education spreads." USA Today. 13 October 2008.: Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 April 2014.
Whelan, Christine B. "Singles." National Review 50.17 (1998): 34-36. Academic Search Premier. Web. 23 April 2014.

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