Single sex school is not the solution

The Austin American Statesman published an opinion titled “Plan for single sex schoolsin East Austin is another pricey experiment” on February 2, 2013. The writer of the editorial is critical about the Austin school trustees who voted to approve single-sex schools for Pearce and Garcia middle schools. In this editorial, the writer’s intended audiences are the parents, taxpayer, and homeowner of Pearce and Garcia. The writer claims that the trustees’ votes were not based on solid research, financial feasibility or models with a proven track record of success. According to the editorial, Pearce and Garcia has been rated academically unacceptable by the state in three of the past four years and the trustees considered that single-sex school would be the best practices for educating these unban minority students in Pearce and Garcia. The writer claims that the trustees approved attendance-zoned single-sex schools without having solid evidence that “those models have successfully affected academic performance of minority students in urban districts”. Instead they focused on the insignificant point that wearing uniforms or studying in single-sex environment offer fewer distractions.

I think the writer makes a valid point that single-sex school is not a solution to improve the academic performance of the urban minority students. Although I think the writer fails to mention the root cause of the poor performance of the students from these areas. In reality, most of the urban minority families don’t put value to their children’s education. Also the writer did not mention about the disadvantages of single-sex schools which is, single-sex schools  promote gender stereotype and  limit students abilities to successfully interact with members of opposite sex.

The point I fully agree with the writer is that single sex-schools are more expensive to run than co-ed schools because it requires separate campuses for both genders.

In conclusion, single-sex school is not a solution to improve urban minority areas’ education. What  they need to do is to get the parents motivate about the importance of their children’s education and also make sure to recruit skilled teachers in those schools.