A middle school lunchroom is not the quietest place on earth.
Hormones are at play, teenage angst is in full bloom, and juveniles are testing their boundaries as well as their voices.
Yet, two Denver schools have found a way to turn down the volume and dampen the drama. They separate the genders at lunchtime.
In ways big and small, gender is playing more of a role in public education as schools explore separating the sexes in lunchrooms, classes or even entire schools.
Single-sex education has been a longtime province of private and parochial schools, but recent research and school choice are making it an attractive option for public schools despite protests from civil libertarians.
In Colorado, a new Aurora charter school opening in the fall is splitting up the sexes.
Arapahoe High School in Littleton has offered single-sex classes in several subjects since 2003, and a charter school in Colorado Springs has been separating genders for years.
Jefferson County Public Schools officials last week met in a three-day seminar about how to teach sexes differently.
“Kids come in all different sizes; one size doesn’t fit all,” said Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, based in Maryland.
“Parents should have choices,” Sax said. “You shouldn’t have to pay $20,000 to send your kid to an all-girls or all-boys school. If you have a dozen or more schools in your district, make one all-boys and make one all-girls. It doesn’t cost anything.”
In 2002, 11 public U.S. schools offered single-sex classes, Sax said. This year, there were 392. By next fall, more than 500 will have single-sex classes.
“It’s market equilibrium,” Sax said. “Every district and every school has their own rationale and reason.”
In the Smiley Middle School cafeteria on a recent school day, girls ate first while boys played outside.
“It’s a good idea,” said 12-year-old Bernice Serrano. “The boys always want to make a mess.”
“The girls get their privacy,” said 12-year-old Alayja Baca. “The boys are rude when girls are trying to talk.”
Referrals to the office, which had spiked during lunch, have dropped, said Smiley principal Nate Howard.
“It’s a genuine fact, there is less conflict during the lunch hour,” he said.
Hill Middle School has been separating the sexes at lunch for several years, and Morey Middle School is thinking about making the change.
Catering to strengths
For some, splitting up the sexes is about eliminating social interruptions and redirecting focus.
Others think the sexes learn differently and therefore fare better if they are taught differently.
Audra Philippon, who is starting Axl Academy Charter School in Aurora in the fall, doesn’t buy that philosophy, saying such ideas perpetuate stereotypes.
So while her preschool-through eighth-grade school will be divided by gender, it will be done purely for social reasons, Philippon said.
Each student will be taught the same and given the same curriculum, she said.
“We are using separate-gender classrooms to make sure kids feel safe and so they can take academic risks,” Philippon said.
“If you are reading a novel to a roomful of boys, you can have a much more meaningful conversation without them stifling themselves because there are girls in the room,” Philippon said. “You can have more authentic, higher-risk conversation with boys and girls in a single-sex setting.”
Philippon cites research that says when girls and boys are on the playground, the girls choose not to play on the basketball court or try activities that are typically male-dominated.
“Each kid needs the maximum opportunity to take risks and grow,” she said. “This is all about breaking stereotypes. It’s not about re-creating other people’s.”
In announcing a change to the federal rules governing single-sex classes, U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spelling in 2005 commented that “research shows that some students may learn better in single-sex settings.”
She was referring to a federal analysis in 2005 that examined more than 2,000 studies on single-sex classes. It revealed that a third of the studies reported a positive result for the students. The rest of the research showed mixed results or no difference for the children.
Hoping to narrow the gender gap, communities embraced the change in federal law, which made it easier for schools to offer single-sex education without running afoul of sex-discrimination laws.
Boys fare worse than girls in many subjects, and girls are getting left behind in math and science, according to test results.
In Colorado, girls consistently score better than boys on the Colorado Student Assessment Program reading tests, a bellwether of academic success.
Statewide, the female student graduation rate for the 2006-07 school year was 78.6 percent, and the male graduation rate was 71.5 percent — a gap that has been consistent for the past decade.
“These days, the boys aren’t learning,” said Kathy Stevens, executive director of the Gurian Institute and co-author of “The Minds of Boys.”
The Gurian Institute in Colorado Springs provides training to schools about the differences between boys and girls and how to best focus instruction to both.
Last week, the institute held a three-day seminar with Jefferson County Public Schools on how the sexes learn differently.
“We learn the same things sometimes in different ways,” Stevens said. “But classrooms are more friendly to girls because they are more verbally based.”
In a nutshell, Stevens said, research shows males process verbals in different parts of the brain, they don’t hear as well as girls and their fine motor skills develop at a slower rate than girls’.
The institute recommends different teaching styles to help boys, such as put coed classrooms into circles to help boys’ hearing, don’t let boys sit for more than 20 minutes at a time, do more hands-on activities or start with graphic representations before writing assignments.
“It’s a lot of little things,” she said. “Things that don’t cost money.”
Other groups advocating single-sex education suggest physically changing the separate classrooms — offering different paint schemes for boys and girls, brighter lighting for boys and louder instruction.
However, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit in a number of states against single-sex classrooms, and the American Association of University Women last month issued a study calling the “boys crisis” in education a myth.
Success, the study said, is more associated with family income than gender.
Some raves for separation
The results have been mixed in Colorado.
Maria Mitchell Elementary School in Denver dropped a 3-year-old program in which students were separated by gender in fourth and fifth grades so the school could comply with an unrelated federal court order involving segregation issues.
Roncalli Middle School in Pueblo began offering single-sex classes for sixth-graders in 2005 — randomly assigning kids to the classrooms. Over two years, the all-girls class did best in math, English and science, followed by the all-boys class and then the coed classes.
The school ended the experiment this year because of budget cuts.
“Parents are requesting it again,” said counselor Mike Howard. “Even if we can’t bring it back, the theory here is boys and girls learn different. We continue to provide different methodologies in the classroom — more hands on, more movement, shorter intervals, change up what they are doing every eight minutes.”
Four years ago, Arapahoe High School officials began noticing a drop in grades for boys and their lack of representation in school leadership roles.
They offered classes that were single-sex only — swimming, a health class for juniors, math and language arts. Now, single-sex classes are available in nearly every subject. Three hundred of the 2,100 students have enrolled.
“Our objective was not to lower the female standing but to raise the male standings,” said math teacher Barb Stahlhut.
“There have been phenomenal outcomes,” said principal Ron Booth, adding that teachers have learned how to approach the sexes differently.
“Girls like to work in groups,” he said. “Boys like to work in rows. Girls are more concerned that all of the girls are learning it. Boys are more competitive.”
Shauna Rienks, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Denver, wrote her dissertation on single-gender education. She studied Arapahoe High for a semester and did not find overwhelming academic growth. But she also did not find worse outcomes.
“It doesn’t seem to be hurting,” she said.
She found students in English classes felt better about being in single-gender classes — believed they could speak their minds and their teachers treated them fairly.
More research and longer-term studies need to be done, she said. That goes for coed classes as well.
“It hasn’t become clear that it is males falling behind or females making up ground. If one gender is not performing as well as it should, then we need to examine it,” she said.
At Smiley Middle School recently, the girls’ lunch period was ending and the boys were coming inside from their recess.
To keep the sexes separated, the boys enter from one hallway and the girls exit through another.
“Every once in a while, someone swims upstream,” said principal Howard, closely watching the transition to make sure they are kept apart.
Howard said separation allows him to take the boys aside at times, talk to them mano a mano.
Girls say they like the separation, but some boys aren’t too sure.
“It would be nice, cool to have them in here,” said Malik Metcalf, 12. “I have friends who are girls. But there would probably be more arguments.”
Aaron Nay, 12, said he understands why the sexes are kept apart.
“This way it’s just us boys,” he said, “gives us a chance to have boy time and talk about boys stuff.”
Twelve-year-old Jack Dalupan San Andreas said he wishes he was together with the girls at lunch.
“It would be kind of nice,” he said. “I could get some more food.”
Jeremy P. Meyer: 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com
