Sometimes 'Equal' Means 'Different'
The debate over single-sex education is heating up again. The office for civil rights of the U.S. Department of Education has informally notified New York City Schools Chancellor Rudy F. Crew that an all-girls leadership academy, opened last year in East Harlem, appears to violate Title IX, the federal statute that bars sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. Federal officials have suggested that a possible solution might be to admit boys to the school or to open a "comparable" all-boys school at a nearby location. The chancellor has publicly rejected both proposals, threatening to take the case to federal court if necessary. However this stalemate is resolved, the resolution will reverberate far beyond the borders of New York.
When the Women's Leadership School opened last year, it revived interest in a concept that had languished for several years in the aftermath of litigation brought by civil liberties and women's groups against all-male Afrocentric academies for at-risk students in Detroit. The determination shown by officials and sponsors of the East Harlem school and the enthusiasm voiced by the young women and their parents appear to have re-energized the movement and extended it outside the inner city. This year, half a dozen California school districts are establishing "single gender" separate academies for boys and girls, including boys' schools in order to comply with a recent California law and, arguably, to insulate the plan from legal attack. ( "Calif. Opens Single-Sex Academies," Sept. 10, 1997.) Fueling the debate is the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last year declaring the all-male Virginia Military Institute unconstitutional.
Yet despite all the saber rattling by opponents of the concept, single-sex education has solid grounding in the law and in research findings. Title IX itself implicitly excludes the admissions policies of elementary and secondary schools, other than vocational schools. The New York City case, however, hinges on the interpretation of a provision in the Title IX regulations requiring that public school systems provide "comparable" courses, services, and facilities to any student excluded from a school on the basis of sex. But the regulations do not require that such courses, services, and facilities be provided in the same school or even in a nearby separate single-sex school. In other words, a single-sex school for girls does not trigger a legal obligation to open a comparable single-sex school for boys provided similar opportunities are offered, even in a coed setting. The New York board of education maintains that the East Harlem school district already provides numerous "comparable" opportunities for boys within several coed...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or purchase this article.
Subscribe to Education Week and Save
Get a full year and save up to 45%!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
- Elementary School Teacher
- Success Academy Charter Schools, New York, NY
- Superintendent
- Pinellas County Schools, Pinellas County, FL
- Middle School Language Arts Teacher
- TEAM Schools, Newark, NJ
- Chief Academic Officer
- Adams 14, Commerce City, CO
- Program Coordinator
- Institute for Educational Advancement, South Pasadena, CA
