Advice Given on Single-Sex Schools for Boys of Color

Single-sex schools for Latino and African-American males use such interventions as fostering a feeling of “brotherhood” among students, providing relevant instruction, and countering negative messages in the media and in their daily lives—among them that school is more suitable for girls.

Those are the findings of a study conducted by the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University of seven single-sex public schools that enroll primarily boys of color.

The qualitative study is part of a more comprehensive inquiry conducted from 2006 to 2009 by Pedro Noguera, the executive director of the center and one of the authors of the study, into the effectiveness of single-sex public schools for Latino and African-American males. Edward Fergus, the deputy director for the center, is a...