ACLU challenges Kentucky district’s single-sex classrooms
The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit in federal court charging segregating classes by gender at the Breckinridge County (KY) Middle School is illegal and discriminatory. The single-gender classes started after the U.S. Department of Education announced its intention to loosen federal restrictions on segregating students by gender. The new lawsuit claims such segregation violates the U.S. Constitution and federal and Kentucky law. "The Breckinridge County sex-segregated classrooms are not only unlawful because they deny boys and girls equal opportunities in education (but) these kinds of experimental programs are also misguided in that they distract from efforts that we know can improve all students' education like improved funding, smaller classes, more parental involvement and better trained teachers," said Emily Martin, deputy director of the ACLU Women's Rights Project.
Source: Daytona Beach News-Journal, 5/20/08, By Staff
[Editor’s Note: The ACLU-KY’s press release, below, includes links to the legal complaint and other materials, including criticism of research purporting to show that single gender education can yield positive academic results. The 2006 article from Stateline.org included information on increased experimentation with such programs around the country, the research debate, and a 2006 decision by Louisiana’s Livingston Parish school district to shelve two pilot programs when sued by the ACLU. In the face of controversy, the school board in Greene County, Georgia, also recently abandoned its plans to convert all its schools to single-sex classrooms. Ongoing consideration of such programs there, too, has attracted the ACLU’s attention. See the next links, as well as those to reports on single-gender programs in South Carolina and Wisconsin. Education Week reports that the South Carolina programs are being tried not only in the hopes of academic benefits but also as a way of increasing the menu of public school options for parents amid voucher debates. Information on the federal regulations is at the last link.]
ACLU-KY press release
Stateline.org, 9/19/06, By Pauline Vu
NSBA School Law pages on Georgia single-sex schools
ACLU press release on Greene County
Wisconsin State Journal, 5/4/08, By Melanie Conklin
Education Week, 5/7/08, By Michele McNeil
NSBA School Law pages on Title IX regulations