Single-Sex Schooling: Bridging Science and School Boards in Educational Policy

摘要

Heated debate over the necessity, efficacy, and legality of public single-sex schooling continues in communities across the U.S. In this introduction to the second part of a special issue on the topic, we provide illustrative descriptions of issues that are common in U.S. school board deliberations on the topic, including issues of ideology, money, race, and science, and legal battles over the outcomes of such decisions. We then summarize the nine papers that appear in the issue. Four papers provide reviews of the laws, neuroscience, and critical race theorizing relevant to single-sex schooling. In addition, two papers present sophisticated re-analyses of important data sets on the topic, and three papers present new empirical data on non-academic outcomes (gender attitudes, peer relations, and body image) associated with single-sex schooling. Finally, we offer conclusions for educational practice and policy based on the current state of scientific evidence.