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No Girls Allowed

Boys go here, girls go there, as across the country, schools embrace single-sex education in hopes of boosting achievement.

By Mary Ellen Flannery

They’re loud. They’re rambunctious. They are, well, boys.

This classroom at the Walter C. Cunningham School of Excellence in Waterloo, Iowa, is among the latest to embrace single-sex education—the newly popular, but still controversial, practice of dividing a house so that each might stand straighter and achieve more. It is the hot thing these days: Boosted by money in the so-called No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) and recent changes to sex discrimination laws, the number of U.S. public schools with single-gender classrooms has soared from four in 1998 to 211 in 2006.

At Cunningham, the boys-only classroom is Ferguson’s answer to the persistent under-achievement of Black boys in particular. If he can support their specific interests, and teach them in a way that fits their learning style, he hopes to close the gap. College for all of them, he says.

“Mr. Jackson, what are those first three letters,” barks Ferguson during a reading lesson.

“C-A-N,” reads a slim second-grader, wearing a navy Cunningham sweatshirt and a small, sparkling ear stud.

“What is it?” Ferguson demands again.

“C-A-N, can, candy!” shouts his student.

“All right!” Ferguson exclaims, beaming. “That’s what I’m talking about! All you needed were the first three letters to identify that word, and why is that?”

“Because we’re smart!” boasts a classmate.

General expectations in most classrooms, that students will raise their hands, work cooperatively, ask for help, and refrain from disruption, are easier for most girls than boys to meet, says Leonard Sax, founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education. And that’s why, he says, too many boys are falling behind.

“We live in a sexist society,” Sax says. “And in co-ed schools, our girls and boys are pigeon-holed into blue and pink cubbyholes.”

Sax suggests girls would be free to start working toward that Nobel Prize in Physics if they studied in a more supportive, esteem-building environment. And boys will flourish alone, as well, he says. Check out Woodward Elementary in DeLand, Florida. In co-ed classes, 37 percent of boys passed a state writing test in 2005. But in all-boy classes? 86 percent.

In a Phi Delta Kappa analysis of recent research on single-sex education, researchers agreed—at least in part. Their review concluded that single-sex classrooms might be a particularly good fit for minority, low-income students, who often lack academic and social supports at home. And, especially in secondary school, they may prevent kids from dropping out.

But it may not work for everybody, cautions Pamela Rios, a senior policy analyst in NEA Human and Civil Rights. “We’re not saying it can’t work, but we are saying there’s not enough research to support putting this kind of program into widespread use for everyone. The verdict is still out.”

Education Equality

Concerns include the possibility that single-sex programs may enshrine stereotypes. Not all boys are disruptive, rambunctious, school-haters. Not all girls need to be sheltered from boys. And, if we divide our children by gender, it may set a dangerous precedent for divisions based on race or religion. Other ways to close achievement gaps, such as teacher-quality initiatives and smaller class sizes, are proven solutions.

“Research shows that the differences within a sex are much bigger than the differences between sexes. Assuming that all boys like war games and all girls like dolls is a very big assumption,” says American University professor David Sadker. “You have to ask, why is this so suddenly popular? It’s because we’re resegregating our schools—by race, by economics, and now, by boys and girls.”

“A talented teacher of girls will put aside everything when a girl comes to her to complain about some slight at the cafeteria table, and look her in the eye and say, ‘Talk to me,’” Sax says. “And she will mean it. She really does care about the whole girl, and not just her grade in biology.”

A talented teacher of boys, on the other hand, can roar. (Really roar—boys respond to louder instruction, Sax says.) And juggle. “Picture a guy on a cell phone; he’s moving. He thinks better when he’s moving,” Ferguson says. 

Use that boy-energy, urges Annette Duncan, Ferguson’s colleague. In her all-boys classroom, a spelling lesson might require them to catch a ball and dash to her desk. She also capitalizes on their real-life interests—a lesson on news-writing opens up the sports pages.

“My boys are impulsive,” Ferguson says. “Do I want to take advantage of that? Or squelch it and put it in a box? I’d say 60 to 70 percent of the time, they don’t have to raise their hands. Just come on with it. It makes them want to answer, to take a risk.”

Learning Games

At Iowa’s Cunningham school, there are three single-sex classrooms: Ferguson’s second grade, and two complementary rooms in the third grade. There also are co-ed classes. Parents choose their preference, often with the principal’s recommendation.

Walking between them is like opening the refrigerator door. Even the air seems different. Here, it’s calm. There it’s controlled chaos. Here, it’s quiet. Next door, the pulsating rhythms of Dr. Dre (without the lyrics) play softly.

In Amy Schmidt’s all-girl class, she and a handful of students are clustered in a corner, reading about weather systems. A lightning streak across the book’s cover makes “Miss Armoney” think of one word: “Suffocating,” she tells her teacher. “Because if you’re like in a hurricane, and the water is coming and the winds are coming, you’re just really, really scared, like you can’t even breathe, and you don’t know if you can feed your children or anything!”

“Oooh! Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful answer!” Schmidt exclaims, kissing her fingers and touching Armoney’s head. “I like your thinking, honey!”

 They do not miss the boys. “Miss boys? Oh no!” Armoney cries, shaking her head firmly. “One chased me today at recess. Tried to kiss me. Oh no, we will never have boys in our class.

“Our class is a truthful class,” she continues. “We respect one another and we care for one another. If anybody fell, we would help them up. And it doesn’t matter if we mess up or not, Ms. Schmidt loves and cherishes us.”

And she does, Schmidt says—much like Ferguson loves “his gentlemen.” But she also loves having them to herself. Teaching two genders in one classroom is almost like teaching two grades in one room, Schmidt says. Knowing the difference, say both Schmidt and Duncan, they’d never go back. 

• Join the debate:
  Are girls more likely to engage with a female teacher, and boys with a male teacher?

Photos: Mark Tade/Gazette Communications

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The Wages of Teaching

A Newsweek columnist calls for higher pay for teachers, saying, ‘They made us. We owe them.’

By Anna Quindlen

A couple of years ago I spent the day at an elementary school in New Jersey. It was a nice, average school, a square and solid building with that patented classroom aroma of disinfectant and chalk, chock-full of reasonably well-behaved kids from middle-class families. I handled three classes, and by the time I staggered out the door, I wanted to lie down for the rest of the day.

Teaching’s the toughest job there is. In his new memoir, Teacher Man , Frank McCourt recalls telling his students, “Teaching is harder than working on docks and warehouses.” Not to mention writing a column. I can stare off into the middle distance with my chin in my hand any time. But you go mentally south for five minutes in front of a class of fifth-graders, and you are sunk.

The average new teacher today makes just under $30,000 a year, which may not look too bad for a twentysomething with no mortgage and no kids. But soon enough the newbies realize that they can make more money and not work anywhere near as hard elsewhere. After a lifetime of hearing the old legends about cushy hours and summer vacations, they figure out that early mornings are for students who need extra help, evenings are for test corrections and lesson plans, and weekends and summers are for second and even third jobs to try to pay the bills.

According to the Department of Education, one in every five teachers leaves after the first year, and almost twice as many leave within three. If any business had that rate of turnover, someone would do something smart and strategic to fix it. This isn’t any business. It’s the most important business around, the gardeners of the landscape of the human race.

Unfortunately, the current fashionable fixes for education take a page directly from the business playbook, and it’s a terrible fit. Instead of simply acknowledging that starting salaries are woefully low and committing to increasing them and finding the money for reasonable, recurring raises, pols have wasted decades obsessing about something called merit pay. It’s a concept that works fine if you’re making widgets, but kids aren’t widgets, and good teaching isn’t an assembly line.

McCourt’s book is instructive. Early in his 30-year career, he’s teaching at a vocational high school and realizes that his English students are never more inspired than when forging excuse notes from their parents. So McCourt assigns the class to write excuse notes, the results ranging “from a family epidemic of diarrhea to a sixteen-wheeler truck crashing into the house.” Pens fly with extravagant lies. You can almost feel the imaginations kick in.

The point about tying teaching salaries to widget standards is that it’s hard to figure out a useful way to measure the merit of what a really good teacher does. You can imagine the principal who would see McCourt’s gambit as the work of a gifted teacher, and just as easily imagine the one who would find it unseemly. Tying raises to pass rates is a flagrant invitation to inflate student achievement. Tying them to standardized tests makes rote regurgitation the centerpiece of schools. Both are blind to the merit of teachers who shoulder the challenging work of educating those less able, more troubled, from homes where there are no pencils, no books, even no parents. A teacher whose Advanced Placement class sends everyone on to top-tier colleges; a teacher whose remedial-reading class finally gets through to some, but not all, of a student group that is failing. There is merit in both.

The National Education Association has been pushing for a minimum starting salary of $40,000 for all teachers. Why not? If these people can teach six-year-olds to add and get adolescents to attend to algebra, surely we can do the math to get them a decent wage. Since the corporate world is the greatest, and richest, beneficiary of well-educated workers, maybe a national brain trust might be set up that would turn a tax on corporate profits into an endowment to raise teacher salaries.

Maybe states and communities could also pass regulations with this simple proviso: no school administrator should ever receive a percentage raise greater than the raise teachers get. Neither should state legislators.

In recent years, teacher salaries have grown, if they’ve grown at all, at a far slower rate than those of other professionals, often lagging behind inflation. Yet teachers should have the most powerful group of advocates in the nation: not their union, but we the people, their former students. I am a writer because of the encouragement of teachers.

Surely most Americans must feel the same, that there were women and men who helped them levitate just a little above the commonplace expectations they had for themselves.

At the end of his book, McCourt, who is preparing to leave teaching with the idea of living off his pension and maybe writing—and whose maiden effort, Angela’s Ashes, will win the Pulitzer—is giving advice to a young substitute. “You’ll never know what you’ve done to, or for, the hundreds coming and going,” he says. Yeah, but the hundreds know, the hundreds who are millions who are us. They made us. We owe them. 

For more on NEA’s campaign on professional pay, visit www.nea.org/pay/index.html .

This essay by Anna Quindlen, a columnist and author, first appeared in the November 28, 2005, issue of Newsweek magazine. To read it online, go to: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10116331/site/newsweek/

Photo by Karen Cipolla

See Your Name in Print

NEA staff writers are looking for sources for future stories. Share your experience and expertise and see your name in print! The stories are listed below.

English Only?

Should English Language Learners be in English-only immersion classes, or in bilingual environments? How does your state legislation affect how you teach ELLs? If you’d like to share your experiences and opinions with NEA Today readers, write to Rebecca Weber at  neaeditor@nea.org .

Teaching 9/11

Next fall will mark the five year anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. How will teachers talk about 9/11 in today's classrooms? How has the discussion evolved, and how are history books presenting the information? If you'd like to participate in this story, please write to Cindy Long at neaeditor@nea.org .

Then and Now

September’s NEA Today is going to take a look at some of the changes from the early days of our members’ careers (be it two decades or two years ago) to the present. Tell us how your job has changed since you first started. What were the hot-button education issues and lingo of your early years? Drop NEA Today writer Cynthia Kopkowski a line at neaeditor@nea.org. (And we want pictures, too! Send us a photo of yourself from your earliest days in education and a word or two about your expectations of the job then, and your aspirations, and how those developed over the years. Email digital photos to neaeditor@nea.org, or mail them to NEA, Office of the Executive Editor, 1201 16th St. NW Washington, D.C. 20036-3290, Attn: Cynthia Kopkowski)

Standardized Tests

Standardized testing is big business—are you getting a piece of the pie? Do you earn money by grading essays or short answer responses for standardized tests, or by writing test questions? Tell us your story at neaeditor@nea.org

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State Report

Mistaken Identities

Michigan At first, administrators thought the cost of fingerprinting and background checks for employees—required by recent laws aimed at protecting children from sex offenders— would be their biggest challenge. But problems really began when the Michigan Education Association (MEA) had to defend educators mistakenly identified by the screenings as criminals. For the approximately 200,000 public school employees involved, nearly 4,600 offenses were listed.

“We’ve heard from hundreds of our members who are victims of mistaken identity or errors in the report,” says MEA President Iris Salters. “In numerous cases, completely innocent, hardworking school employees have to spend time away from their classrooms or worksites to clear their good names in order to retain their employment—not to mention their reputations.” MEA obtained a temporary restraining order against the public disclosure of the list.

ESPs Seek New Code

Illinois Officials with the Illinois Education Association (IEA) have introduced legislation to address education support professional (ESP) concerns through changes in the state school code. These concerns include increasing accumulated sick leave, broadening recall rights, prohibiting subcontracting during a collective bargaining term, maintaining active status for employees injured on the job, and establishing bid requirements and public hearings for districts seeking to subcontract school non-certified staff when a contract has expired.

“There are numerous statutory areas that need to be addressed to provide ESPs with job security and due process of law,” says IEA ESP Specialist Stacy Burroughs.

Big Push for Pensions

Maryland Members of the Maryland State Teachers Association (MSTA) are in  the throes of a campaign to improve teacher pensions. Maryland teachers receive 38 percent of their salaries (minus state taxes) when they retire, compared with almost 75 percent in Pennsylvania (tax free) and 60 percent in New York. As part of the “Push for Pension” drive, MSTA members have hosted more than 500 house parties, sent over 30,000 e-mails to legislators, and sponsored legislative receptions. “I am proud of how our members and staff have seized the challenge of moving this grassroots effort out of the schools and worksites to the halls of the Maryland General Assembly,” says Pat Foerster, MSTA president. Maryland is the third-wealthiest state in the nation with a huge surplus this year.

In the Right Direction

Georgia Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue is one of almost 40 governors urging their legislatures to support increased public school funding. Coincidentally, their states are holding gubernatorial elections in the fall. Governor Perdue, for example, has proposed a 4 percent salary increase, a $100 gift card to help teachers buy classroom supplies, and state underwriting for a portion of teacher health-insurance premiums.

“The 4 percent is good, but 6 percent is more in line with taking us in the direction we need to go,” says Merchuria Chase Williams, president of the Georgia Association of Educators (GAE). Georgia ranks ninth in population and is the fifth- fastest-growing state. “Yet, we’re 18th in teacher salaries,” Williams says. Though Georgia teachers received a 2 percent raise in 2005–06, their take-home pay declined because of increased contributions to health insurance.

Trickle-down Leadership

Arizona Members of the Mesa ESP Association (MESPA) have learned their lessons well. After studying the fine points of school finance, coalition building, and member recruitment at the hands of the Arizona Education Association (AEA), the Mesa bargaining team recently won a 3.4 percent raise for all ESPs, a district-covered insurance increase, a summer bonus of 4.4 percent, and a one-time payment that averaged $450 per educator. “AEA got our people trained, and the results have been good,” says Richard Berumen, MESPA president.  Mesa is one of seven ESP locals targeted for assistance by AEA.

Educators Set the Agenda

Minnesota Education Minnesota (EM) launched a five-year communications campaign in January to build public support for schools and establish EM and its locals as the dominant sources of information on education issues. The “Schools First!” campaign includes more than $1 million in TV advertising to encourage Minnesotans to voice their opinions at an EM Web site (www.schoolsfirst.org). EM President Judy Schaubach says the campaign was launched to hear people’s views about public schools. “Our goal is to generate a great statewide public discussion about schools,” she says. In conjunction with the ad campaign, 15 public “listening sessions” were held across the state.

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Spotlight

Second Time Around

A grandpa rediscovers the wonder of raising a bundle of joy—and runs into some problems.

Frank Miller was facing one of the worst nightmares a parent can imagine. His 24-year-old daughter, home on a visit, was lying on the couch, sick with heroin withdrawal pains, while her one-year-old daughter patted her face—a toddler trying to mother her own mother.

Jennifer Arsenault enjoys a teaching moment with two students from military families at Birdneck Elementary School in Virginia Beach, Virginia.

Frank, a school psychologist, and his wife, Coletta, a guidance counselor, took a stand. “We told our daughter she had a choice: either go into a rehabilitation program or we would take the child from her. Which is what we did.”

So began a life adventure filled with the joys of bringing up a little girl, tempered by the pain of dealing with a grown daughter in crisis and the complications that come with a family arrangement very different from what’s ex-pected, but becoming much more common.

According to the 2000 census, 4.5 million children live in grandparent-headed households, up 30 percent since 1990. That’s more than 6 percent of children under

age 18, although in many cases, the parents are also in the household.

News stories about grandparents bringing up children usually focus on low-income, minority grandparents, but “that’s the tip of the iceberg,” says Miller. There are also non-minority, middle class grandparents in this situation—like him and his wife, who live in Denton, Maryland.

Poor or not poor, grandparents raising children need help and consideration from educators, Miller says. Instead, he adds, they often feel disapproved of. “Some people seem to feel, ‘You screwed up the first time. What gives you the right to try again?’ But grandparents are forced into this situation. They’ve done the right thing, and they deserve respect and support.”

The grandchildren are likely to have extra problems caused by their difficult childhood experiences before the grandparents stepped in. The Millers’ granddaughter spent a year in and out of foster care before her grandparents got custody, and she bears emotional scars, says Miller.

Grandparents may also have trouble getting medical insurance for a grandchild until they complete the adoption process, which for the Millers took until this past November.

Then there’s the problem that grandparents may be unable to understand the lives of modern children. “My wife and I are educators, we’re in schools every day, so we’re in touch, but what if I were an engineer or a plumber? I’m 55, so I went to elementary school in the 1950s. There are grandparents in this situation in their 60s, who went to school in the 40s. A lot has changed.

“They may need to learn how special education works, how to help with homework, what’s No Child Left Behind?” Miller says.

There are social expectations as well—What’s normal for an eight- or 12-year-old these days? “When the child comes home and says, ‘Everybody’s doing it,’ is it okay, or do I need to say, ‘No.’”

Grandparent-parents may also suffer social isolation. “A lot of our friends shunned us,” says Miller. “They don’t invite us to social gatherings because they don’t want a five-year-old around.”

At the same time, he says, the parents of his granddaughter’s little friends don’t really want to see them socially, either. “They don’t invite us old coots. They don’t think about us for play dates or birthday parties.”

The Millers are perhaps even more dedicated to their little girl than most parents because, whether it’s rational or not, they do feel that guilt, Miller explains. This time, they’re determined to do everything right.

So instead of empty nest freedom, their lives are filled with soccer practice, dance lessons, and hundreds of bedtime stories.

“I was getting ready to retire,” says Frank, “but now I’m starting over. I’ll be 66 when she’s in high school.

“But I have no regrets. I love this girl to death. It’s been 20 years since I’ve heard a little voice, chased a little girl around the house, and put her on my shoulders. Fortunately, I’m in pretty good health, but I’ve started working out and lifting weights so I can keep up with her.”

For other grandparents raising grandchildren, Miller recommends checking out the Web site of Grandparents United Delaware, at www.grandparentsunitedde.org, which has links to other useful sites.

—Alain Jehlen

Photo: Charles Votaw

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Heat, Bugs, and Bullets

Those are the biggest challenges facing education support professionals who serve as Army Reservists in Iraq, they say.

“They had a whole lot of different ugly bugs with furry legs that would crawl inside your clothes and bite you all over,” says Staff Sgt. James Smith, a school bus driver with the Clark County School District in Las Vegas. “And it was hot—about 150 degrees inside the cab of my truck.”

Smith is one of hundreds of education support professionals (ESPs) who have traded their school wardrobes for sand-colored combat fatigues. As members of the Reserves and National Guard, ESPs from across the country are part of the largest military call-up in the last 30 years.

After a long deployment to Iraq, Staff Sgt. James Smith, a school bus driver with the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, is happy to be back home with his family.

“When our country calls, ESPs respond,” says Karen Mahurin, president of the National Council of ESPs. “It’s hard for them, having to leave their families and jobs. But they don’t hesitate to defend America and everything we stand for.”

When Duty Calls

As a member of the Army Reserve’s 257th Transportation Company, Smith drove a 72-ton Heavy Equipment Transporter with a goose-neck trailer. He hauled tanks, various fighting vehicles, and soldiers from one battlefield to another.

“We would drive 14 hours a day and spend a week or more at a time in a combat zone,” Smith says.

 Among the 253 soldiers in the company was Spc. Kimberley Potter, also a Clark County school bus driver. As a field mechanic, Potter was often in the same 30-truck convoy—dubbed “Rolling Thunder”—as Smith. She and the 29 other women in the unit endured the same sand fleas, camel spiders, and battle conditions as the men.

“In the desert, there are no showers,” she says, “We had to sit through sand storms and clean ourselves with baby wipes.”

The company spent 346 days in Kuwait and Iraq, from February 2003 to March 2004. As a unit they drove more than 2 million miles between home base in Kuwait and hot spots like the Sunni Triangle.

Although Smith was thousands of miles from Las Vegas, he found that his experience at the wheel of a bus helped him on those long drives along the Iraqi countryside.

“The truck was harder to handle, being three times as big as my school bus,” he says. “But I was used to driving in a high state of alertness because at school you have to constantly keep your eyes moving from the traffic on both sides of the bus back to the kids in the rear.”

Road Warriors

Aside from IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and other road mines, Smith and Potter had to beware suicide attacks from pedestrians and other vehicles.

“Cars would come up beside you and start shooting, or kids would run up to the truck and try to throw a grenade in the cab,” Smith says. “‘Stay alert, stay alive’ was my motto.”

Because of the weight of the vehicles and their loads, the convoy didn’t travel faster than 45 miles per hour. In one instance, the slow speed helped Smith evade a pile-up when a truck in front of his hit a roadside bomb.

“The force of the explosion blew out my windows,” he says. “After that, I was always praying.”

On missions that would last up to 12 days, Potter carried an M-16 rifle on her shoulder and a 50-caliber weapon in her Humvee. She and the other mechanics brought up the rear of the convoy as gunner support.

“In Mosul, we encountered enemy fire, but there was little I could do except continue driving,” she says. “In other places people would sometimes shout at us and slide their index finger across their throat.”

Historic Proportions of Poverty

But for other uniformed ESPs, it wasn’t the specific danger that they experienced, but the poverty suffered by local people that struck them most. Staff Sgt. Kenny Ham, who was deployed in February 2003 to Camp Udari, Kuwait, also took part in several humanitarian missions to Afghani villages in Kandahar. On one assignment, members of his company delivered food, clothing, books, toys, and medical supplies to a poor mountain village.

“People came running out of their homes—which were mud huts made with straw,” he says. “As word spread, more and more people came on foot, by camel and donkey. It was chilly, and the kids were barefoot, wearing a single layer of clothing. Their little hands were chapped and weathered.”

The village lacked telephones, television, and radio.  “[Afghanistan] is so far behind the modern world, it is beyond belief,” says Ham, who also flew combat missions as a door gunner during his 14 months in the Middle East.

On the Homefront

Back home, Ham is an assistant fleet mechanic in operations and maintenance with a three-county BOCES (Board of Cooperative Education Services) in Elmira, New York. Though he lives in New York, he has served 17 years with the 104th Airborne Division of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard.

“I joined the Pennsylvania Guard because I wanted to be in an aviation unit,” says Ham, who reports to Fort Indiantown Gap, a three-and-a-half hour drive from his farm house in Pine City. “It was the nearest aviation unit.”

Ham says he has no regrets about his deployment, especially since he received strong support from his school district.

“Two of my co-workers split their shifts to fill in and keep the fleet in good running order,” he says.

None of the three ESPs lost seniority or were penalized during their service in Operation Iraqi Freedom. While they were not paid by the school district during their tours, each received full pay and benefits as active duty military. Smith and Potter say they also received encouragement and advice from Sam Johnson, a UniServ director with the Nevada State Education Association (NSEA).

“It’s a federal law that citizen soldiers have to be excused from work without penalty,” Johnson says. “But we also have it written in our bargaining contract.”

Johnson, who served 23 years in the Air Force, says his military experience helped him negotiate some extra protection for local ESPs.

Having Association support was a relief to the ESPs, especially because of other concerns—including their young children.

“Without hesitation, I missed my son the most,” says Ham, whose son turned seven during his deployment. When Potter left, her son was age three and her daughter was one.

“I left active duty after my son was born,” she says. “I wanted to ensure more time with my family while not giving up my military career.”

Smith’s wife, who was pregnant when he left for the Middle East, introduced her husband to their eight-month-old son.

“I appreciate life more since coming home,” Smith says. “I now thank God every day for having a family, a job, and my freedom.” 

—John Rosales

Photo:  Kevin Cannon

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