Single-Sex Public Education in Connecticut Would Be Illegal and Ineffective

Separating Connecticut public school students on the basis of sex would be illegal, as well as educationally unsound, the American Civil Liberties Union of Connecticut and the ACLU Women's Rights Project wrote in a letter to Connecticut Education Commissioner Stephan Pryor in response to a recent report from the State Education Resource Center.

The report, Single-Sex Education: The Connecticut Context, disregards the prohibition of segregation by sex in the Connecticut Constitution and suggests single-sex classrooms as an option for addressing the gender achievement gap. Tight restrictions in federal law on single-sex education, including the protections of the Constitution, Title IX and agency regulations, are similarly disregarded. Regulations enforced by the U.S. Department of Education under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 tolerate single-sex education only under certain extremely limited circumstances.

The ACLU of Connecticut and the Women's Rights Project ask the Connecticut Department of Education to reject the report and to notify local school officials that sex-segregated education is not a legal option for public schools in the state.

"We wrote the letter to dispel the impression that public schools in Connecticut may legally separate students into boys-only and girls-only classrooms or campuses," said David McGuire, staff attorney for the ACLU of Connecticut. "Our state Constitution prohibits this kind of segregation."

The letter also pointed out that the supposed benefits of single-sex education are not validated by any legitimate research.

"Although single-sex classrooms have become popular in the past decade, there is no scientific research showing that they lead to better educational outcomes," said Amy L. Katz, cooperating attorney with the ACLU Women's Rights Project. "Most of these programs have been based on unsupportable theories about differences in learning and brain development between boys and girls that have been discredited by reputable scientific research."

Many of the single-sex education programs established in other states have faced legal challenges and many others have shut down under threat of litigation or been abandoned because they were ineffective. School districts should focus on innovations that have been demonstrated to work, rather than wasting resources on this costly and legally risky approach.

-- October 2, 2013

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