[Vision2020] Idaho public school makes national news
Donovan Arnold
donovanarnold@hotmail.com
Tue, 27 May 2003 16:15:31 -0700
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<P><BR> I would have to say that I strongly dislike this idea. Many of my friends were girls in school and I helped them and they helped me to understand the school material. I also think that limited interaction between members of the opposite gender is harmful to social development. Also, it eventually leads to inequalities between the learning environments of the two. Usually the better books and teachers for math, science, and computers going to the boys and music, arts, and the social sciences to the girls, thus inhibiting a person from getting the best teacher they could for a field where they could have an excellent teacher. If one girl is taking calculus in the 8th grade and 6 boys are, who is going to get knocked out? On the other hand, if one boy is gifted in english and 8 girls are, who is going to get knocked out then? Are you going to have one teacher for the one boy and one for the one girl? What a waste of money and oppo!
rtunity. There is absolutely no way to make sure that the learning environments are the same for both the girls and boys in every area of study without increasing costs or denying equal opportunity. I would hate this learning environment and think it unconstitutional for a public school. "Separate but equal" has already been tried for centuries and doesn't work, for race, gender, religion, disability, etc. They are using the exact same arguments for segregation on the basis of race in the 1950-60's. "The social interaction for Whites and Blacks was not conducive to the learning environment." I strongly disagree with separating people on any characteristic other then "level of skill" and only because it benefits the student. This is stereotyping the "males" as one way, and 'girls" as another. Sure this might limit conflict between boys and girls and make life easier for the teacher, but schools aren't made to make life easier for a few teachers, it is made to make life !
better for the future of all children.<BR><BR>Donovan J. Arnold</P></D
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<DIV></DIV>>From: "John Moss" <JOHNMOSS@MOSCOW.COM>
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<DIV></DIV>>To: <VISION2020@MOSCOW.COM>
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<DIV></DIV>>Subject: [Vision2020] Idaho public school makes national news
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<DIV></DIV>>Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 15:35:40 -0700
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<DIV></DIV>>http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/05/26/single.gender.classes.ap/index.html
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<DIV></DIV>>Teachers: Kids focus in single-gender classes
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<DIV></DIV>>Monday, May 26, 2003 Posted: 9:08 AM EDT (1308 GMT)
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<DIV></DIV>> Sixth-grade boys work together in their English class at Kimberly Middle School in Kimberly, Idaho.
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<DIV></DIV>>KIMBERLY, Idaho (AP) -- Mr. O'Donnell's sixth-grade class asks a lot of questions about their social studies assignments. So many, in fact, that he has to stop them just so he can explain their next task.
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<DIV></DIV>>It's one of the benefits, he says, of the single-gender classes the public school switched to this year.
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<DIV></DIV>>Now, in math, science, social studies and English, students are segregated into all-boy and all-girl groups. Though the latest testing data aren't back, leaving school officials with no measurable way to judge whether the system works, teachers and students alike say the system has helped them do better work.
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<DIV></DIV>>It's a welcome change from years past, Jim O'Donnell said, when students were more focused on social studies of a different kind -- interaction with the opposite sex.
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<DIV></DIV>>"I use a lot of interaction with the kids, and in my mixed classes the boys really dominated the conversation," he said. "Now all the students are really eager to speak. We have fewer classroom problems with more focus on academic performance."
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<DIV></DIV>>Teachers came up with the idea after they heard a lament from a high school teacher.
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<DIV></DIV>>"The teacher said, 'If we could just separate boys and girls we could get a lot more teaching done,"' said Lani Tingey, who teaches English at the middle school. "I had just heard about a school in another state that was trying exactly that, and we decided to do some research to see if it would be a good idea here."
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<DIV></DIV>>They didn't find much.
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<DIV></DIV>>Several studies suggest that girls begin to ask fewer questions as they reach sixth grade, but few researchers have considered the effects of single-gender classes on boys, Tingey said.
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<DIV></DIV>>Rene Folse, a psychologist and special education child advocate from Thousand Oaks, California, said research on the subject is limited.
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<DIV></DIV>>"There aren't a lot of conclusive studies about what environment produces a better educational result. The claimed advantage to single-gender classes is that a less distracting environment is more conducive to learning," he said. "But where do you get the learning to get along with opposite-sex peers? It's still a debatable issue."
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<DIV></DIV>>Still, Folse applauds the school's effort to improve its students' learning opportunities.
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<DIV></DIV>>"It makes me happy that they may study it or compare scores for the next three years or so to see if it helps," he said.
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<DIV></DIV>>Tingey said it just seems like good common sense.
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<DIV></DIV>>'Best of both worlds'
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<DIV></DIV>>"This is the age when kids have a lot of insecurity around male-female interaction," she said. "They're still kids even though society encourages them to mature faster. The classes let the boys relax and not try to impress the girls, and the girls like it because they're not afraid to ask questions," Tingey said.
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<DIV></DIV>>The teachers approached principal Judy Watson, who agreed and sent letters to parents explaining the change.
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<DIV></DIV>>"I've not had a single parent who wasn't happy with it," Watson said. "In fact, we've decided to move it into the seventh grade next year, too."
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<DIV></DIV>>Not all the classes are segregated. Elective courses -- such as art, band and homeroom -- remain mixed.
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<DIV></DIV>>"Students learn socialization, self-resourcefulness and organization in school as well as their classwork. So, to put kids totally in single-gender situations doesn't appeal to us," Watson said.
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<DIV></DIV>> Sixth-grader Edie Jones, 11, looks up from her studies during an all-girl social studies class at Kimberly Middle School.
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<DIV></DIV>>That approach minimizes any disadvantages that may come from single-gender classes, said Folse.
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<DIV></DIV>>"I think that's a very good way to do it. A blended program gives you the best of both worlds," he said.
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<DIV></DIV>>The transition has been natural for the students, O'Donnell said.
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<DIV></DIV>>"They segregate themselves when they come to homeroom, with all the boys on one side and all the girls on the other. It's comfortable for them," he said.
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<DIV></DIV>>Edie Jones, an 11-year-old who hopes to be an architect or some sort of engineer, said she's glad her core classes are separated.
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<DIV></DIV>>"I think it helps you learn. Sometimes you get embarrassed around the boys. In our English class, we had an assignment about embarrassing things your parents did to you," Edie said, "and I know some girls told things they wouldn't have told if boys were there."
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<DIV></DIV>>Plenty of interaction with the opposite sex remains, she said.
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<DIV></DIV>>"I think there are still people who go out with each other, and they pass notes still. That happens about the same," Edie said. "But this kind of helps you from getting distracted by looking at the boys."
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<DIV></DIV>>It's easier to pick work partners, she said, because the girls are not worried about getting stuck with a boy. Her grades have improved this year -- up to an "A" in science from last year's "B" -- which she attributes to the single-gender atmosphere.
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<DIV></DIV>>School administrators are struggling to accurately measure the program's success. The state switched from using the Iowa Basic Skills Test to the Idaho Standards Achievement Test this year, and class sizes have grown enough to throw off grade comparisons.
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<DIV></DIV>>But students are clearly behaving better, O'Donnell said.
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<DIV></DIV>>The middle school uses a discipline program called "Refocusing," which requires misbehaving students to fill out a form explaining what they did wrong and how they will change that behavior.
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<DIV></DIV>>The forms make it easy to track classroom problems, O'Donnell said.
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<DIV></DIV>>"The first few months of the year, Refocuses were down about 35 percent despite an 11 percent increase in students. The number slowly climbed back to the average, and when we reviewed them all, we found that we're giving them now for things we didn't give them for before," he said. "We started raising our expectations as behavior improved."
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<DIV></DIV>>At the first of the year, said Watson, students would get a Refocus only after they had first been warned, generally for things like disrupting the class or not working on assignments.
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<DIV></DIV>>Now, she said, they are given Refocuses for failing to bring their books or folders to class -- once considered a minor infraction.
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<DIV></DIV>>Both boy and girl classes get the same lessons.
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<DIV></DIV>>"We've never thought about adjusting the lessons for this in any way, shape or form," said science teacher Beryl Rieke. "We expect the same of both the boys and the girls. This isn't really a big deal. We're just doing something that we think is good for kids."
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