A new study finds that single-sex educational classrooms have no measurable benefits for either boys or girls.
Janet Hyde, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin and one of the authors of the study, reports that girls don’t necessarily do better in math and science without boys in the classroom. And she found that boys were no more verbal in classrooms without girls than they were in co-educational settings. Furthermore, Professor Hyde stated that maintaining single-sex educational environments can be more expensive for public school districts.
“It’s really quite unwieldy, particularly [for] public schools that are using taxpayer dollars,” Hyde said. “They should do this if there’s a demonstrated educational benefit to these single-sex configurations, and there isn’t.”
Professor Hyde is a graduate of Oberlin College in Ohio, where she majored in mathematics. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She has been on the University of Wisconsin faculty since 1986. Earlier she taught at Dennison University in Granville, Ohio, and Bowling Green State University in Ohio.
The study, “The Effects of Single-Sex Compared With Coeducational Schooling on Students’ Performance and Attitudes: A Meta-Analysis,” was published in the online journal Psychological Bulletin. It may be accessed here.