Singled out

One room, 20 high-school boys and one teacher made all the difference. It's a story that could easily be a based-on-a-true-story movie, and it's happening right next door at Einstein, where an all-male class has made great strides in improving the education and lives of several students.

Their story began when William Lee, a teacher at Einstein, piloted an all-boys Honors English 10 class. Lee first came up with the idea at the beginning of the school year, when he discovered how low the academic eligibility rates for black and Latino students were - fewer than a dozen black male students in the whole school had GPAs of 3.0 or higher. In an effort to help such struggling students improve their academic standing, he proposed starting an all-male sophomore English class. Counselors, teachers and school administrators then recommended students who were academically ineligible but also deemed capable of performing well in such a class.

That was at the beginning of third quarter this year. By the end of the quarter, more than half of the almost 20 students in the class were academically eligible, says Lee. This proportion speaks for itself - the all-male environment helped foster the academic growth of the students in the class, as well as in other classes. Lee used the standard Honors English 10 county curriculum, but the environment that directly encouraged learning through personalized teacher attention and the right peer motivation was what ended up mattering most.

Schools with large numbers of academically ineligible students should take Lee's class as an example of a step forward in educational practice. Educational scholars argue that completely segregating genders prevents students from obtaining a complete educational experience, but at Einstein, teachers have found the perfect mix. Even one single-sex class out of a student's schedule of seven improves a student's education across the board. Alongside the success in his English class, Lee and his fellow teachers at Einstein also observed the boys' increased participation in other classes and consequent increases in GPA, leading to a greater overall eligibility rate.

According to the National Association for Single Sex Education, a 2000 study by the Australian Council for Educational Research found that students educated in single-sex classrooms performed significantly better - 15 to 22 percentile ranks higher - than students in co-educational classes. Lee's students' improved grades after they shifted to a single-sex class are clear evidence to this research.

Students in Lee's single-sex class cite a lack of female distraction in the classroom as their reason for improvement, and Lee agrees. Today's teens have been shaped by society and their peers to believe that, as Lee puts it, "It's not cool to be smart," especially in front of the opposite sex. This mindset tends to eliminate any motivation on the part of the already-struggling students. By working with the boys in a separate setting and with special lessons focusing on the value of education, Lee is working to bring back that motivation.

Some changes though, aren't measured by test scores or quantified by numbers - but are just as critical in a student's development. After Lee's students had attended the all-male class for several weeks, teachers at Einstein began noticing that they had become "gentlemen," according to Lee, as they showed a greater respect for females around the school. Clearly, the academic progress came hand in hand with character development, an indisputably positive result of single-sex classroom education.

Lee's class serves as a fine case study and a strong example for other schools facing low academic eligibility rates to follow. Both parents and students have noticed the progress of Lee's students outside of the class and are eager to follow in their footsteps. By the beginning of the fourth quarter, only a few months after the beginning of the original class, there was already a waiting list for enrollment in the class next year. As schools struggle to meet national standards of accountability and improve student success in all areas, educators should reconsider the value of single-sex education and Lee's singular success.