The odd couple: single-sex education advocate Leonard Sax wonders why the Bush administration is getting all the blame for something Kay Bailey Hutchison arid Hillary Clinton teamed up to do for the nation's public schools - and credit

Women's Quarterly, Summer, 2002 by Leonard Sax

SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION has long been a no-no for feminists. So it was riot surprising that, when the Department of Education announced this spring that girls' schools and boys' schools would henceforth be eligible for public money, the reaction was a barrage of protest. "The Bush administration's proposal for single-sex schools is a giant step backward in the struggle for girls' and women's equality," Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, proclaimed in USA Today. Terry O'Neill, the organization's spokesman, chimed in: "How can a single-sex school teach boys to be led by girls?" she asked.

For Nancy Zirkin, director of public policy for the American Association of University Women, the new rules on single-sex education raised the specter of racial segregation. Zirkin invoked the language of Brown v. Board of Education when she declared, "We believe that separate is never equal." "It is ironic and discouraging that the Bush administration has chosen to use its regulatory power to encourage sex discrimination by promoting single-sex education," wrote Leslie Wolfe, president of the Center for Women Policy Studies, in a letter to the New York Times.

Hold on, ladies. You're attacking the wrong folks. The real "culprits" are two female senators--Republican stalwart Kay Bailey Hutchison and Hillary Clinton, the feminist icon. When Hutchison proposed an amendment to the 2001 education bill to permit single-sex education in public schools, Clinton courageously rose to voice support.

Hutchison first introduced the amendment in 1998, when it passed in the Senate but then met its doom in the form of a veto from Senator Clinton's husband. During the debate that year, Senator Ted Kennedy argued that the amendment raised a "sinister and real issue of constitutionality." For good measure, Kennedy added that it would "undermine the whole movement of trying to get equal treatment for women.

When Hurchison tried again, in June 2001, something amazing happened--the amendment passed the Senate by unanimous consent and subsequently was signed into law. This might not have happened but for the support of Clinton, who signed on as a co-sponsor. With Clinton on board, not a single senator spoke against the amendment. Single-sex education in public schools has been illegal (more or less) since the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Tide IX prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex. The Hutchison amendment made public single-sex education unambiguously legal and eligible for up to $450 million a year in federal funding.

When guidelines regarding this amendment were promulgated in May, newspapers--like the feminist establishment--simply assumed that the Bush administration was behind the shift in policy: "Bush Plan Would Reverse Key Policy," shouted the Washington Post's front page headline. The New York Times' headline blared: "White House Proposes New View of Education Law to Encourage Single-Sex Schools."

The new rules fly in the face of the "findings" of a famous report by the American Association of University Women (AAUW), which now opposes single-sex education. In 1998, the organization published Separated by Sex, a report on single-sex education for girls. The press release was headlined: "Report Finds Separating by Sex Not the Solution to Gender Inequity in School." The release listed five findings, all of which were negative. It further noted that single-sex public schools are of "questionable legality."

People who went on to read the report itself, however, were in for a surprise. A Wall Street Journal editorial noted the disparity between the report and the accompanying press release. "The Association tanked its own study," the Journal concluded. The introductory essay was by Pamela Haag, director of research for the AAUW's Education Foundation, who wrote that "published studies that use subject preferences and girls' attitudes toward math and science as indicators have concluded uniformly that single-sex environments have a positive effect for girls." Cornelius Riordan, professor of sociology at Providence College and an authority on single-sex education, was emphatic: "Single-sex schools work. They work for girls and boys, women and men, whites and non-whites." "The [beneficial] effects of single-sex schools are greatest among black or Hispanic females from low socioeconomic homes," he emphasized.

Shortly after the Young Women's Leadership School, a girls-only public school in East Harlem, opened its doors in the fall of 1996, the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women, joined by the ACLU, filed a formal complaint with the Department of Education which claimed that the school violated Title IX. Like Zirkin more recently, Anne Connors, president of New York NOW, invoked the language of Brown v. Board of Education, insisting that the school should be closed: "Separate but equal is not OK," she said.

The Young Women's Leadership School has been phenomenally successful. In the most recent class, 100 percent of the girls passed the New York Regents exam in English, compared with 42 percent citywide. The school has the best attendance record in its district. All but one member of the class of 2001 went on to attend a four-year college; the one exception is a woman who enlisted in the Navy Every member of the class of 2002 has been accepted to a four-year college. These figures are even more impressive when you consider that 90 percent of the graduating seniors came from families where neither parent attended college.