No Educator Left Behind is a series providing answers from the U.S. Department of Education to questions about the federal No Child Left Behind Act and how it will affect educators. If you have a question about No Child Left Behind, send an e-mail to Ellen Delisio, and we will submit your question to the Department of Education.

Question:

Under NCLB, are schools allowed to have single-sex classrooms or schools?

U.S. Department of Education:

On March 3, 2004, the Department of Education proposed to clarify its regulations regarding when single-sex classes and schools are permitted at the elementary and secondary school levels.

In issuing this proposal, the department is, in large part, continuing the bipartisan language co-authored by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) in the No Child Left Behind Act that allows public school districts to use federal funds for single-sex schools and classes. The proposal gives more flexibility to educators to provide a wide range of educational programs and more options for parents, while neither encouraging nor favoring single-sex education.

The proposal addresses two specific areas -- single-sex classes and single-sex schools. With regard to classes, current regulations prohibit school districts (and private schools that receive federal assistance) from offering single-sex classes except in areas involving physical education, sex education, or chorus. The proposed changes would allow these schools and districts to offer single-sex classes when the single-sex nature of the class is substantially related (a) to providing a diversity of educational options or (b) to meeting the particular, identified needs of students.

Under the proposal, schools and districts must treat male and female students evenhandedly in providing single-sex classes. Student participation in single-sex classes would be on a voluntary basis. A substantially equal coeducational class in the same subject always would be required. Schools and districts would be required to evaluate single-sex classes periodically to ensure consistency with these nondiscrimination requirements.

While currently a school district may provide a single-sex public school when it offers comparable benefits and opportunities to students of the other sex in another school, the department has interpreted this provision to require two comparable single-sex schools, one for boys and one for girls. The proposed change would clarify that a district that provides a single-sex public school may offer the required substantially equal benefits and opportunities to students of the other sex in either a single-sex school or coeducational school. There would be an exemption to the requirement to provide either a single-sex school or coeducational school for students of the other sex for single-sex public charter schools that are single-school district.

Read previous questions and answers in our No Educator Left Behind archive.