Fifteen sixth-grade girls stand linked hand-in-hand, forming a unity circle. Brittney is actively engaged; Jasmine is sharing her personal story. Suddenly, several boys barge in unexpectedly. Brittney suddenly becomes completely focused on making herself noticed — giggling, flirting and acting out. Jasmine has a different experience — silencing herself, she retreats from the group.

On any given afternoon, middle-school girls participate in girl-only activities, where they can focus on their education without interruptions from boys. Too often, in co-educational academic settings, girls either become distracted and turn all their focus to boys, or they retreat and turn inward. Neither response promotes an optimum learning environment.

(ENLARGE)

Gail Rothman is the CEO of Atlanta-based GOAL Inc., which develops programs for middle-school girls to promote self-esteem and self-awareness.

The federal government's recent move to give school districts the right to create single-gender classrooms and schools highlights a trend that is well under way nationwide. The National Association for Single Sex Public Education lists 51 single-sex schools and 241 schools that offer some type of single-sex classes as of September 2006.

With Atlanta Public Schools poised to open the first public school single-sex academies in the metro area in the fall of 2007, and several public schools already utilizing single-sex classrooms, the issue has significant local implications.

Research has consistently shown boys and girls learn differently and have brains that are wired differently. It is not enough, however, to separate boys and girls and expect that alone to yield major improvements in educational achievement. The key to the success of single-sex education is a thorough understanding of how boys and girls learn best and the strategic implementation of classroom approaches that address these differences. Training for teachers and administrators as well as thoughtful planning is critical to ensure the success.

The focus of the debate on single-sex public education has most often been only on test scores rather than a holistic view of adolescent development. For girls, the effects of single-gender educational environments include multiple benefits not reflected in test scores. These include increased career aspirations, enhanced leadership opportunities and a higher percentage of girls pursuing math and science study.

In the not-too-distant past, gender segregation in education reflected the belief that girls were ill-suited to more technical studies and were instead directed toward more stereotypically female subjects such as art and literature.

Single-sex schools in the past also provided inequity in terms of funding, facilities and enrichment programming. The current single-sex movement reflects the idea that boys and girls learn math differently and this should be reflected in the educational methodology, not in making determinations of who is more or less suited to study math. In our culture, adolescent girls are constantly exposed to images that encourage them to place their sexuality above their self-development. Girls, from a young age, receive the contradictory message that they can do anything while at the same time they are fed a steady pop-culture diet of sex over substance: unhealthy body image, over-emphasized teen sexuality and the glorification of the "airhead." Single-sex educational settings give girls a break from the constant focus on how they should look and act around boys. It puts the classroom focus back on education and allows both boys and girls to challenge themselves to move outside of traditional gender expectations.