In fall 2006, four classes of second- and third-grade boys and girls started back to school at Belcher Elementary, a public school in Clearwater, Florida, but this year these students learned apart from each other. In addition to these segregated classes, the Florida House Education Committee considered requiring single-sex classes at schools that earned a D or F on the state’s annual report card. These four single-sex classes joined the then 262 public schools in the United States offering single-sex educational programs, 3 and more are forthcoming. In 1995, only three public schools offered single-sex classes in the United States. Barely ten years later, single-sex schools and classes are on the rise, especially since 2002 when the Department of Education6 (DOE) indicated its intent to amend Title IX of the education Amendments of 19727 (Title IX) to “provide more flexibility for educators to establish single-sex classes and schools at the elementary and secondary levels.”
In the fall of 2006, the DOE announced new rules (Amendments) permitting single-sex public education. These Amendments represent a major change in Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs or activities that receive federal funds, generally public schools. According to the amended regulation, states and school districts may have public single-sex classes, schools, or activities as long as students, or their parents, volunteer to participate in them and there is a “substantially equal” coeducational (or another single-sex) class, school, or activity for students of the excluded gender.