Study challenges claims of single-sex schooling benefits

As many American public school districts adopt single-sex classrooms and even entire schools, a new study finds scant evidence that they offer educational or social benefits. The study was the largest and most thorough effort to examine the issue to date, says Janet Hyde , a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We looked at 184 studies, representing the testing of 1.6 million students in grades K-12 from 21 nations, for outcomes related to science and mathematics performance, educational attitudes and aspirations, self-concept and gender stereotyping," says Hyde. "From these, we selected 57 studies that corrected for factors like parental education and economics, which are known to benefit children's school performance." The study, published in the online Psychological Bulletin Feb. 3, used an analytical technique called meta-analysis, which draws conclusions from multiple studies of an issue. "We are trying to shed some light by putting together studies that applied different methods to different populations," says Hyde. "If you do this right, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts." Hyde's co-authors were Erin Pahlke , who was a postdoctoral fellow at UW-Madison and is now teaching at Whitman College in Washington State, and Carlie Allison, who was a graduate student in psychology.