"Room for Debate" over Single Sex Education

Single-sex education remains in the public discourse, in the wake of the much-discussed article in Science that calls into question the presumed benefit of single-sex classrooms, and the news of Vermilion Parish's decision to curtail through 2016 single-sex classes at its middle school in settlement of its litigation with the ACLU. The New York Times "Room for Debate" series addresses single-sex education today by including columns from all angles on the debate -- from those most critical of single-sex education as a misguided placebo for the performance gap in public education, like Galen Sherwin (ACLU attorney),Verna Williams (University of Cincinnati law professor) and Richard Fabes (child development professor at Arizona State), to the more moderate positions like Rosemary Salomone (St. John's law professor) who supports more limited use of single sex education, to the stronger proponents of single-sex education like Jane Dammen McAuliffe (President of Bryn Mawr), Leonard Sax (author) and Christine Hoff Summers (author).