Wednesday, June 12, 2013

No more sex segregation in Alabama middle school

Huffman Middle School in Birmingham, Alabama was the subject of ACLU action, which we wrote about here, in 2012. OCR investigated the school's sex-segregated practices (which included single-sex core classes, lunch, and homeroom) and determined that they were in violation of Title IX. The segregation was initiated and maintained because of the beliefs about hard-wired sex differences that could be better addressed by separating boys and girls. In addition to research that disputes such beliefs, the school district's own researchers did not see (in test scores) significant improvement in children who were in sex-segregated classrooms.
In accordance with an agreement with OCR, Huffman Middle School will stop this program at the end of this school year.