I went to class, I went home with the girls, I went to dances and basketball games and faculty meetings, and what I learned is this: Single-sex education matters, and it matters most to the students who historically have been denied access to it. I have just spent three years working on a book about two all-girls schools, the private Marlborough School in Los Angeles, and The Young Women's Leadership School of East Harlem (TYWLS), a six-year-old public school in New York City. Here's how: By creating an alternate, parallel universe where smart matters more than anything, good looks hold little currency and a strong sense of self trumps a date on Saturday night - a place where "class clown" is a label that young boys dread and "math whiz" is a term of endearment for young girls. How, then, did an apparent return to the Fifties come to symbolize educational reform? Separating the sexes was something we did in the days of auto shop and home ec, before Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and Title IX. Many parents may be wondering what the fuss was about this past week, when the Bush administration endorsed single-sex public schools and classes.
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