"This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world."
- U.S. President G. W. Bush
01.29.2002
- by DIANA JEAN
SCHEMO
New
York Times
05.09.2002
WASHINGTON, May 8 - The Bush administration is planning to reinterpret the nation's education law to encourage the creation of single-sex public schools, which had been largely denied federal financing under 30 years of Republican and Democratic administrations. The schools had also been open to discrimination lawsuits under the statute's current interpretation.
The administration made clear its intent to change the guidelines and regulations surrounding the civil rights statute covering equality of the sexes in education in a proposal published in the Federal Register today. The publication follows a little-noticed $3 million appropriation for single-sex schools as well as classrooms in other schools that was slipped into the education bill that President Bush signed into law in January. The appropriation was under "innovative programs."
The bill ordered the Education Department to review federal statutes and advise school districts on how they could spend the money on single-sex classrooms and schools without running afoul of federal regulations.
Only 11 public single-sex schools operate in the nation, according to the Brighter Choice Foundation, a private nonprofit group that has helped finance such schools around the country and has advised them on how to survive legal challenges.
Officials at the Education Department said that they intended to reinterpret the civil rights statute for education, known as Title IX, to give school districts greater flexibility in designing local schools and give parents more choices.
"The use of single-sex classes and schools can reflect important and legitimate efforts to improve educational outcomes for all students," the notice said.
While the money involved appeared minimal, Education Department officials acknowledged that the reinterpretation could result in the creation of many public single-sex schools that could gain access to federal money.
Advocates of single-sex classes said that the importance of the department's reinterpretation of Title IX was not so much financial as legal, since such schools have had to tread carefully to avoid charges of discrimination.
"To most of the people who are running single-sex schools the money is not the issue," said Tom Carroll, president of the Brighter Choice Foundation. "The issue is that for the first time we see the legal cloud being lifted from single- sex schools."
Mr. Carroll is planning to open a charter school with separate classes for boys and girls in Albany this fall. He said he had received more than 250 applications for 90 seats.
Supporters of single-sex schools argue that some boys and girls learn better without the distractions posed by the presence in the classroom of students of the opposite sex. Critics, however, contend that single-sex schools are little more than an educational elixir, offering a simplistic solution for troubled communities and siphoning off scarce resources that should be available to boys and girls equally.
Nancy Zirkin, director of public policy and governmental relations for the American Association of University Women, said: "It is not the single-sex schools per se that make boys and girls succeed, but all the same elements that make boys and girls succeed in schools where they are together, like a sense of community, good discipline, and adequate resources."
Education Department officials, in a briefing today, said that discrimination on the basis of gender was far less of a problem today than in the 1970's, when the Title IX legislation was first passed. "We've made a lot of progress," said Gerald A. Reynolds, an assistant secretary who heads the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights. "The consensus out there is there are people of good will who want to try new things."
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, the Texas Republican who sponsored the provision with support from Democrats like Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, said: "If you look at the number of single-sex schools in the private sector you can see there's a real demand for them. Why not make those options available to public school parents?"
It is not clear, however, whether the department's new approach to interpreting Title IX will create a major movement to establish single-sex schools or classrooms.
William Taylor, the acting chairman of the Citizen's Commission on Civil Rights and an author of the precursor legislation to Title IX, said schools still risked legal challenges on the basis of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
With its announcement today, the Education Department was not so much removing the threat of lawsuits, Mr. Taylor said, as signaling that public schools that segregate classrooms by gender need not automatically worry about losing federal financing. "When any federal agency seeks to justify what are ordinarily invidious classifications - race, sex disability - that troubles me," Mr. Taylor said. "It indicates a direction in federal policy that I find worrisome."
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