Alabama School District Agrees To End Illegal Sex Segregation
The Mobile County
School System has agreed to stop sex segregation in public schools after
being notified by the American Civil Liberties Union that its sex segregated
programs were illegal and discriminatory. On March 25, the Board of School
Commissioners of Mobile County approved a settlement agreement changing the
policy.
"We’re very
pleased that the Mobile
County school board
agreed to end mandatory sex segregation," said Allison Neal, a staff
attorney with the ACLU of Alabama. “These programs are not only clearly
against the law, but also diminish real life experiences and diversity in
public schools. We hope that Mobile County will focus on efforts that we
know can improve all students’ education, like more teacher training and
parental involvement.”
Without notifying
parents, the Mobile County School System segregated the entire student body
of Hankins Middle School by sex for the 2008-2009
school year. The policy went so far as to bar boys
and girls from even speaking to each other in school hallways. Outraged
parents contacted the ACLU in November 2008, after the school denied their
earlier requests to resume coeducational classes. At least seven other
schools in Mobile
County also segregated
students by sex; some of these schools did not provide a coeducational option
for students or parents.
Under the
settlement agreement, Hankins
Middle School will
immediately cease to segregate students by sex in elective classes, at
lunchtime and all other nonacademic events. Beginning in the fall of 2009,
all courses will be integrated in every school in the county and no school
will institute any sex-segregated programs for the next three years. For the
2012-2013 academic year and two years thereafter, if Mobile County
plans to institute new single-sex programs in any school, it must first
notify the ACLU before implementing them.
Under the
sex-segregation program at Hankins
Middle School this
year, teachers had been instructed to treat boys and girls differently. At a
teacher training, teachers were informed that boys should have competitive,
high energy classrooms and be taught about “heroic behavior” but that girls
should have cooperative, quiet classrooms and learn “good character.”
Teachers were told that male hormone levels directly relate to success at
“traditional male tasks” but that when stress levels rise in an adolescent
girl’s brain, “other things shut down.” A story in the Mobile Press-Register
reported that a language arts exercise for sixth grade girls involved asking
the girls to use as many descriptive words as possible to describe their
dream wedding cake, while the boys were asked to brainstorm action verbs used
in sports.
Certain classes
were also offered only to one sex. For example, a girls’ Drama class was
offered, but there was no boy’s Drama class.
Similarly, while there were four separate boys’ Computer Applications
classes, there were no Computer Applications for girls.
These classrooms
were not equal and weren’t constructively responding to differences between
boys and girls; they were creating and enforcing gender stereotypes.
According to Mark
Jones, whose son Jacob attends Hankins
Middle School, the
school principal told him that the changes at Hankins were necessary because
boys' and girls' brains are so different that they needed different
curriculums.
“Segregating boys
and girls didn’t make things any better for our children; in fact, it made
things worse,” said Jones. “Our kids were basically being taught ideas about
gender that come from the dark ages.”
In a letter sent
to the school board in November 2008, the ACLU and the ACLU of Alabama
informed the Mobile County School System that mandatory sex segregation in
public schools violates Title IX of the Education Amendments, the Equal
Education Opportunities Act and the U.S. Constitution. The Mobile County
school board initially seemed receptive to halting single-sex programs in
county schools, but it wasn’t until the ACLU threatened to file a lawsuit
that the school board finally agreed to reintegrate.
“I really wish the
school had checked in with parents before it went ahead and separated all the
boys from the girls,” said Terry Stevens, whose son attends Hankins Middle School.
“I’m happy that next year the school will be integrated but very disappointed
that my son will have had an entire year without any academic classes with
girls. The real world is integrated, and it’s important to both me and my son
that he learn in a coed environment.”
A recent review of
existing data by the U.S. Department of Education showed that there is no
reliable evidence that segregating students by sex improves learning by
either sex. Yet, school districts across the country are experimenting with
sex-segregated programs, which all too often rely on questionable "brain
science" theories based on outdated gender stereotypes that suggest that
teachers should treat boys and girls radically differently.
In addition to the
ACLU, organizations that have opposed sex segregation in schools include the
national NAACP, the National Education Association and the American
Association of University Women.
A copy of the
settlement agreement is available at: www.aclu.org/womensrights/edu/39130lgl20090324.html
More information
on the ACLU Women's Rights Project work on sex segregation is available at: www.aclu.org/womensrights/edu/34504res20080228.html
Thank you for your continued support of civil liberties
in Alabama!
Olivia Turner
Executive
Director, ACLU of Alabama
207 Montgomery Street, Suite 910, Montgomery, Alabama 36104
T: 334-262-0304 | F: 334-269-5666 |
info@aclualabama.org
www.aclualabama.org
|