Here's an article from the San francisco Chronicle on single gender education. This highlights boys' programs but is not exclusive; and it also discusses all boys without focus on Black and/or low income males. In fact, an opposing view says it's not boys in general but that "race and class play a bigger role than gender."

Some hightlights:


...Gurian Institute of Colorado. The firm has trained 30,000 teachers in gender differences and learning since it was founded in 2002 by Michael Gurian, a Spokane, Wash., family therapist and author who helped kick off the boys movement in 1996 with his book "The Wonder of Boys."

Among the neurological differences Gurian and others highlight, based on brain scans and other research:

-- Males use more cortical areas of the brain for spatial and mechanical functioning, while females use more for words and emotions -- meaning boys tend to benefit from hands-on learning, while girls are better auditory learners who write and use more words.

-- Boys have less of the "calming chemical" serotonin and more testosterone, making them more fidgety, impulsive and competition-driven.

-- Boys' brains go more frequently into a "rest state," leading to "zoning out" or moving around to try to stay focused.


A report last year by Education Sector, a Washington think tank, found that boys' reading and math scores on the national assessment test had improved since the 1970s. It said black and Hispanic boys may be failing but that race and class play a bigger a role than gender.

There were three public schools nationwide offering single-gender instruction in 1995 and 262 today, still a small fraction of the country's more than 90,000 public schools, according to Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. Many more are in the pipeline with changes last fall to Title IX -- which banned sex discrimination in schools in 1972 -- that make it easier for schools to create voluntary single-gender classes and schools.

"The brain develops in a different sequence," said Sax, author of "Why Gender Matters" and "Boys Adrift," which will be published in August. "If you teach the same subject in the same way, you have girls who think geometry is tough and boys who think poetry is stupid.