Boy trouble: Do same-sex schools make sense?

Boys are falling behind girls in U.S schools -- and around the world. They earn lower grades, and complete fewer years of education and enter the high-tech workforce with weaker skills. Some believe single-sex schooling has the potential to focus on boys' strengths, provide male role models and motivate boys to try harder and learn more, writes Ben Smith for the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM).

The Glee Club at Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy, an all-boys public school in Dallas.

But there's not much evidence that all-male schools are a game-changer, concludes a new report by researcher Nina Hanks for AIBM. "Single-sex education may offer limited benefits for certain populations of boys under specific conditions, but is not universally advantageous," she writes.

"The highest-quality research shows almost no difference in mathematics performance between boys in single-sex schools and boys in coeducational settings," the report finds. Some research suggests boys may do worse in reading and writing in single-sex settings.

Boys who do benefit are attending single-sex schools -- not just all-male classes in coed schools, the report notes. The teaching practices, discipline policies and other factors in all-male schools could be duplicated by coed schools.

There are few all-male public schools in the U.S., and the number has declined since the peak in 2016. "There are no rigorous studies of all- boy public schools in the United States," Hanks writes. "On average, rigorous international studies show only a small academic edge for boys in gender-separate settings."

"Boys’ behavior and engagement do seem to improve in well-run single-sex schools," she writes. "However, evidence is thin and sensitive to context, age, and peer quality."

Public boys' schools in the U.S. disproportionately serve black and Hispanic students from single-parent families. Leonard Sax wrote about Dallas' Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy, which features competition and camaraderie, in 2023.

"Putting boys in a room without girls accomplishes nothing good by itself, and often leads to catastrophic mayhem — if teachers have received no training in how to manage and lead the all-boys classroom," Sax wrote earlier. Effective schools "teach the content differently" and "create a culture in which it’s cool for the top athlete to also be a gentleman and a scholar. But none of that happens automatically just by removing the girls." 

"The good news is that most of the benefits of the all-boys schools can be achieved in a coed classroom if teachers have appropriate training," Sax concludes.