Table Of ContentSame, Different, Equal
ame, ifferent, qual
S D E
Rethinking Single-Sex Schooling
Rosemary C. Salomone
Yale University Press New Haven & London
Copyright © 2003 by Yale University.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in
part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond
that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of
the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers
for the public press), without written permission
from the publishers.
Designed by James J. Johnson and set in Scala and
Meta types by The Composing Room of Michigan,
Inc. Printed in the United States of America by
Vail-Ballou Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Salomone, Rosemary C.
Same, different, equal : rethinking single-sex
schooling / Rosemary C. Salomone.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-300-09875-8 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Single-sex schools—United States. 2.
Women—Education (Secondary)—United States.
3. Sex differences in education—United States.
4. Educational equalization—United States.
5. Feminism and education—United States.
I. Title
LB3067.4 .S35 2003
371.822—dc21
2002153145
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
Joe and Andrew
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
chapter1. Text and Subtext 1
chapter2. A Tale of Three Cities 7
chapter3. Equality Engendered 38
chapter4. Myths and Realities in the Gender Wars 64
chapter5. Who’s Winning, Who’s Losing, and Why? 85
chapter6. Legal Narratives 116
chapter7. Reconciling the Law 150
chapter8. The Research Evidence 188
chapter9. Rethinking Single-Sex Schooling 237
Notes 245
Index 279
Preface
Books enter the world in di¤erent ways. Typically a book swells up as
a concept in the author’s mind and slowly takes shape before the first words
begin to appear on the page. But there are also occasions when an unex-
pected event triggers the opportunity and even the necessity for a thought-
ful response. That was the case here.
In the summer of 1996, while I was feverishly working against another
book deadline, the Supreme Court struck down the all-male admissions
policy of the Virginia Military Institute. Moved by the Court’s sweeping de-
cision on gender equality, I heatedly pulled together a commentary for the
National Law Journal and figured my thoughts on the subject would rest
there. But fortune took another turn. A few weeks later, I received a tele-
phone call from someone I had never met. The caller introduced herself as
Ann Rubenstein Tisch, a former news reporter and then sponsor of an all-
girls public school that was scheduled to open in East Harlem that Septem-
ber. She told me that civil liberties groups were threatening to bring legal
action and prevent the school from opening, as I was faintly aware from
press reports. She urgently needed advice on the constitutional and Title IX
implications. We spoke a bit about the school and I gave her my under-
standing of the VMI decision as well as the Title IX statute and regulations.
Little did I realize that what seemed like a well-intentioned e¤ort would
mushroom over the coming months into a cause célèbre. Nor could I fore-
see how that initial conversation would redirect my attention and ulti-
mately drive my intellectual energies for the next half-decade.
As I shifted back into my work, the East Harlem school continued to
haunt me. How could anyone oppose a program that promised to heap ben-
efits on disadvantaged girls? If nothing else, the school deserved a chance to
prove its worth. I began to dig deeper into the question and spun out an-
other commentary, this time for the New York Law Journal. Suddenly I be-
came drawn into the public debate, called upon by the news media to com-
ment on the merits of single-sex schooling. As the summer ended, the
school did indeed open, and I was pleased to have played a small role in
making it happen. But the issue continued to follow me. Later that year, Di-
ane Ravitch invited me to prepare a paper on single-sex education for a con-
ference she was planning with the Brookings Institution the following
spring. At first reluctant to set aside my other work, I soon became en-
grossed in the project. Invitations to discuss and debate the legal and policy
issues continued to come my way, and the interdisciplinary complexities
gradually revealed themselves.
Meanwhile, I began for the first time in many years to consciously reflect
on my own all-girls high school experience. I had long felt indebted to the
school for having nurtured and validated my intellect at a time when society
valued young women far more for how they looked than for what they knew
or thought. But searching through the literature, I became keenly aware
that it was not just the academic rigor of my alma mater that made such a
profound and lasting impact on my life but also—and perhaps foremost—
its all-female context and the experience of learning from and among smart
women, who were passionate about their work and saw limitless possibili-
ties. I recalled returning to the school as commencement speaker in the
1980s and telling the girls about the battles won and not yet won in the
struggle for women’s equality. I remembered being struck with the sense of
continuity and ritual that had withstood the intervening years of vast social
upheaval. Yet one thing had changed dramatically. The school’s competitive
sports program was riding the crest of Title IX, and the list of athletic schol-
arships now equaled the academic awards.
As I engaged in the public debate over the following year, and as the pa-
per presented at the Brookings conference circulated around Washington
and beyond, a number of individuals suggested that there was a book to be
written here. That task initially seemed daunting; I realized that to e¤ec-
tively move the discussion beyond ideology, I would have to carefully exam-
ine every angle and to weave together a massive store of peripherally con-
nected scholarship into a seamless policy argument. The Open Society
Institute made this more possible with a generous fellowship that a¤orded
me a concentrated stretch of time to make significant inroads on the work
before me.
Carrying out this project has introduced me to dedicated educators in
public and private schools serving the rich and the poor from New York to
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