Where the boys aren't: Do single-sex schools prepare girls better for life?

Carla? You there? Remember how your mom used to threaten you whenever you cursed or broke curfew back in junior high? How she'd say: "Do that again, young lady, and we'll send you to [a certain all-girls' school]"?

Well, guess what? Attending a boy-less school might not have been the living hell we all imagined. Hillary did it. Condoleezza did it. Melinda (Gates) did it. And nowadays thousands of girls want a piece of what those three dynamos had — namely, time spent learning in the absence of guys.

The boom

Girls' schools — on the endangered list back in the equality-conscious 1970s — are now thriving. Well-established schools are seeing capacity enrollments; new schools have opened in many cities. The No Child Left Behind Act has fostered an increase in same-sex classes by making it legally easier for public schools to offer them.

Information

www.singlesexschools.org

National Association for Single Sex Education presents its case, along with resources.

www.aauw.org/newsroom/
news/national04.cfm

Association of University Women study

"We view this as a renaissance for girls' education," says Whitney Ransome, co-executive director of the National Coalition of Girls' Schools.

Close to home, Holy Names Academy on Capitol Hill, at a little over $9,700 a pop, is "bursting at the seams"; Bellevue's century-old Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart, where tuition's around $20,400, is in the midst of a mini construction boom. And Tacoma's Annie Wright School — the one Carla was threatened with years ago — has both full classrooms and a full dorm (tuition: $17,000, or $34,000 if boarding, but, like other area girls' schools, offers scholarships to boost social and economic diversity).

And that's not counting the middle schools — Seattle Girls', Lake Washington Girls Middle School in Seattle — or the single-sex classes offered by St. Therese, St. Alphonsus, Madrona K-8, Thurgood Marshall Elementary and other coed schools.

Separation: spirit of the times?

Why all the interest now in same-sex ed? Talk to scholars and you hear:

As a society we're still confused in our attitudes about women. Legal equality's been won; females are doing better than males in many ways: better verbal-skills tests, fewer discipline problems, higher grades and more high-school diplomas and bachelor's degrees.

But gender stereotypes persist, particularly when it comes to math, science and leadership roles. Then there's sex. ...

As Stephanie Coontz, sociology professor at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, says, "Girls are doing well academically in coed schools, but they're also facing social pressures in the hypersexualized coed atmosphere."

Haven from sex-saturated society

An earlier era often saw girls' schools as de facto chastity belts; today's parents may see them as a haven from pressures brought on by a sex-saturated media that's flummoxing young women. Recent research shows more than half are stressed by pressure to be "hot" while still being smart, independent and successful.

Add in our consumer culture accustomed to a zillion choices — education included, particularly in Seattle, with one of the highest percentages of private-school enrollment.

The result, Coontz says: "Instead of figuring out how to change the school culture and treat people as individuals, we sidestep the issue and separate the sexes."

Enter the girl-empowerment zone

Whether single-sex classrooms breed more academic successes is hard to say, because reliable research is limited. Several studies back at least the claim that students at girls' schools are less likely to see math and science as "masculine."

For a first-hand look at one of these girl-empowerment zones, we visited the lush, hilltop campus of Forest Ridge in Bellevue just before school ended last June. Population: 360 girls in grades five through 12. There, the student-body officers are girls, the top athletes are girls, the computer nerds are girls, even the class clowns are girls.

"Without boys, we're less inhibited to be who we are and to say what's on our minds," said Divya Bahl, a graduating senior who now attends Boston University. "We don't hold back."

Neither do they take time from academics to fuss about looks. Forest Ridge students wear uniforms most days. Typically they pull their hair back into careless ponytails and don sweatshirts bearing slogans such as "Life is short. Play hard."

"It's not like we don't care how we look; it's just that we have no one to impress," explained student Alana Yee. "If boys were here, I'd take longer to get ready in the morning. I'd even brush my hair [laugh]."

Not to say that these schools create a perfect, feminist utopia. Most still battle with cliques, cattiness and Internet bullying. But without boys the schools do seem, well, different.

"There's a lot less posturing going on, a lot less bravado" without its typically male practitioners, said Forest Ridge male math teacher Chris Pesce, who used to teach at coed Nathan Hale High School.

Inside Pesce's math class, 12 girls sat at tables of four to study for a final exam. "I know how to do this! It's 10x minus 6 right?" yelled out one student, then seeing that she'd made a mistake, let out a dramatic, "Oh! I'm going to cry!"

"It's OK," soothed another girl. "We can help you."

Outside, a circle of girls tossed a ball during their lunch break. Suddenly, one stopped the action and shouted: "Hey, Marlena. I'll switch places with you because the sun is in your eyes and because I'm a nice person!"

High alert: a boy on campus!

Girls here are not entirely cut off from boys. They meet guys at work, after-school activities and joint social events with all-boys O'Dea High School in Seattle. Yet many admit to an uneasiness around the opposite sex. "I feel a little out of my element when I'm in a coed setting," confessed then-senior Gena Brigham.

Whenever a boy wanders onto campus, the school usually goes on high alert, said math teacher Pesce. "Boys emit powerful radar here," he explained. "The girls sense them, jump up and exclaim, 'There's a boy!' The word carries through the campus, like a bird call."

What boys add

Is an all-girls school for everyone? A group of Roosevelt High seniors sitting outside at lunchtime last June said no. "It could really mess up your social life," warned Ruhi Parashar. Worse still, her friends said: It wouldn't mirror the two-gender society that girls will graduate into.

"At coed schools, boys make you think in new ways," said Elaina Schwennsen. "For example, we were talking in psychology class about divorce, and the guys said, 'We don't know why the mother always gets custody of the kids just because she gave birth to them.' ... One guy got very emotional about this, and his opinion made me see things differently."

Divya Bahl at Forest Ridge conceded that she often wished she could hear a boy's perspective when her class discusses a novel.

"On the other hand, there are things we can discuss because men are not here," she said. "For example, we were talking about nudes in our art-history class and it would've been more uncomfortable if we had been with men."

Can-do attitude

According to Forest Ridge students, the biggest benefit of all-girls schools is the way they encourage a can-do attitude and boost girls' self-esteem.

"Outside of school, I ran against a boy for the India Association Board," Bahl said. "A lot of my friends from coed schools said, 'I don't want to run because a boy is running and he seems so confident.' But I didn't care." (She won.)

So would the Forest Ridge girls go on to single-sex colleges such as Wellesley College or Smith College in Massachusetts? No way, said those interviewed.

"I'm going to study engineering at Cal Tech, so you might argue that I'm going to an all-male school," said Ankita Mishra with a laugh.

Said Gena Brigham, who's now attending University of San Francisco: "I don't regret my time here, but I need to set myself up for the real world."

Meanwhile, Roosevelt grad Juliana Shadlen is now at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, which is about 76 percent female.

"I like the encouraging of women," she explained. "I'm looking forward to going into a cocoon for four years to better myself and build up my strength so that I'm a worthy competitor when I come out."