On Monday evening we had a lengthy staff meeting at my afternoon school with our district Superintendent, five other BIG-Wigs from the district, and our school principal. It seems that because we have such declining enrollment in a large-capacity building, drastic measures need to be taken to keep our school open. The Sup’s idea is to turn our school into a school driven by gender-based instruction. Put simply, we would implement both an all- boys and an all-girls "academy" of sorts for all core content areas in grades k-3, starting next school year, then adding a grade level each year until we are gender-based for k-6. Specialist classes and lunch would be co-ed.
In St Paul Public Schools we service about 41,000 students and offer a ton of school choices for students….neighborhood schools and magnet schools. Each magnet school has a specific focus (Math & Science, Technology, Creative Arts, Aerospace, communications, Museum magnet, Year-round schools, American-Indian magnet, World Cultures, French Immersion and Spanish Immersion, just to name a few. Magnets schools always perform better and have higher enrollment rates because no matter where the child lives in the district, they receive bussing to the magnet schools. Neighborhood schools don’t fare as well….if a child moves out of the attendance area, they are usually forced to move to another school because transportation is NOT provided. As you can probably imagine, neighborhood schools that are in tough, transient neighborhoods with a high number of rental properties struggle because of the transition rate of kids moving in and out.
Our district has just recently implemented gender-based instruction at one of our middle schools and it is going very well, but there is nothing like it at the elementary level in our district. Research has been done on gender-based instruction and there are quite a few schools like this around the country that are showing very positive achievement outcomes because of it. It is the hope of our Superintendent and staff that providing a unique experience like this will be a big draw to our school and that it will drastically increase enrollment.
I am interested to find out more about the program and how it will work. I think there are definite benefits to providing gender-based instruction and I am kind of excited to be part of the pilot project.
What are your thoughts on gender-based instruction? Would you be willing to try it with your children if there were significant benefits?
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