The National
Association for Choice in Education
What is the National Association for Choice in Education?
What is the National Association
for Choice in Education?
The National
Association for Choice in Education is a non-profit organization originally
chartered in Maryland in April 2002 (see “History”, below). The mission of the
Association is to promote and support girls’ schools and boys’ schools, whether
in the public sector, private sector, or Catholic sector.
To “promote and support” includes a variety of
activities. We seek to:
1. Understand and share best practices for
single-gender schools: those best practices include gender-specific instructional
strategies and motivational strategies, as well as gender-specific strategies
for building community in the classroom and in the school. If you are interested in learning more about these strategies,
which are based in part on Dr. Sax's visits to more than 380 schools over the past 12 years, please Contact us
2. 
Educate parents
about single-gender schools. Many parents assume that because the real world is
coed, a coed school necessarily provides better preparation for the real world.
We point out the two major fallacies in that reasoning. But we don’t insist that single-gender
education is better than coeducation for every
child, just for some. So another
part of this mission is to help parents determine whether their child would do
better in a single-gender school or in a coed school. Some kids do better in coed; some do better
in single-gender. We don’t blindly promote single-gender education for all
students; we promote choice for all
families (hence the name “National Association for Choice in Education).
3. Provide a big tent for
all educators and administrators who care about single-gender education. There
are already many fine organizations devoted to some aspect of single-gender
education. But most of these organizations are concerned primarily with girls’
schools, or primarily with boys’ schools.
In view of widespread misunderstandings regarding single-gender
education, we believe it’s important to have at least one organization which is
equally concerned with girls’ schools and with boys’ schools.
In April 2002, Katie
Kautz, Janet Phillips, and Leonard Sax
founded the National Association for the Advancement of Single Sex Public
Education (NAASPE). This name
was deliberately patterned after the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP is for people of color, but it is not against white people. The
phrase “for the advancement of X” indicates that you are in favor of X without
being opposed to Y. Likewise, we wanted
to communicate that we although we are for
single-gender education, we are not against
coeducation. We drew our inspiration from the Association between
then-Senator Hillary Clinton (D-New York) and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
(R-Texas), who jointly sponsored legislation clarifying the legal status of
single-gender educational choice in the public sector. As Senator Clinton
observed on June 7 2001, “there
should not be any obstacle to providing single-sex choice within the public
school system.” More recently, Senator Hutchison joined with her Democratic
colleague from Maryland, Senator Barbara Mikulski, to explain that
single-gender educational options should be available for all parents, not just
those parents who can afford to send their kids to private schools. You can
read the full text of the Hutchison/Mikulski op-ed in the Wall Street Journal at www.4schoolchoice.org/hutchison2012.html.
But the name NAASSPE seemed
cumbersome. Later in 2002, we shortened
the name to NASSPE, deleting “for the Advancement of.” In retrospect that may
have been a mistake. In 2011, eight professors in the United States created a
non-profit organization whose primary objective is to criminalize single-gender
education in the public sector. Whereas we – following the lead of Senators
Hillary Clinton, Susan Collins, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Barbara Mikulski (two
Democrats and two Republicans) – seek to expand choice in the public sector, those
eight professors seek to restrict it.
They don’t believe that any parent
who sends their child to a public school should have the option of
single-gender classrooms, under any circumstance, for any reason. In opposition
to our original web site www.singlesexschools.org,
they created an opposing web site www.coedschools.org.
In a particularly startling page on their web site, they assert that it’s
wrong even to address children as “girls and boys” or as “ladies and
gentlemen,” in just the same way that it would be wrong to address students
as “blacks and whites.” The co-founder
of the group, Professor Rebecca Bigler, debated Dr. Sax in Houston on October
21 2012. When Dr. Sax asked Professor Bigler whether she was opposed to the
Girls Scouts, she answered, “Yes.” According to Professor Bigler, no parent
should enroll their daughter in the Girl Scouts. It’s not sufficient for
Professor Bigler to say that she personally does not like the Girl Scouts; she
believes that NO parent should enroll their daughter in the Girl Scouts, and if
she had the authority to do so, she would criminalize the Girl Scouts or compel
them to make all their activities coed.
The most fundamental error this group
makes is in misunderstanding the basic question. They believe that the basic
question is “Which is better?
Single-gender or coed?” They try to prove that coeducation is better. But we don’t believe that one size fits
all. Coeducation may be a better choice
for some kids; but single-gender may be a better choice for other kids. What
works for Justin may be a disaster for Jason.
We are not asserting that every child should be in a single-gender
classroom; we are just asserting that parents should have choices, including
those parents who can’t afford the tuition for a private school or a Catholic
school.
The eight professors behind www.coedschools.org direct their angriest
outbursts at advocates of single-gender education in the public sector. However, they have not hesitated to attack
single-gender Catholic schools and private schools. After all, if their
assertions were valid – if it were actually true that single-gender education
inevitably reinforces gender stereotypes and promotes sexism, and that mere
exposure to the single-gender format has lasting negative consequences – then
the single-gender format would be wrong, regardless of whether the school in
question happened to be a public school, private school or Catholic
school.
The backlash against single-gender
education is not confined to the public sector and it is not confined to the
Angry Eight professors who launched www.coedschools.org. Listen for example to Terry O’Neill,
president of the National Organization for Women, in this
interview on KUOW public radio for Seattle, in which Ms. O’Neill asserts
that you can look in “any archdiocese” in the United States which offers
single-gender schools, and you will “inevitably” find that single-gender
Catholic schools “systematically” give more resources to boys and fewer to
girls; that the boys are first-class citizens and the girls are second-class
citizens. (Ms. O’Neill’s interview
begins about ten minutes into the segment.)
Boys are boys and girls are girls –
regardless of whether they attend Catholic schools, independent schools, and
public schools. The best way to get
girls engaged and motivated in the study of number theory or quantum mechanics
doesn’t vary substantially between a private school and a public school; but
the best way to get girls excited about quantum mechanics turns out to be quite
different from the best way to get boys excited about quantum mechanics,
regardless of whether they are attending a public school or a private
school. When educators don’t understand
that, the result is that many girls who might have enjoyed quantum mechanics
instead think that “advanced physics is for guys.”
By the end of 2011, it was clear that
the name “NASSPE” did not accurately describe our work of promoting
single-gender education in the public sector AND the private sector AND the
Catholic sector. Hence the change in
name to “The National Association for Choice in Education.” Our original web site www.singlesexschools.org continues to
receive more than 100,000 hits per month, so we will not shut it down; but
gradually we hope to redirect visitors to this site.
Conference
Our
Eighth International Conference took place Saturday and Sunday, October 20
& 21, at the Westin Galleria Hotel in Houston, Texas. We had more than 50
different presentations, from Catholic schools, from private independent
schools, and from public schools; from all across the United States, as well as
from Australia, Canada, Colombia, and Iceland. More information, including a
complete list of presenters and their topics, is online at the 2012 conference website.
Unfortunately we do not have
plans for another conference at this time. Dr. Sax hosted all eight international conferences between 2003 and 2012,
recruited most of the 200+ presenters, and attended many of the hundreds of presentations which were offered at the conferences.
So if you are interested in learning more about the strategies which were shared at those conferences, please Contact us
Contact
us
By telephone: 610 296 2821 between 9 AM and 4 PM Monday
through Friday.
By email: mcrcad AT verizon.net (substitute “@” for
“AT”). If you don’t receive a prompt response to your email, please call!
By fax: 610 993 3139
By snail mail: Leonard Sax MD PhD, 64 East Uwchlan Avenue,
#259, Exton, Pennsylvania 19341.