QUOTATIONS ON SINGLE-SEX EDUCATION
“There should not be any obstacle to providing single-sex choice within the public school
system...We have to look at the achievements of [single-sex] schools that are springing up around
the country. We know this has energized students and parents. We could use more schools such as
this.”
– Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Congressional Record
June 7, 2001, S5943
“This action [federal law promoting single-sex public schools] is long overdue and would correct
a misinterpretation of title IX of the education amendments of 1972 that clearly was never
intended...[This law] will give schools the flexibility to design and the ability to offer single- gender
classes when the school determines that these classrooms will provide students with a
better opportunity to achieve higher standards.”
– Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Congressional Record
June 7, 2001, S5944
“We are trying to open more options to public school than are available in private school because
we want public schools to be able to tailor their programs to what best fits the needs of students
in that particular area. [S]ometimes in some circumstances we find that girls do better in a
single-sex atmosphere and boys do better in a single-sex atmosphere...Drop the barriers. Open
the options for public schools. Give parents a chance to have their child in public school have all
the options that would fit the needs of that particular child.”
– Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Congressional Record
June 7, 2001, S5943-S5944
“If school districts want to offer single-sex programs, and parents want to choose them, and girls
and boys want to attend them, then they should have that right.”
– Susan Estrich (former National Campaign Manager for Dukakis for President
former National Board Member of the ACLU
former aide to Sen. Ted Kennedy)
“Ideologues Decry Single-Sex Education, But Girls Benefit,” Denver Post
May 22, 1998, B-11.
“The American tradition favors pluralism, diversity and choice. There should be coed schools
for those who want them and single-sex schools for those who prefer an environment free of the
pressures of the dating game.”
– Diane Ravitch, “Why Not a Girls School?,” New York Post
September 26, 1997, 29.
“[S]ingle-sex education is another issue in which the principles of individual liberty (in the form
of choice) and equality (in the form of equal educational opportunity) are clearly recognizable
and mutually reinforcing...If equality is truly a fundamental goal of public education, particularly
in the inner city, then public schools should afford to the disadvantaged, with potentially greater
personal and social returns, the same choice and opportunity that historically have been enjoyed
by those attending private schools.”
– Rosemary C. Salomone, “Single-Sex Schooling: Law, Policy, and Research,”
Brookings Papers on Education Policy 1999
(Brookings Institute: Washington, DC, 1999), 278.
“In employing this innovation [single-sex education] we are not in any way harming children, as
they are naturally inclined toward this way of being, and we are potentially helping millions of
children who aren’t learning as well as we’d like in the naturally gender-competitive
environment that coeducation is...Separate-sex options can solve many problems at all grade
levels...we believe that a huge portion (perhaps at least half) of middle school learning and
discipline problems would be curtailed or removed if middle schools were single-sex
institutions.”
– Michael Gurian, Boys and Girls Learn Differently!: A Guide for Teachers & Parents,
(Josey Bass: San Francisco, California, 2001), 203-204.
“[F]emales especially do better academically in single-sex schools and colleges, across a variety
of cultures. On the basis of research, it appears that single-sex schools for females provide a
greater opportunity for educational attainment as measured by standardized cognitive tests,
curriculum and course placement, leadership behavior, number of years of formal education, and
occupational achievement...I have found that the effects for African-American and Hispanic
males and females are larger than those obtained for white females.”
– Cornelius Riordan, “The Case for Single-Sex Schools,” Single-Sex Schooling:
Proponents Speak (Office of Educational Research and Improvement,
U.S. Department of Education: Washington, DC, 1994), 48.
“The forces arrayed against public, same-sex education for boys are formidable indeed...Single-sex
classes do not cost substantially more than mixed classes. They seem to be working for privileged
boys...as well as for the disadvantaged boys. We need a national discussion on the merits of all-male
classes. And we need to take care that groups such as NOW, the AAUW [American Association of
University Women] and the National Women’s Law Center do not control and shape that
discussion.”
– Christina Hoff Sommers, The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism is Harming
Our Young Men (Simon & Schuster: New York, New York, 2000) 173-174, 177.
In the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Virginia (1996), commonly referred to as the VMI
decision, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, in his concurrence, explained that “considerable
evidence shows that a single-sex education is pedagogically beneficial for some students...and
hence a State may have a valid interest in promoting that methodology.” In writing the majority
opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg similarly noted the position that “single-sex education
affords pedagogical benefits to at least some students” and concluded: “that reality in
uncontested in this litigation.”
(September 2008)