Late to the party.....
St DS8's school 6-12th, the classes are gender separated in 7th and 8th. When they first did this there was an uproar, but grades and test scores have proven that it works.
The thinking is that the girls don't want to be too smart around the boys and tend to dumb down. The boys, hormones raging aren't capable of coherent thoughts with girls in the room....LOL!
So essentially when they are grouped together, the score for both girls and boys are lower? Interesting ...
I've heard something similar in a presentation from a Catholic school that separates the children by gender starting in 3rd grade (I think ... it was many years ago). The idea is that that's about the age when they start noticing the other gender. They're trying to nip it in the bud before any issues arise, I suppose ...
We don't really see many issues between boys and gender. They were many problems in 4th grade among the girls, though, but it seems to have subsided now in 5th. Maybe it will this come back again in 7th grade?
