Single-Sex Charters Expand in New York; Will Missouri Be Next?

Single-sex classrooms have caught on in public districts and charter schools in Missouri, so I would expect single-sex charters to appeal here too. It’s true that Missouri’s charter school law forbids discrimination by sex in admissions, but Illinois has a similar law that hasn’t prevented single-sex charters from opening. (No boys have applied to the girls’ schools in Illinois, and vice versa.)

The most recent news about single-sex charters is from New York City: PublicPrep, which operates two all-girls charters, will open two more for girls and one for boys during the next two years. This radio news program interviews some parents as well as a principal. According to the report, 700 families applied for just 132 openings in the Bronx GirlsPrep school.

I’m impressed that the Lower East Side GirlsPrep school teaches Spanish to third graders, even though PublicPrep has no foreign language focus. This is an example of a charter going above and beyond what it would need to provide in order to fulfill its mission — namely, a single-sex learning environment. Charter schools are not slaves to test prep, nor do their themes constrain them from offering a range of subjects.