An investigation of single -sex education and its impact on academic achievement, discipline referral frequency, and attendance for first and second grade public school students

According to various educational theorists and researchers, single-sex education is an effective instructional strategy for increasing student achievement and improving discipline referral and attendance. However, little is known about the impact of single-sex public education. This study investigates differences between single-sex students and coeducation students, on academic and non-academic variables. It was the intent of this researcher to contribute to the empirical understanding of single-sex education within an elementary educational environment, specifically, for first and second grade students. This quantitative research analyzes the impact of single-sex education on academic achievement, discipline referral and attendance for public school first and second grade students. An ANOVA was used to analyze the academic data and chi square was used to analyze the non-academic data. Analysis of the academic data with ANOVA indicated that female students in the single-sex environment showed statistically significant improvement in both reading (p=.01) and in math ( p=.04). Attendance data were analyzed for significance differences between single-sex classes and coeducational classes. Statistically significant differences (p = .004) for attendance were found between all single-sex students and all coeducational students. Differences in attendance were also statistically significant (p=.01) between females in single-sex classes and females in coeducational classes. Only an empirical reporting of discipline referral data was included due to low incidence of referrals. The implications of these findings are that single-sex education may be an effective instructional strategy for facilitating math and reading improvement for female students. Also, based upon the findings of this study, single-sex education may have a positive impact on attendance for males and females. Future research on single-sex education is necessary before a definitive conclusion can be reached regarding the academic or non-academic impact on student performance in public education. Researchers must seek to identify best practices for single-sex research and standardize research methodology so that the end result, high quality research-based evidence, may be obtained.