An investigation of the effect of single-gendered instruction on achievement in math and English in an urban high school

Since the inception of the No Child Left Behind Act, many initiatives have been implemented to increase academic achievement. Single-gender education is an initiative that public schools have adopted with the hope of seeing boys and girls achieve significant gains in their core classes. This study explored the achievement levels of 9th grade girls and boys in their English I and algebra I classes. After a year of learning in single-gender classes, the students' End of Course scores were compared to the previous cohort of students who were taught in a traditional co-educational format by using an independent t-test. Scores were inputted in SPSS and analyzed. Eight research questions were formed to discover if significant differences from the co-educational year to the single-gender year existed. Results showed that there was a significant difference between the achievement of students who took single-gender English I classes compared to students who took co-educational English I classes, with single-gender English classes outperforming co-educational English classes. Results also showed that there was a significant difference between the achievement of students who took single-gender algebra I classes and students who took co-educational algebra I classes, with co-educational algebra I classes outperforming single-gender algebra I classes. Qualitative research is needed in the future to determine if teacher/ student training and perceptions of single-gender education impacted the data.