With special math and science programs for girls and “brain breaks” for boys, Los Angeles Unified embarked Monday on an educational experiment as it opened a campus that segregates students by gender.A ribbon-cutting ceremony formally recognized the opening of Young Oak Kim Academy Middle School in the Pico-Union District, where 750 boys and girls attend academic classes on separate floors and come together only at lunch.
“This is yet another element of reform,” school board President Monica Garcia said. “We have to try as many strategies as possible to see what helps our students excel and grow … We cannot continue to do one-size-fits-all.”
Garcia said the single-gende concept could someday be replicated at other district schools.
Studies cited by the National Association for Single Sex Education have shown that students in a single-gender classroom can outperform their counterparts taught in a coed setting.
A three-year study conducted by Stetson University in Florida found that boys in single-sex classes demonstrated a proficiency of 86 percent on standardized tests compared to 37 percent for boys in coed settings.
And students in all-girl classes earned a 75 percent score, compared with 59 percent proficiency among girls in coed classes.
At YOKA, educators have taken the program a step further, creating separate lesson plans for boys and girls.
Because research shows that adolescent girls thrive in groups and learn well in lectures, teachers at YOKA assign the girls a lot of collaborative projects. There’s also an emphasis on math, science and technology because girls traditionally do not pursue these fields as aggressively as boys do.The boys’ classes, meanwhile, incorporate “brain breaks” that allow the students time to digest the lesson they’ve just been taught. There are even amplifiers in the boys’ classrooms because studies show that adolescent boys have a less developed sense of hearing than adolescent girls.
Teachers say YOKA provides an opportunity to understand the differences in how boys and girls learn - and experiment with ways to help them achieve.
“You need to think about equity versus equality,” art teacher Katherine Harrison.
“`Equity’ says everyone has access, `equal’ says everyone gets the same thing … But we are not all exactly the same,” she said. “This is about finding individual strengths and using them to overcome weaknesses.”
The process of introducing the single-gender campus started in 2004, under the guidance of then-District 4 Superintendent Richard Alonzo, who began recruiting teachers and counselors trained for the alternative environment.
“We didn’t just bring children to a new school,” Alonzo recalled. “We thought very carefully about what kind of school we wanted.”
Advocates for a single-gender school faced an obstacle early on because of federal laws that mandated equal access to programs and services for boys and girls. Changes made in those laws in 2006, coupled with incentives for innovation included in the No Child Left Behind Act, paved the way for YOKA and other single-sex campuses.
Now, more than 500 schools in the country offer single-sex educational programs or classes.
Named for the first Asian-American colonel to lead a U.S. battalion in war, YOKA was built as part of LAUSD’s $20 billion construction program. It is designed to relieve overcrowding at Virgil and Berendo middle schools, which still operate on year-round calendars.
For many parents in the Pico-Union community - home to many Latino or Asian immigrants - the single-sex concept is very familiar.
“I was raised the same way in El Salvador,” said Lucy Cortes, whose sixth-grade son attends YOKA. “I think it’s a great option that allows our kids to focus more in school.”