Can Separate Still Be Equal? A Look at Gender Sorting in American Schools

The policy of racial segregation in US schools became illegal 60 years ago with the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. However, de facto racial segregation remains a persistent and much discussed feature of the nation’s school system.

While attention is often given to segregation in schools based on race and socioeconomic status, there is little dialogue over school segregation based on gender. In “Gender Sorting across K-12 Schools in the United States,” published in the American Journal of Education in May 2013, authors Mark C. Long and Dylan Conger examine gender segregation in schools nationwide. Their research suggests that, despite a variety of coeducational school options, a significant degree of gender segregation is occurring.

The authors find that certain genders are overrepresented in particular school settings—a fact that may not initially inspire much concern. However, a growing body of research reveals that girls are currently outperforming boys on several measures of academic success. On average, girls now surpass boys in reading achievement across all grades and are more likely to complete both high school and college. In addition, there is evidence that many of the gaps in gender performance are growing. While the driving factors behind these outcomes are unknown, it is clear that girls, on average, now have a higher likelihood of academic success than their brothers. The few studies examining the impact of male peers on overall classroom achievement suggest a negative effect. If these studies are correct, could gender segregation in schools be partially to blame for the gap in academic performance?

The authors address gender segregation by comparing US Department of Education data from the 2007-2008 school year on enrollment patterns in all traditional and nontraditional public schools, charters, and most private schools. Their findings show that there are significant differences in school assignment based on gender.

A handful of key factors can significantly impact gender balance—what Long and Conger refer to as “gender sorting”—in a given school.

Across the country, districts use a combination of home location, school site services, and family choice to determine school assignment. Using reported data, the authors find that gender sorting is greatest in areas with a large number of school enrollment options, suggesting that gender sorting increases as school options increase.

The authors compare the actual gender distribution in schools with what one would expect to see if the distribution were random. This statistical analysis reveals that gender sorting is more prominent after fifth grade. By high school, the actual variation in the national distribution of male students across all schools is 46 to 50 percent higher than what one would expect without gender sorting. Boys are, on average, underrepresented in private and charter schools while being overrepresented in nontraditional public schools such as juvenile detention and special education schools.

Student characteristics also play a role in gender sorting. For example, students within the special education system as well as the juvenile justice system are often assigned to nontraditional public schools, which further drives gender sorting due to the overrepresentation of boys in those systems. Other students, meanwhile, are given at least some choice in where they attend school, though the number of available options differs widely by district.

One possible explanation for gender sorting is that parents are choosing schools for their daughters and sons based on different criteria. For example, the authors find that parents may be prioritizing academically rigorous schools for their daughters while selecting schools with well-ranked sports programs for their sons. Surprisingly, however, parent survey data indicates that there are no significant differences by gender in stated reasons why parents choose a particular school. This suggests that sorting is happening subconsciously within family decision making, is being driven by children themselves, or is occurring at the institutional level.

Policymakers need to examine the possibility that administrative-level decisions are driving gender segregation in our nation’s schools. Additionally, more research needs to be done to determine what is causing the gender achievement gap and if it is related, as the authors of this study hypothesize, to increased gender segregation in schools. The trend of higher educational outcomes for girls means that this sort of sorting must be taken seriously as it may result in student experiences that are both separate and unequal.

Feature Photo: cc/(Abby Bischoff)