Dive Brief:
- The Girls Academic Leadership Academy, to be known as GALA, represents the first single-gender school Los Angeles Unified has created in almost two decades — a move that is only questionably legal.
- EdSource reports state law prohibits single-sex schools while federal law allows it, providing an opening for the STEM-focused GALA and an all-boys school that is expected to open its doors in 2017.
- GALA will open next month with sixth and ninth grades and a plan to teach grades 6-12 by its fourth year. So far, its ethnic split among students includes 30% Latino, 30% white, 23% black and 10% Asian, and a primary goal will be 100% college acceptance.
Dive Insight:
The research is mixed on whether single-sex schools improve student outcomes and if they do it enough to compensate for potential downsides to segregating students by gender. Charter schools have been among those embracing the single-sex model in recent years, opening urban college prep schools with student bodies that are often nearly entirely non-white and all-male. Black boys have especially low performance outcomes in K-12 education and college.
In Chicago, Urban Prep Academies got its first charter in 2005 to combat these trends, and it now operates three campuses in the city. Its students have consistently earned 100% college acceptance rates, gaining international attention for their against-all-odds success. One key data point that should be better tracked, however, is whether students with such intensive support throughout high school and the college admissions process actually graduate from their postsecondary programs.