The popularity of same sex high schools appears to be rising in Chicago as more charter schools open campuses designated for boys or girls only.
The popularity of same sex high schools appears to be rising in Chicago as more charter schools open campuses designated for boys or girls only.
Chicago’s only all-boys public high school, Urban Prep Academy for Young Men, 6201 S. Stewart Ave., will open its third campus next fall in the South Shore community. It currently has a campus in Englewood and in the East Garfield Park community on the West Side. And the Englewood campus, which opened in 2006, will graduate its first senior class in the spring.
Edward Briscoe, director of recruitment and development for Urban Prep, said a third campus was needed to accommodate the demand for all-boys public high schools.
“Even after we hold a lottery for admissions we end up with a waiting list each year and rather than lose candidates to other schools we are expanding our campuses,” he said. “A big attraction to parents besides our academic curriculum is that they do not have to pay tuition each month like private school parents.”
Indeed, receiving a good, quality education for free is a big attraction to many parents who said they pay enough in taxes.
“Property taxes, sales taxes, you name it and if you live in Chicago, you’re paying it,” said Sheila Allison, 47, whose son attends Urban Prep Academy. “I know parents who pay upwards of $7,000 a year to send their sons to private high schools like Mt. Carmel and De LaSalle Institute when they could send them to Urban Prep and receive the same quality education for free.”
And the number of same sex schools is expected to increase each year as demand continues to grow, said Jean Hawkins, a retired University of Illinois sociology professor.
“Boys and girls learn better when they are among themselves and not mixed with the other gender,” Hawkins explained. “Look at the prisons. Men and women are not housed together, but separately, and studies have shown that, as a result, their rehabilitation goes much faster. And prior to the government blending men and women in combat training the military was another example of how separation between men and women worked.”
She added that while Young Women’s Leadership Charter High School, 2641 S. Calumet Ave., and Urban Prep Academy are the only two same-sex public high schools in Chicago, she expects that to change soon.
Monique Bond, communications director for CPS, said parents want more school choices and CPS is striving to provide those options.
“We have a variety of schools for parents and students to choose from. We have schools that offer vocational courses, schools that concentrate in science and math and even schools with a military component,” Bond said.
At the end of the 2008-09 school year, CPS had 483 elementary schools and 116 high schools filled with 407,955 students. Additionally, there were 40 charter elementary schools and 27 charter high schools.
But choices are nothing new for the private sector, which has operated same sex schools for over 30 years: Brother Rice, Hales Franciscan and Leo for boys, and Resurrection, Mother McAuley and St. Scholastica Academy for girls.
Psychologists said children attending same sex schools learn life lessons that contribute to their classroom performance.
“As a teenager, self-esteem plays a big role in their ability to perform in school,” said James Majors, a child psychologist in private practice. “When kids go to school with the opposite sex they have a tendency to get teased. This can cause them to lose focus from their studies and instead concentrate on their appearance, attire or materialistic things like a cell phone.”
Same-gender schools offer more than isolation from the opposite sex, though.
“They offer a curriculum that is catered to that gender class. So an all-girls school can offer pregnancy classes, coming of age classes that deal with menstrual cycles or the importance of fathers at an all-boys school,” said Arthur Meadows, a psychologist for Catholic Charities, a non-profit organization. “In my previous job I dealt a lot with abused and neglected children and none attended same sex schools. But if they had I am confident it would have had a positive impact on their rehabilitation.”
Meadows retired in 2007 after working 32 years at the Illinois Department of Human Services as a case manager.
In higher education, Historically Black Colleges and Universities also promote same sex schools. Some of the nation’s top colleges, such as Morehouse College and Spelman College, cater to a single gender.
Morehouse alumnus and historian Walter Black, 76, said same sex schools benefit men more so than women.
“Men need to be around men. When this happens, especially for those with no father figure in their life, they learn how to be responsible leaders,” he said.
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