This time the kerfuffle is up in Massachusetts, where middle schools in Lawrence are going single-sex and the ACLU is not very pleased at the situation.
I discussed the regulatory changes that affect single-sex educational programs last fall in this policy paper. The key question is whether the programs are voluntary in nature, which seems to be the controversy in Lawrence. If the school district provides a co-ed option for parents who don’t want their children in the single-sex program (even if it’s at a neighboring school–as the regulations allow for entire schools to go single-sex), they should be fine. From the looks of the article, only one school (of ten) has shifted to single-sex programing, leaving parents with plenty of co-ed options, assuming they are allowed to freely enroll elsewhere in the district.