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Interest in single-sex classes continues to grow in the United States, but there has been little research at the elementary level in this country or elsewhere to help guide educators' decision-making about the overall value of single-sex classes in public schools and the specific value of single-sex classes in public schools for increasing boy's reading achievement. The major purpose of our study was to find out if single-sex classes in two public elementary schools in Arkansas, one in grade 5 and the other in grade 6, seemed to make a difference in boys' reading achievement in the 2008-2009 year, as judged by scores on annual state assessments. That is, did boys in an all-boys' class do better than, the same as, or worse than comparable boys in a mixed class? We were interested in whether boys' literacy scores significantly improved in a single-sex class because of the large and growing gap in reading (and writing) achievement between boys and girls by the high school years. The single-sex classes in the two elementary schools for which we had state assessment data showed differing results. In one school, boys in the boys' class gained significantly more in Literacy than boys in the mixed class. In the other school, boys in the boys' class did not gain significantly more or less than boys in the mixed class in Literacy, but they did gain significantly less than the boys in the mixed class on the Reading test from a nationally normed test that the school also gives. As we also found, girls did not gain significantly more in Mathematics in a girls' class than in a mixed class in either school, but they did not gain significantly less. However, the trends in gain scores for boys and girls in Literacy and in Mathematics tended to favor the single-sex classes. There does not seem to be an academic downside in experimenting with single-sex classes so far as is suggested by test results in these two elementary schools. Boys' and Girls' Scores in Mathematics are appended. (Contains 18 tables and 4 footnotes.)

We consider the question whether pupils from the lower social strata perform better in private government-dependent schools than in public or private-independent schools, using the PISA 2000 data on European high schools. In the eighty's, Coleman and Hoffer (1987) found in the USA that the performance of these pupils was better at religious schools than at comparable public schools. Dronkers and Robert (2003) found in PISA-data for 19 comparable countries that private government-dependent schools are more effective then comparable public schools, also after controlled for characteristics of pupils and parents and the social composition of the school. The main explanation appeared to be a better school climate in private government-dependent schools. Private independent schools were less effective than comparable public schools, but only after controlling for the social composition of the school. As a follow-up we now investigate, again with the PISA-data of these 19 countries, whether this positive effect of private government-dependent schools differs between pupils from different strata. We use various indicators to measure social strata: social, cultural and economic. We expect that the thesis of Coleman & Hoffer does hold for private government-dependent schools, because in these 19 countries they are mostly religious schools, which have more opportunities to form functional communities and create social capital. But for private independent schools, which due to their commercial foundation are less often functional communities, this relation is not expected to hold. However, the results show that public and private schools have mostly the same effects for the same kind of pupils and thus mostly not favor one kind of pupils above another kind of pupils. But private government-dependent schools are slightly more effective for pupils with less cultural capital. However, private independent schools are also more effective for pupils from large families or low status families. (Contains 4 tables, 12 notes and a list of 25 Literature Resources .)

This study uses a widely respected method to calculate public high school graduation rates for the nation, for each state, and for the 100 largest school districts in the United States. The authors calculate graduation rates overall, by race, and by gender, using the most recent available data (the class of 2003). While this report builds upon a foundation of previous reports, there is much that is new. First, this report contains graduation rate estimates for the class of 2003, the most recent year for which data are available. Second, in this report the authors are able for the first time to break out graduation rates by gender. Observers have long suspected that the graduation rate for boys is significantly lower than that for girls. Third, this report contains graduation rates for each of the 100 largest school districts in the country. (Contains 5 tables and 14 endnotes.)