Same, Different, Equal: Rethinking Single-Sex Schooling »

Rosemary C. Salomone is Kenneth Wang Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law and a fellow of the Open Society Institute.

In this timely book, Rosemary Salomone offers a reasoned educational and legal argument supporting single-sex education as an alternative to coeducation, particularly in the case of disadvantaged minority students.
“A carefully organized, often lively . . . compendium of everything that matters in the debate: how boys and girls do in classes and on tests, their differing learning styles, and the legal tussles.”—Timothy A. Hacsi, New York Times
“Smart, objective, evenhanded. Must reading in this important debate.”—Susan Estrich, University of Southern California Law School
“Everyone concerned about inequalities in our schools and our society should want to read it.”—Michael Duffy, Times Educational Supplement (U.K.)
“If you have time for only one book and you really want to be informed about single-sex education, then make it Same, Different, Equal.”—John Borst, Education Today
“The single best book I have read about single-sex education. A must-read for every educator who is concerned about the different outcomes for boys and girls in school.”—Michael Thompson, Ph.D, coauthor of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys

Publishers Weekly

An expert on single-sex schooling enters the contentious public discussion with an even-handed and exhaustive examination of the history and politics of gender and education. Salomone, a law professor at St. John's Univ., makes a convincing, pragmatic argument: voluntary single-sex education is a legally acceptable option that ought to be widely available in the U.S., especially for disadvantaged children. In her most vivid chapter, she looks at three all-girl public schools in New York City, Boston and Philadelphia, reporting succinctly on the tradition of excellence all three claim. Salomone contextualizes these case studies and the current debate with an overview of the contemporary canon of thought about gender identity, an exercise that will cover familiar ground for many educators. Salomone also provides a confident analysis of the legal questions at stake. Based on the "separate is inherently unequal" legacy of the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision, liberal organizations such as the ACLU, NOW, the NAACP and the AAUW have spoken against and filed lawsuits to stop single-sex education. Salomone also considers the implications of the 1996 Supreme Court ruling against the all-male admissions policies of the Virginia Military Institute (with implications for similar litigation against the Citadel), Title IX and other legal decisions that have affected the issue. Salomone's digest of the results of experiments in single-sex teaching-among both boys and girls-is dense with statistics, but makes an effective point: the research, taken as a whole, doesn't inarguably refute or support single-gender schooling. In the end, Salomone's simple declaration that single-sex education is not harmful, and, in fact, might be beneficial to needy students feels self-evident, but nonetheless necessary in a complicated ongoing debate. (July) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.