The efficacy of single-sex education for boys has been a focus of scholarly inquiry for decades. The consensus has been that the all-boys format does not boost academic achievement for boys, on average. In this article, I suggest that the scholarly consensus may be mistaken or at least misleading. I argue that while some boys’ schools are successful and others are not, the all-boys format creates opportunities to educate differently. But when teachers are not trained in boy-friendly instructional strategies, nothing good happens, and bad outcomes are likely. I consider some characteristics of a successful boys’ school and the prospects for boys’ public schools in the United States.
Click here to read my scholarly article for the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.