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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (721)	5/8/2003 11:18:38 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793958

Legality of single-sex schools up in air By Lou Marano From the Life & Mind Desk - UPI Here is a case of "Yes Minister" going on. The Bureaucrats don't want this, and are dragging their feet. WASHINGTON, May 8 (UPI) -- Sixteen months after the No Child Left Behind Act authorized single-sex education and a year after the secretary of education announced that regulations would be rewritten to bring them into conformity with the law, the Department of Education said it needs at least three more months to do the job. Because of the delay, the New York State Board of Regents has withheld approval of a plan to open New York City's first all-boys charter school. On April 29, "Deputy Education Commissioner James Kadamus told the Regents that the sponsors of the Bedford-Stuyvesant School for Excellence 'have not sufficiently addressed concerns about the legality of a single-sex school,'" the New York Post reported in its April 30 editions. "Basically, we are still preparing draft regulations, and we're looking to have those completed within the next 90 days or so," U.S. Department of Education spokesman Carlin Hertz told United Press International on Thursday. When asked why the process was taking so long, Hertz said he would check into it. "The answer that I got from OCR (the department's Office of Civil Rights)," he said when he called back, "is that the regulations are complex and very detailed." Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits "discrimination" based on sex in educational programs that receive federal assistance. As a result of the 1972 law, very few single-sex public schools survive in the United States. In June 2001, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, introduced an amendment to President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act to remove legislative barriers to local school districts that wish to offer single-sex schools and classes. She was joined by three co-sponsors: Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, N.Y., Barbara Mikulski, Md., and Thomas Carper, Del., as well as Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. Hutchison's amendment (S.A. 540) passed the Senate by unanimous consent on June 7, 2001, and was incorporated into the final conference version of the No Child Left Behind Act, which was signed into law on Jan. 8, 2002. On May 8, 2002, Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced that the department was beginning to rewrite the regulations "to provide more flexibility for educators to establish single-sex classes and schools at the elementary and secondary levels." Leonard Sax, a family-practice physician and psychologist in Poolesville, Md., is executive director of the Montgomery Center for Research in Child & Adolescent Development. He also is founder of the National Association for Single-Sex Public Education. "All the other new regulations arising from the No Child Left Behind Act have now been published -? most of them were published several months ago," Sax said. "But the Department of Education shows no sign of planning to publish these regulations anytime soon -? if ever." Sax said that on Nov. 28, 2002, he asked the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights when the new regulations would be available, and its reply cast doubt on whether they would ever be promulgated. Sax provided United Press International with a copy of the OCR's response: "The Department is currently in the process of reviewing the approximately 170 comments received (during the 60-day period that expired on July 8, 2002). After the Department has completed its review and assessment of all comments received, the Department will decide if amendments to the regulations are warranted." Sax said the department's use of the word "if" violates Congress' clearly expressed legislative intent. "Sen. Collins specifically made reference to single-sex classes for girls in math in Presque Isle, Maine, which had been eliminated after school administrators were informed that their girls-only classroom violated existing regulations," Sax said. "Sen. Collins emphasized that the purpose of the amendment was to make such classes legal." The absence of new regulations derailed a principal's plan to give parents of fifth-graders the option of single-sex classrooms in Germantown, Md. Pamela Collins, principal of the Fox Chapel Elementary School, hoped to start such classes in the fall of 2002, the Montgomery County Gazette reported on Aug. 14. But an Aug. 16 memo from acting community superintendent Cynthia Rattley said the school system's legal counsel recommended against allowing single-sex classrooms until the regulations are updated, the Gazette reported on Aug. 21. upi.com