Boarding Schools for Girls

Nearly a century and a half after it was established, a program to empower girls and young women continues to employ innovative efforts to help participants overcome obstacles and achieve personal and professional successes.

Michaele Weissman profiled Girls Inc. in the Winter 2009 edition of ForbesWomen magazine:

Girls Inc [is] a national research, education and advocacy organization. The 145-year-old nonprofit was founded during the Industrial Revolution to help young women who migrated from rural areas to work in textile mills and factories.

Today Girls Inc. programs and efforts are focused on the problems that continue to limit the aspirations of girls, especially those who grow up poor.

Three-quarters of the group's members come from families with incomes of $30,000 or less, and nearly 70 percent are minorities. Half of them come from single-parent households. &

Girls Inc. programs teach young women how to resist peer pressure, respect their bodies and their health, prevent teen pregnancy and excel in math, science and technology.

Labels: mentoring, math, technology, science

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Sixty-five high school students from three Rochester, N.Y.-area schools are participating in innovative single-sex science classes that are taught by graduate students from the University of Rochester.

According to a Nov. 30 article by Democrat and Chronicle staff writer Nestor Ramos, the program  which began in 2003 as an after-school opportunity for middle-schoolers  is provides the girls with hands-on learning opportunities, high-level instruction and a supportive environment:

The girls meet for 90 minutes every Thursday to work on hands-on projects, answering science questions of their own devising. This years theme is "Shrinking Our Footprints: Exploring the Science Behind Walking in Balance." The students will present the results at a public forum Dec. 5. &

Keeping Science STARS all female makes sense because boys in science classes tend to dominate the equipment, and teachers involuntarily focus their attention on the boys, asking challenging questions and directing more instructional energy their way, [UR assistant professor April Luehmann] said.

Its easier to focus in an all-girl class, ninth-grader Cornelia Joseph said. "It's a girl thing."

Labels: single-sex education, public-schools, science

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In honor of the 37th anniversary of Title IX (which expanded female students' access to educational services and activities), the U.S. Department of Education announced the awarding of $2.4 million in grants to help girls in math and science.

According to a June 23 DoE press release, the grants were awarded to 13 organizations that are dedicated to raising math and science proficiency among female high school students:

The four-year grants were made under the Women's Educational Equity Act Program within the Department of Education. The program provides financial assistance to enable educational agencies to meet the requirements of Title IX.

The grantees were selected from 63 eligible applicants. Grantees received additional points if their projects included activities to help at-risk students meet challenging state academic standards and graduate. All of the awardees will serve females at the secondary level.

One of the grant recipients is the Pittsburgh Public Schools, which will receive $163,559 to track 348 female students for four years (grades nine to 12) as they complete courses of study that are focused on math and technical education.

Labels: math, science, academic performance

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According to a Nov. 15 article by Caroline Millburn of Australia's The Age newspaper, a new study shows that Australian girls are trailing their male counterparts in math and science achievement:

"People assume that girls are doing better in all subject areas and that's not the case," says the study's author, Associate Professor Helen Forgasz, of Monash University.

"There's no doubt that girls have higher pass rates overall and in a lot of subjects they are outperforming boys, but not in the maths, science and IT areas. They are still under-represented in these areas."

A gender gap in school maths achievement has re-emerged nationally, with Australia ranked with El Salvador, Ghana, Syria and Colombia in having the biggest gender difference favouring male students at year 8 level.

Many experts believe that inherent biases toward male students make it more difficult for girls to succeed in fields of study such as math and science. This is one of the reasons that many parents and other caregivers advocate on behalf of single-sex classes and/or single-sex schools.

Labels: math, science

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