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By BETH QUIMBY, Staff Writer Monday, October 9, 2006

Lorraine Ann Taylor's fourth-grade girls are working on their writing assignment, drawing up a list of things they are good at, mostly sitting in groups and minding their teacher's request to speak in their "whisper voices."

Across the hall at Lyseth Elementary School in Portland, Paul MacDowell's fourth-grade boys are sprawled on the floor or standing at desks. They're putting finishing touches on cardboard shields that theywill later emblazon with Greek letters. Soon the boys will take a quick break to do a few leg raises and squats before carrying on with their work.

Both classrooms are involved in a two-year experiment to see whether separating girls and boys will lead to better learning. For half of the day the children separate by gender for mathematics and reading, and then recombine for science and social studies.

The initiative is a first-of-its- kind effort at a Maine public school aimed at raising boys' lagging reading and writing scores, while providing for boys' and girls' different learning styles. Lyseth is among a number of schools in Maine and across the country that are trying different strategies to address boys' performance, which is falling behind that of girls.

While Maine girls and boys perform almost identically in mathematics and science, girls outperform boys in reading and writing. Fifty-seven percent of Maine fourth-grade girls met or exceeded the reading standards this year on the Maine Education Assessment, the statewide achievement test; while only 45 percent of fourth-grade boys did so.

By eighth grade the performance gap widens, with 46 percent of girls meeting or exceeding standards, compared to 29 percent of the boys. The same trend is seen in higher education, with only 38 percent of the bachelor's degrees awarded at Maine's public universities going to men.

A growing number of public schools across the country are turning to single-sex classrooms to try to reverse that trend, although research has yet to demonstrate conclusively that doing so will improve academic performance.

Three public schools in the country offered single-sex instruction in 1995, compared to more than 240 today, of which 51 are entirely all-male or all-female schools, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. While single-sex education is more common in the South and the Midwest, the only other New England public school to venture into gender-segregated classrooms is a 150-student middle school in Hartford, Conn.

Lyseth Elementary School principal Jeff Porter said the single-sex classroom project grew out of years of discussions about gender differences at elementary schools, where there are few male role models. Porter is the only male principal among Portland's 11 elementary schools. MacDowell is the only male classroom teacher at Lyseth, the city's largest elementary school, with 550 students.

Porter said the project also is an extension of his school's long-standing attempts to address different learning styles. The school previously broke ground in Maine for a classroom designed for children with Asperger's syndrome and has a long history of team teaching and multi-age classrooms.

"We want it to be one of many options," Porter said.

Students were randomly assigned to the single-gender rooms, but given the option of not participating. Porter said few, if any, students opted out.

The two teachers trade off subjects. Taylor takes the boys for mathematics and the girls for language arts. MacDowell has the boys for reading and the girls for mathematics. Both teachers are spending the year documenting the results, and they expect to do the same with another batch of fourth-graders next year. They will be studying test scores and recording their observations. Porter said they will continue to track the students through middle school to see whether their year in a single-sex setting had any effect.

Taylor, who has taught in Portland elementary schools for close to two decades, said that girls thrive working in groups and the collaboration-based classrooms that came into vogue in the 1990s.

"It works beautifully with girls because they relate well with each other," she said.

But boys, she said, are often less interested in collaboration and more eager to compete, either with themselves or others. They like timed tests and other exercises that allow them to see how they measure up.

Taylor says she adapts her methods to the gender of the group. She encourages the boys to move around, which research has found helps boys concentrate. She urges the girls to speak up and ask for what they want.

Some parents say their children appear to be thriving in their single-sex classrooms. Doug Warren, a parent of two boys and two girls, said his son Donnelly, 10, is able to have richer and deeper discussions with his classmates about books than in the past.

He said the boys are reading the adventure, fantasy and nonfiction books they prefer and are much more apt to connect with each other about their books.

"Typically he would speed through the classroom reading to get to his own books. What we found with the gender-specific thing, he is talking about thebooks they are reading in class together," Warren said.

Both Taylor and MacDowell, who has taught elementary school for 28 years, said if nothing else, the new single-gender arrangement has motived both them and their students, who have become proficient at guiding the observers who show up to see the classroom at work.

The boys say their all-boy classes make them feel as if they are on a quest. Alex Oja, 10, described his class as a fraternity. Others said the class helps them open up with each other when it is just boys.

"To me it seems calmer without the girls," said Billy Johnson, 9.

Some said they can relate to a male teacher. "If we have a boy teacher, we can learn better. He is someone we can depend on," said Cody McCann, 10.

The girls also report positive results.

"My teacher said I need to speak up and raise my hand," said Mamie Walsh, 9. She said she now raises her arm as high as she can and has added a little wave on top of that to get the teacher's attention.

Paige Peltzer, 9, said she likes having some classes with just girls but would not want all of her classes to be segregated by gender.

"I do like hanging out with boys. They are funny," she said.