Richard Whitmire, who wrote this USA Today editorial in support of single sex schools, wants those of us at Fordham to send a video crew to the Excellence Charter School in New York City to capture and disseminate its effective practices nationwide. (Richard must have been impressed by these videos .) Furthermore, he bemoans the lack of a major federal evaluation to explore the rapid growth of single sex schools and learn from the best of them. On that front, I have a suggestion for Doug Mesecar and Kelly Scott, now the top political appointees in the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement (where I once hung my hat): reallocate dollars from the Women's Educational Equity Act to support exactly the sort of study Richard is describing. That's how we funded these evaluations of single sex schools several years ago, and it still makes me chuckle when I think about how mad that must have made the American Association of University Women.
