Students in a large mid-Atlantic city graduate from the public district high schools at an average annual rate of fifty-six percent. This low rate of high school completion predicts future financial and social instability for not only those individuals who drop out of school, but also for their surrounding community. The research on dropouts highlights the significance that students' low levels of academic and social engagement in school have on their decisions to leave school. Advocates for single-sex education argue that students engage and achieve at high levels when learning in this educational model. According to the current literature, students' success in single-sex schools is primarily a result of the proacademic choice that they and their guardians make when electing to attend a single-sex school. Through focus groups, interviews, and observations, this study explores what student engagement looks like at an all-girls urban neighborhood public high school that is non-selective and where the proacademic choice of students is not a factor. With new federal policy measures advocating innovation in public education, single-sex schools - historically inaccessible to minority students from low-income communities - are finding a foothold in urban public school systems across the country. This study aims to illuminate the extent to which a single-sex school serves as a "site of transformation" for young women of color from a low-income neighborhood. The realization of the school's mission, to interrupt the social reproduction of the neighborhood through the education of its young women, depends on its students' graduation from high school and their access to and success through college. Data related to various features of the school are analyzed to highlight how student engagement is promoted and inhibited at the school and ultimately results in transformative and/or reproductive educational experiences for students. / Urban Education

The purpose of this study was to ascertain whether or not the single-sex environment has an effect on the gender role perceptions and life paths of young women. Students were selected from two urban high schools, one all-girls and one coeducational. The schools themselves are located a short distance from each other to ensure consistency in regards to socioeconomic status. This study used a mixed methods analysis. Female students in their senior year of high school were surveyed using a gender role perception inventory (Prasad & Baron, 2009). Ten students from the original sample, five from each site, were then selected for in-depth, face-to-face interviews. Results indicate that there is little difference in gender role perception and life path between the two samples. The only exception is in the area of gender role reversal, which favors the single-sex school. As such, students from the single-sex school are more likely to indicate comfort with the inversion of conventional gender roles. In terms of life path, no significant difference between the two groups was found in terms of traditional, non-traditional, and gender-neutral career plans. Interviews with students from both sites reveal two major differences thematically. Students in the single-sex school reported that the decision to attend an all-girls school was mostly made by their parents, while students in the coeducational school reported making the decision themselves. The second difference between the two environments is that students in the single-sex school reported that they and their peers in the school feel quite comfortable acting “themselves” because of the lack of males in the environment. The students in the coeducational school corroborated that sentiment by expressing the tendency of their female peers to act differently in the presence of male peers. The results of this study do not conclusively prove that the single-sex environment is beneficial for the formation of non-traditional gender role perception and life path, with the exception of the reversal finding. The interviews, however, may indicate that the students in the single-sex environment have an advantage in terms of comfort because of the absence of their opposite sex peers. Indisputably, this study confirms that more research is needed in the area of single-sex education for females. / Educational Leadership