On Tuesday night, Mobile County agreed to a settlement with the ACLU ending sex segregation in its public schools. That morning, the Mobile Press Register ran an editorial suggesting that the county’s public school system’s desperate need to improve is reason enough to test sex segregation on our children. But these programs are not only discriminatory, they are an empty promise for failing schools.

There is no consistent evidence that segregating students by sex improves learning, yet school districts across the country are experimenting with sex-segregated programs — too often based on questionable 'brain science' theories that urge teachers to treat boys and girls radically differently.

In segregated classes at Hankins Middle School, teachers were told to create competitive, high energy classrooms for boys but cooperative, quiet classrooms for girls. Teachers were informed that boys should be taught "heroic behavior" and girls, "good character," and that male hormone levels relate to success at "traditional male tasks," but that when stress levels rise in a girl's brain, "other things shut down." A story in the Press Register reported that a language arts exercise involved asking girls to use as many descriptive words as possible to describe their dream wedding cake, while the boys were asked to brainstorm action verbs used in sports.

These classrooms were not equal and weren’t constructively responding to differences between boys and girls; they were creating and enforcing gender stereotypes. We hope that now Mobile County will focus on efforts that we know can improve all students' education, like more teacher training and parental involvement.

We’re very excited about the premiere today of the documentary film, The Least of These, a documentary film about the Hutto detention center at the 2009 South by Southwest Film Festival (SXSW) in Austin, Texas.

If you can’t make it down to Austin, you can watch it in its entirety for free online on SnagFilms, and it will also be available to educational institutions through Cinema Guild.

The film, co-produced and co-directed by Clark Lyda and Jesse Lyda and produced by Marcy Garriott, chronicles the ACLU’s successful legal challenge to the prisonlike conditions at a Texas detention center where immigrant children and their families were held.

The film questions the government’s assumption that imprisonment of immigrant children and their families is a reasonable solution to keeping families together and explores the role — and limits — of community and legal activism in bringing about change. We hope that the film brings to the forefront the need for practical, realistic immigration policy, not draconian methods that are harming vulnerable kids.

The Least of These plays today, Wednesday and Friday. Movie times, ticket prices and locations can be found on the SXSW website.

There will be a Q & A after each screening featuring the directors, Barbara Hines of the University of Texas School of Law, Michelle Brané of the Women's Refugee Commission and former Hutto detainees.

Today is May Day and immigrants in New York, Chicago, Boston, Houston, Denver and in many other cities across the country are marching demanding immigrants' rights. It's fitting that this day that commemorates the Haymarket labor riots has for the last three years been chosen as the national day of mobilization for immigrants.

The first May Day in 1886 was a massive national strike led, by and large, by America's immigrant workers. Thousands of workers nationwide and in Chicago walked off their jobs to take part in demonstrations for shorter work days. Then, as now, employers' abuses of immigrant workers drove down wages and standards for all workers.

Despite its American birthplace, May Day is celebrated officially almost everywhere else but here. But immigrant labor in the U.S. is rising up once again and marching, giving new life to the legacy of 1886 in the country of its origin.

The problems the marches bring to our attention such as due process and the rule of law are important to us all, and don't just affect immigrants but every person in this country. One of the issues highlighted today, directly related to labor rights, is the Department of Homeland Security's 'no match' rule, which would unlawfully use the error-ridden Social Security Administration (SSA) database for immigration enforcement by forcing employers to fire workers whose names do not match their Social Security numbers. The rule would punish hardworking lawful workers, deny jobs to U.S. citizens and cause discrimination and retaliation against workers who may appear foreign or who assert their workplace rights. And because of the difficulty resolving errors in the SSA database, if this rule goes into effect, 165,000 lawful U.S. workers could lose their jobs according to a recent study by an economist.

Such unjust rules go against core American values of fairness and equal opportunity and impact everyone whether they have been in the U.S. one year or for generations. Thanks to those who are marching today for reminding us.

Happy May Day. A marchar!