Blog of Rights
Amy L.
Katz
08/15/2012
Single-Sex Education

What Happens When You Teach Stereotypes Instead of Kids?

By Amy L. Katz, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 6:00pm

Some school officials in West Virginia think boys and girls are so “hard-wired” to learn differently that they have implemented some major changes in their middle school: boys and girls are separated into different classrooms for all their academic classes and  taught using radically different methods.

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08/30/2012
Single-Sex Education

Back to Coeducation in Wood County: Judge Rules School May Not Separate Students by Sex This Year

By Amy L. Katz, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 3:56pm

The Van Devender Middle School in Wood County, West Virginia, will return to coeducation next week, thanks to the efforts of a courageous mother who refused to allow her daughters to be assigned to discriminatory single-sex classes for another year. Girls and boys were separated at Van Devender for all core curriculum classes and were being taught using different methods based on dangerous sex stereotypes.

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06/06/2013
Single-Sex Education

Alabama: Another Unlawful Single-Sex Program Goes Co-Ed

By Amy L. Katz, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 11:11am

A Birmingham, AL public middle school has agreed to abandon unlawful single-sex classes as the result of ACLU action that led to an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the federal agency charged with enforcing Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally funded educational programs.

As part of our Teach Kids, Not Stereotypes campaign, the ACLU and the ACLU of Alabama obtained public records from the Birmingham City School District regarding sex separation within Huffman Middle School. Those records revealed violations of Title IX which generally forbids treating students differently on the basis of sex. In December 2012, the ACLU filed a complaint with OCR detailing the violations at Huffman.

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06/21/2012
Title IX

Visiting Capitol Hill in Celebration of 40 Years of Title IX

By Galen Sherwin, ACLU Women's Rights Project & Amy L. Katz, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 3:02pm

Forty years ago, we would have been rarities, women lawyers. Congresswoman Gwen Moore would have been a greater rarity: an African American female member of the House of Representatives. Yesterday we were on Capitol Hill to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a law that helped make our careers possible: Title IX.

We attended a panel briefing, hosted by the National Coalition for Women and Girls in Education and Rep. Moore in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Title IX and the launch of a new NCWGE report. Although Title IX is best known for its impact on increasing participation by women and girls in athletics, the report and the panel covered several of the less well-known applications of the landmark law, including career and technical education (CTE), science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), sexual harassment, the rights of pregnant and parenting students to complete their education, and single-sex education.

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