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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina s congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Myorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

ACLU: Sex-Segregated MI Classroom Crosses the Line

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Monday, November 2, 2009   

LANSING, Mich. - The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says a small Michigan school district needs to stop offering different classes for boys and girls in the fourth grade. The ACLU says sex-segregated classrooms and schools have been on the rise since 2006, when the Bush administration loosened the rules and the state followed suit. Those rules allow separate boy-girl classes only when an equivalent co-ed class is also offered, and the ACLU says an Algonac school is in violation of state and federal law by not offering a reasonable co-ed alternative to its sex-segregated fourth-grade class.

Liz Homer, of the Michigan National Organization for Women (NOW) Education Task Force, says the 2006 changes to state and federal law are being abused in some cases.

"If you're a charter school and you want to do some niche marketing, this is a way to do it. Stereotypes are an easy thing to fall into. But the thing we object to is the fact that they're saying there are two types of learning, male learning and female learning."

An attorney for Algonac Public Schools responded to the ACLU charge by saying that the classes in question are volunteer and a co-ed class is available. However, the ACLU says that in order for students to opt out of the segregated class, they must be bused from one area to another for the co-ed class, and that travel necessity makes it unreasonable.

Homer says sex-segregated classes are often given more resources to help students improve achievement. She says the difference in learning has less to do with sex and more to do with economics.

"When you remove those extra benefits, smaller classroom size and so forth, there isn't that differential based on sex. What really matters is the economic status of the children involved."

The ACLU says the U.S. Department of Education has concluded that there is no clear evidence that students are more likely to succeed in single-sex schools. Michigan currently has 13 public schools that offer single-sex education.


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