Idaho single-sex elementary classrooms violated federal law

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Officials with the U.S. Department of Education said recently that an Idaho school district violated federal law when it segregated elementary students into single-sex classrooms.

"School children in Middleton Heights Elementary deserve educational improvements, but there is no evidence that single-sex classrooms are effective in improving outcomes," said Galen Sherwin, senior staff attorney with ACLU's Women's Rights Project, in a prepared statement.

According to the Department of Education, Idaho school officials violated Title IX — a federal law banning sex discrimination in education — because they failed to adequately justify the need to separate boys from the girls for all school subjects in grades second through fourth.

An estimated 500 public schools across the country offered some all-boy and all-girl classrooms as of 2012, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, an advocacy group.