Resolution----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Resolved: Single-gender classrooms would improve the quality of education in American public schools.
Contentions---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contention 1: Single-gender classrooms would benefit academic achievement.
Subpoint 1: STEM benefits
Gender Matching: Matching teacher genders with students improves outcomes.
Park, Behrman, and Choi 2013
Shannon Gleeson, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Law and Social Inquiry is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Bar Foundation. The journal was established in 1976. The journal publishes articles on law and sociology, economics, political science, social psychology, history, philosophy, and other social science and humanities disciplines. http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1015&context=psc_working_papers The second argument concerning student-teacher interactions focuses on how students respond to the gender of teachers rather than how teachers treat students differently according to the gender of students (Dee 2007). Riordan (1990) showed that all-girls schools tended to have more female teachers than coeducational schools, while all-boys schools tended to have more male teachers. Some studies have found that students, especially girls, benefit from having a same-gender teacher. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Nixon and Robinson (1995) found that the higher share of female teachers and professional staff in high school was significantly associated with higher levels of educational attainment of young women. In a study of 8th grade students and their teachers using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS: 88), for example, Dee (2006, 2007) found