"Separate classrooms for male and female students" - practice ACT Essay

Hi, i would really like to get better at writing essays for my grades and my own personal benefit. This is an ACT practice writing prompt. Please do not correct the prompt and waste your time. This is a long essay so if you only correct a couple of sentences that would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Practice ACT Essay Prompt: Some high schools in the United States have considered creating separate classrooms for male and female students in subjects such as mathematics and science. Some educators think separate classes will be beneficial because students will be less distracted from learning. Other educators think having separate classes for females and males will not be beneficial because it seems to support false stereotypes about differences in ability between males and females. In your opinion should high schools create separate classes for male and female students.

My Response and Essay:
Imagine that a high school student receives his report card and sees that he is failing math. Is this because he was so distracted by a member of the opposite sex that he totally disregarded his school work? Of course not, but this is what many high schools are suggesting by creating separate classrooms for males and females in math and science. Creating separate classrooms for males and females will create more problems for teachers, students, and schedules while not reducing the problem of distraction in schools.

Teachers and students will have to deal with new problems that will arise due to this separation. Will teachers teach the males differently than the females? If so, isn't this the same segregation that took our country hundreds of years to get rid of? Instead of segregating skin color, the school system would be segregating gender. By nature this is a direct violation of the constitution. In addition, teachers would have to spend more time worrying about how they have to teach each class differently which takes away from time they could be using to help students learn. Furthermore, a difference in teaching leads to false stereotypes concerning the differences in ability between different genders. Not only will this hurt the ability of a teacher to teach but it will create even more distractions for the students. Other problems that could arise are scheduling problems. It would be much harder for schools to create a school day that will runs smoothly for students and teachers. A large school would run into many problems with scheduling and classroom size if separate classrooms were created in math and science for males and females.

Separating classrooms will not solve the problem of distraction in schools as a whole. The point of solving distractions is to try to improve students' grades. However, most students are not distracted by the opposite gender in schools so much that their grades suffer so dramatically. Most students who are doing badly in school simply do not care to do well in school. Separating the genders would not improve their grades. Students who do not care to learn will not improve their grades no matter how many distractions there are in school. Students who want to learn and get good grades will work through distractions. That will prepare them for their future also. In colleges and in work, there are many distractions that cannot be eliminated and the students that have not learned to cope with distractions will be much worse off.

Proponents for the separation of genders will disagree and might point out that many private schools are male only or female only. They will also state that students earn better grades in those schools. However, many other factors contribute to this. The students in private schools generally care more their grades as there parents are paying for their education. In addition, students in male or female only schools are separated all hours in school while public high schools are only considering this separation in math and science classes. If students are truly distracted by the opposite gender, then this would not be enough because of the distractions outside of those classes. Besides, the margin of grades between public and private schools are not black and white. They are in many respects almost the same.

Creating separate classrooms for males and females in math and science will not be beneficial and will create more distractions. Both teachers and students will suffer from the separated classrooms. Moreover students will be less prepared for the real world and college. Separating classrooms will create problems and will be unbeneficial for students and teachers.

This essay is already quite strong, especially for a standardized test job. But, since you say you are not practicing for a standardized test, but to improve your overall essay writing skills, I would say you need to focus on providing more evidence and stronger logical connections to back up your points. Most of the points you make could be worked into much more convincing form than they currently are:


Perhaps a better question might be "should teachers teach the males differently than the females?" This is where research might come in useful, to find out what various experts have to say about what differences, if any, exist between the way men and women learn.


Why? Presumably they could teach the classes the same way if that was determined to be the best approach to take, and if the separation is merely to prevent the boys and girls from distracting each other.


Again, you assume that A) there should be no difference in teaching, and that B) there would be anyway. You also provide no reason why, if teachers believe boys and girls to have different innate abilities in math, that this should manifest itself more strongly in single-sex classes than it does in current co-ed ones.


Again, this might be true, but you offer no evidence why it should be so. Most schools already have too many students to fit into a single class, and so have multiple versions of the same class taught at different times by different teachers.


Evidence for this claim would be nice. Are there still some all-boys and all-girls schools whose students performance on, say, the math section of the SAT could be compared to the performance of students from coed schools in the same area? You would have to control for a lot of other variables, of course, but some sort of tentative comparison should be possible.


Okay, so now you admit that such a comparison is possible, and that the comparison, i.e. the empirical evidence weighs against your position.


Again, it is possible to control for various variables to try to gauge the effect of gender segregation. Possibly some researchers have even designed experiments meant to test just this variable.

Just FYI, you missed (and probably aren't aware of) the strongest reason this has been suggested: not because boys will be distracted by girls but because a drop-off in math achievement at around age 12 has been demonstrated in girls and seems to be associated with conformity to gender roles as puberty approaches.

Also, again just FYI, you don't need separate classrooms for male and female students to be treated differently -- they already are. Numerous studies have demonstrated preferential treatment for male students (calling on them more often, praising them for correct answers, giving them credit for answers that were actually first put forward by girls, etc.) Separate classrooms keeps this from happening, or so the theory goes.

And given how far ahead of boys girls tend to be academically, as reflected in university admission rates, many argue that same-sex classes could provide a friendlier learning environment for boys. Not so much because girls are thought to distract them, as that boys are believed to require a very different learning environment from girls. So, both genders think they have something to gain from this.