Yahoo! News: Education News

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• Texas attorney general says college dormitory gun ban would break law
• The Resurgence of Single-Sex Education
• Small town Iowa students get Clinton to visit school

Texas attorney general says college dormitory gun ban would break law Posted: 22 Dec 2015 10:44 AM PST Public universities in Texas would be breaking a new state law if they ban guns from student dormitories because such a prohibition would violate the rights of people with licenses to carry concealed handguns, the state's attorney general said. Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton issued his nonbinding legal opinion late on Monday after an advisory panel convened by the University of Texas system, one of the nation's largest with more than 214,000 students, recommended on Dec. 10 largely banning guns from dormitories. "If a public institution of higher education placed a prohibition on handguns in the institution's campus residential facilities, it would effectively prohibit license holders in those facilities from carrying concealed handguns on campus, in violation of the express terms of (the law)," Paxton said in his legal opinion provided to a Republican state senator.

The Resurgence of Single-Sex Education Posted: 22 Dec 2015 04:30 AM PST Defenders of same-sex schools hold fast to the belief that girls and boys benefit from separate academic instruction. Proponents often point to school experiences documented in landmark reports like The American Association of University Women's "How Schools Shortchange Girls" as evidence of widespread inequities faced by girls in mixed classrooms. Same-sex educational settings are also offered as a way to improve lagging achievement for low-income students of color—mainly boys—in urban public schools. Conversely, opponents claim single-sex education perpetuates traditional gender roles and "legitimizes institutional sexism," while neuroscientists refute the merits of gender differences between girl and boy brains. And rather than creating more equitable schools for nonwhite students, some critics compare separating boys and girls to racially segregated schooling. The disputes pitting ardent supporters against fervent detractors have done little to dampen popularity, however. The prevalence of single-sex public schools has risen and fallen over the years, yet the last decade has seen a major revival. According to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education, only 34 single-sex public schools were in operation in 2004. That number jumped 25-fold in 10 years: The New York Times reported in 2014 that 850 schools nationwide had single-sex programs. With participation apparently on the upswing, the Department of Education's civil-rights division offered guidelines on single-sex classes to K-12 public schools last year. Against this backdrop of renewed interest in single-sex schools and classes, the author Juliet A. Williams, a professor of gender studies and associate dean of the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA, takes a deep dive into the social aspects and framing of this hotly debated issue in a new book, The Separation Solution? Single-Sex Education and the New Politics of Gender Equality. She recently shared some thoughts with me on the subject. The interview that follows has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Small town Iowa students get Clinton to visit school Posted: 22 Dec 2015 12:54 AM PST DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Using a savvy social media campaign, in-person pleas and pithy T-shirts, three Iowa high school students have successfully lobbied Hillary Clinton to visit their small town.

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