Network of All-Boys Public Schools Growing

Once seen by the secular public as male chauvinist and outdated, the all-male educational model had been resurrected to serve New York City’s poorest boys, a group feared more likely to go to prison than college.

The Eagle Academy for Young Men was the city’s first all-boys public school in more than 30 years when it opened in the Bronx nine years ago.

“It’s a movement to try and save our sons,” said David C. Banks, the founding principal of the first Eagle Academy. He just opened his fifth Eagle Academy, in Harlem, and hopes to open two more New York City schools for a total of seven, serving 4,000 students, all in high-poverty areas.

The Eagle Academies have shown above-average results. The four-year graduation rate for the Bronx Eagle Academy in 2012 was 67.5 percent. The citywide average that year was 64.7 percent but only 59.9 percent for boys.

Banks said the school’s performance comes despite a challenging student body: virtually all black or Hispanic, most from low-income families and a higher-than-average special needs population. And, of course, all male.

He says he has been invited to start Eagle Academies in other cities in the U.S. and beyond but would prefer to help others start their own all-boys schools. “The demand is international,” he said.

Single-gender education has long been available to religious or wealthy children in private schools but it remains controversial in public schools. The ACLU argues in its “Teach Kids, Not Stereotypes” campaign that efforts to separate boys and girls in the classroom are often rooted in outdated gender stereotypes.

But even Michael Kimmel, a Stony Brook University sociologist whose work on gender studies has been cited by the ACLU, said evidence supports schools for at-risk boys such as Eagle Academy. “They are obviously doing some real good,” he said.

Like the British boarding schools it was modeled on, Eagle Academies are divided into four houses — Obama House, Malcolm X House, Roberto Clemente House and Che Guevara House.

“I feel proud I’m in Obama House, the first black president of the United States,” eighth-grader Elijah Landsman said. “Right now Obama’s in the lead [in collecting community service points], I’d just like to say that.”

This article appeared in print on page 18 of the November 27th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.