A formula that works | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | News: Education

A formula that works | Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | News: Education

A formula that works

DISD school has competitive admissions, high test scores - and no boys

12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, May 13, 2007

By TAWNELL D. HOBBS / The Dallas Morning News
tdhobbs@dallasnews.com

Round any corner at the Irma Rangel school for girls, and you'll find evidence that learning is a serious mission.

JIM MAHONEY/DMN

Teenage girls swarm the halls at the Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School, DISD's only single-sex school. Opened in 2004, the high-performing school is unusual for reasons other than the absence of boys: Student activities include a lacrosse team and a handbell choir.

Student artwork – from paper quilts depicting different eras to student-made books to intricate drawings – is displayed throughout. A bulletin board is packed with college information. Teachers' academic credentials are posted on classroom doors. Another bulletin board provides information on famous "women of science."

And the girls at the Dallas school district's first single-sex school – turned out in their plaid uniform skirts and white blouses – exude confidence. They don't miss the pressures common at traditional schools – mainly those involving boys.

JIM MAHONEY/DMN

From left: Irma Rangel students Laura Payne, 16, Jennita Warren, 16, and 15-year-old Rosalina Tovar carry life-size baby dolls during their Spanish class as part of a two-week health-class project designed to reinforce the responsibilities of motherhood.

"You get to be yourself," said 13-year-old Adela Sanchez, taking a break from a robotics experiment using Legos. "When you're in a school with guys, you worry about what guys think."

The Dallas Independent School District opened the Irma Lerma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School in 2004 to try out the concept. It's now part of a growing trend. The number of single-sex schools across the country is still small, but it has more than doubled in just a few years. And last year, the U.S. Department of Education issued rules that will make it easier for school districts to create single-sex schools and classes.

Texas has three single-sex public schools – Irma Rangel and two schools in Houston for boys, according to the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. At least one other district, Austin, is adding a school.

Irma Rangel's early successes have led some DISD trustees to suggest that the district consider opening an all-boys school, though no one has made a formal proposal.

Rangel, which is near the Women's Museum in Fair Park, has grown from 126 seventh- and eighth-graders when it started three years ago to 329 students in grades six through 10. A grade is being added each year until the school reaches 12th grade in 2008-09.