Suit likely portends challenge to education improvement

The latest attempt by the American Civil Liberties Union to ram its agenda (which, we should never forget, has little to do with what the Constitution actually means or says) down the American peoples’ throat comes in Louisiana with its suit to try to prevent the Livingston Parish School Board from implementing single-sex classes at two of its junior highs.

Having found a pliant family with a female student ready to enunciate the script, a couple of years ago this suit might have succeeded. But the U.S. Department of Education is on the cusp of issuing new regulations that clearly would permit the activities pursued by the Board.

Actually, none of this is new – over 200 such programs exist nationwide, so it seems odd that the state ACLU would challenge this. The basis of the suit they claim is that the Livingston Parish plan is mandatory, which is not authorized by the new regulations. They claim so on the basis that the student allegedly was told she could not transfer from her school, one of the two designated as single-sex, which has been denied by the district.

This seems to indicate the real motive of the ACLU here; if there wasn’t some larger legal point here, perhaps to try to invalidate the new regulations, why doesn’t the student simply make the request and then get transferred? Add to this the fact that there is no way a trial will come before the start of the school year, now less than a week away, so it seems like the ACLU is waiting for a program to operate under the new regulations and having its client deliberately avoiding the remedy as part of a larger challenge. That is indicated by the ACLU’s bringing into the debate wholly unrelated writings to the achievement issue by supporters of single-sex education.

Single-sex classes are a good option. The Department of Education has compiled an exhaustive list of research which indicates there are academic benefits from it. It is regrettable that the ACLU may end up costing taxpayer dollars in Livingston Parish in pursuit of its intolerant, uninformed agenda (for example), but it will be money well spent if it improves the quality of education there and across the country.