Voices of Hope

Fueled by media reports of gender bias in the schools, the debate over single sex education has been recently renewed. "Voices of Hope" asks for a reconsideration of the framing of that debate. For whom is single sex education better? For the attainment of which goals? What do girls gain by being schooled with male peers? What is lost?

In this longitudinal study of more than fifty high school girls at four New England independent schools, Carole B. Shmurak follows their development from ninth grade through the first year of college. Case studies capture the girls' own voices as they describe their hopes for their futures and the events that subsequently affect those futures.