Single-sex education is common in private schools and almost extinct in public ones, for a legal reason: Title IX generally bars public schools from separating students by sex. A federal carve-out opened a narrow door in 2006, and a handful of cities walked through it.
Across the country, 123 public schools with at least 100 students enroll 95% or more of one sex, according to allk12's analysis of federal data. Sixty-four are girls' schools, enrolling about 24,600 students, and 59 are boys' schools, enrolling about 16,700 students. Together that is roughly 41,000 students, out of some 48 million students in public schools. Single-sex public education is real, but it is very rare.
Where they are
| State | Boys' schools | Girls' schools | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Texas | 15 | 17 | 32 |
| New York | 12 | 18 | 30 |
| Ohio | 8 | 5 | 13 |
| Kentucky | 4 | 3 | 7 |
| Georgia | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| District of Columbia | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Florida | 2 | 2 | 4 |
| Maryland | 1 | 3 | 4 |
| North Carolina | 2 | 2 | 4 |
Two states hold half the total. That concentration is not about state law; it is about a few organizations that built replicable models and a few districts that copied them. New York's count traces largely to the Young Women's Leadership Network, which opened its first school in East Harlem in 1996, and to the Eagle Academy network of boys' schools that followed. Texas imported both ideas: Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio all run Young Women's Leadership schools, and Dallas pairs its girls' academies with boys' academies like the Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy.
Under the 2006 federal rules, a district can offer a single-sex public school only if students of the other sex have access to a substantially equal option, so girls' and boys' schools tend to arrive together. Most are high schools, 69 of the 123, with 24 middle schools, 22 elementary schools, and 8 spanning multiple levels. About a third, 44, are charter schools, and the rest are ordinary district schools, typically magnets that families apply into.
The largest, and the oldest
| School | City | Type | Students |
|---|---|---|---|
| Western High School | Baltimore, MD | Girls | 1,290 |
| Richards School for Young Women Leaders | Austin, TX | Girls | 920 |
| Young Women's STEAM Academy at Balch Springs | Balch Springs, TX | Girls | 751 |
| Boys' Latin of Philadelphia | Philadelphia, PA | Boys | 747 |
| Girls Academic Leadership Academy | Los Angeles, CA | Girls | 720 |
| Solar Preparatory School for Girls | Dallas, TX | Girls | 703 |
| Eagle Academy for Young Men II | Brooklyn, NY | Boys | 662 |
| Irma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School | Dallas, TX | Girls | 604 |
| Philadelphia High School for Girls | Philadelphia, PA | Girls | 592 |
| Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy | Dallas, TX | Boys | 554 |
The biggest single-sex public school in the country is also close to the oldest. Western High School in Baltimore, founded in 1844, predates the modern debate entirely; it is a survivor from an era when public girls' high schools were a progressive idea, and it enrolls nearly 1,300 students today. Philadelphia High School for Girls, from 1848, is its closest peer. Nearly everything else on the list was founded after 2000.
Do they work?
The pitch for single-sex public schools is usually one of two things: that girls do better in math and science without boys in the room, or that boys, do better with male mentorship and a culture built for them. Both ideas have devoted supporters and impressive individual schools behind them. What they do not have is strong evidence that the single-sex format itself is what produces the results.
The largest review of the research, a 2014 analysis in the journal Psychological Bulletin covering more than 180 studies and 1.6 million students, found that once you account for who chooses these schools, single-sex schooling produced little to no advantage over coeducation on achievement or on attitudes toward school. The schools that post strong outcomes tend to be selective, well-resourced, and mission-driven, and those features, not the absence of the other sex, are the likelier explanation. That does not make the schools bad choices. It means a family should evaluate one the way it would any magnet or charter, on its teachers, its results, and its fit, rather than on the format.
The boys' schools in particular sit inside a larger national conversation about why boys are falling behind girls in school, and they are one of the few structural experiments cities have actually tried in response. For how families get into schools like these, most of which admit by application or lottery, see how to get into a magnet school and what a charter school is.
Data note: allk12 analysis of federal (NCES) enrollment data for 2024-25. A school is counted as single-sex if it enrolls at least 100 students, reports enrollment by sex, and 95% or more of students are one sex. Schools with missing sex data are excluded, so the true count is likely modestly higher. Virtual schools are excluded.
Sources
Enrollment figures from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data, 2024-25.
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights: 2006 Title IX regulations on single-sex education
Pahlke, Hyde, and Allison, Psychological Bulletin (2014), The effects of single-sex compared with coeducational schooling on students' performance and attitudes: a meta-analysis.
