487. Together or Separate: Disentangling the Effects of Single-Sex Schooling from the Effects of Single-Sex Schools

Hyejin Ku and Do Won Kwak, School of Economics Discussion Paper No. 487 September 2013, School of Economics, The University of Queensland. Australia.

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Abstract

To separately identify the effects of single-sex “schooling” versus single- sex “schools”, we exploit two unusual experiments in South Korea: students are randomly assigned to academic high schools within districts regardless of school types, and some schools changed their types from single-sex to coeducational over time. While the overall effects of attending a single-sex school are positive for both boys and girls, these are driven by the differences in resources between school types, rather than classroom gender composition per se. We find that coed (versus single-sex) classroom teaching itself has positive effects for boys, and neutral or negative effects for girls.