(Paraphrasing from the Wall Street Journal )

Last week, A judge in West Virginia ordered that single-sex classrooms be removed from public schools. He argues that separating children based on sex, while in of itself not unconstitutional, is based on inconclusive evidence and thus should be suspended.

The decision comes in the wake of the ACLU suing the WV school system on behalf of a mother of three children who were attending a school with single-sex classrooms. The woman, whose name was not released, claimed that in one instance, one of her daughters, who has ADD, was reprimanded for not sitting still... but that in the boys' classes, boys are allowed to move around in order to "expend energy".

Some groups, such as The American Council for CoEducational Schooling and The Feminist Majority Foundation, laud the decision as a strong move against "pseudoscience" and "discrimination".

However, proponents continue to insist that single-sex classrooms can improve school grades, and that the scientific evidence in favor of those results is sufficient.

For some background, in 2006, the U.S Department of Education legalized single-sex education. The Department also commissioned a study in 2005 that showed marked improvement in 1/3 of single-sex classrooms.

Opponents argue that those results were cherry-picked.

In truth, The amount of research on single-sex classrooms versus coed classrooms is very limited. However, in all the cases where the ACLU has challenged school systems, they have won in court. There are currently 500-1,000 schools in the US, mostly private, with single-sex classrooms. However, the case in WV and others like it may force them to go co-ed.

What's your view? Should single-sex classrooms be allowed?