Horizon

Girls in Science: The Local Front

An article in this week's Austin Chronicle informs us that Austin ISD is starting a girls' school specializing in science education. This is exactly the sort of thing that knowledgable analysts have been pushing for, and it will be interesting to see how it works out. Embedded in the hopeful report is this bit of delightful alterna-weekly prose:

[P]lans for a Young Women's Leadership Academy are now officially under way, with the district betting its Bunsen burners that if you throw a single-sex environment and high expectations at a bevy of brainy beauties, they'll lift their aspirations and reveal their inner Edisons.

The YWLA, which will open in the fall of 2007 with 115 students each in seventh and eighth grades, will eventually grow to 800 students in grades 6-12. The program will emphasize science, which is of course gender-neutral, but the schools will girl-ify in other ways, such as tailoring PE to the gentler sex (yoga … salsarobics … mud wrestling …). We hear the ladies may also dissect unicorns and butterflies in lieu of frog bellies and cow eyes.