Quinn: Girls should have their own tech schools

Mayoral candidate and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn wants to open at least five new all-girls middle schools, one in each borough, dedicated to science and math. 

“The point of the schools, and in particular that it’s girls only, is in part to send a message to girls, ‘This is a field for you,’” Quinn said at a press conference at Brooklyn Bridge Park today.

Quinn herself attended an all-girls Catholic high school and has said she would expand single-sex schooling if she is elected. (Single-sex education has strong advocates, but researchers say there’s no evidence that it improves learning and could actually diminish students’ self-esteem.)

The city is in the midst of opening a slew of new high schools with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math. One of the schools, the High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering at City College was 67 percent male last year, Quinn said.

All together, she said, only about a quarter of students in many of the city’s public school tech programs are girls, and more than twice as many boys than girls took Advanced Placement exams in computer science last year.

Quinn said she wanted to focus on middle schools because studies show that girls begin to underperform in science and math in middle school compared to boys.

— Anika Anand