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Editor's note: Rebecca Mazonson is a junior at Brown University. She interned at the Learning First Alliance during the summer of 2010.

As a graduate of a single-sex high school, I can attest to the premise that the single-sex educational experience can be a liberating one, free of many of the distractions and frustrations of coeducation. My classmates and I felt little pressure to wear makeup or be “coy” in the classroom. We readily embraced (consciously or not) the school’s motto of “women learning, women leading,” pushing ourselves to explore academic and career realms that suited our interests, rather than subscribing to gender stereotypes or traditional roles.

I don’t know that this is true for all students who attend or attended single-sex schools. But I contest the assumption that a separation of genders in school necessarily reinforces gender stereotypes. Indeed, I am constantly aware of the ways many of my female classmates at my co-educational university constrain themselves in the classroom or lecture hall, and usually without being aware of it. I have discussed with professors the perennial problem I witness of male students being readier to ask questions or make presentations than female students. (I am talking in the aggregate here. There are clearly exceptions, and I like to think that I am one of them). Having attended an all-girls school, I have no doubt thatgirls can be equally as confident and competent as boys, and I am conscious of a desire to make sure that all girls, women, boys and men are aware of this, too.

I do not think that single-sex education is right or necessary for all students, and I am skeptical that it is a silver bullet for raising academic achievement. I also do not advocate students’ spending their entire K-12 or K-16 experience in same-sex schools. But I would at least challenge the criticism that promoting single-sex education is synonymous with retreating to the past, and I do believe that students should have access to that educational option within the public school system. It was undeniably valuable to me and many of my classmates to learn in an all-girls setting, and the proliferation of single-sex public schools and classrooms should be welcomed as part of our educational system.