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"Setting high expectations for Madison?s often-struggling minority students is the driving force behind an all-male charter school Caire is proposing for the district."

Madison Urban League President Kaleem Caire is one of the 5 Madisonians "to watch in 2012," according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

The school, to be called the Madison Preparatory Academy, would have longer school days, offer a college preparatory curriculum ? and require students to wear uniforms.

As the proposal heads for preliminary approval from the School Board early this year and possible final approval in the fall, it already faces opposition from the teachers union, which opposes non-unionized charter schools, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, which opposes single-gender schools.

Why does the State Journal use the term "single-gender" instead of "single-sex" in this context? Anyway, I think the problem is making a special school for males and not having an equivalent one for females. But this isn't a case of training males for elite achievement (as it was in the Supreme Court case dealing with the Virginia Military Institute). Caire seems to be saying that males have a special problem that needs remediation. Actually, he seems to be saying black males have a special problem needing remediation:

Caire views the school as a key step toward building a stronger black middle class in Madison....

An underdeveloped black middle class in Madison means fewer positive role models for youth, Caire said, which partly explains why the city has disproportionately lower graduation rates and higher incarceration rates among minorities. 

But it's not racial discrimination that's being proposed. It's sex discrimination. In equal protection law, race discrimination must be justified ? at least theoretically ? meeting a higher standard than sex discrimination. But if the government interest to be served by sex discrimination is characterized as racial, does that make the argument for sex discrimination weaker or stronger?

Please discuss. I'll say more later.

Full post as published by Althouse on January 02, 2011 (boomark / email).