MERIDIAN — Fewer Mississippi students may have to worry about being teased or distracted by members of the opposite sex during class.

The reason: A recent federal regulation was changed to make single-sex classrooms an easier option for school districts.

Camie Heard, a fifth grade teacher at Clarkdale Attendance Center, said her students like being in a class with members of the same sex. It’s less distracting, she said.

“It’s better because they don’t have anyone to flirt with,” Heard said. “It also makes for a friendly competition as far as discipline and grades are concerned.”

Heard said that while most of her fifth grade students aren’t overly interested in flirting with members of the opposite sex, the single-sex classroom eliminates many distractions.

Clarkdale is the only school in Meridian and Lauderdale County — and one of only three schools in the state — to offer single-sex classes. Jan Miller, principal at Clarkdale, said there are single-sex classes in both fifth and sixth grades.

Miller said previous federal regulations, which were designed to prohibit sex discrimination in educational programs, previously prohibited such an experiment, but under the No Child Left Behind Act, some flexibility had become available for schools that wanted to try something different.

And changes to Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972, which took effect on Friday, allow for more flexibility and may encourage more schools to try single-sex classrooms.

According to a press release issued by the U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings said the changes were made because the department of education realizes that some students may learn better in a single-sex environment.

The new regulations state that enrollment in a single-sex class must be voluntary and a substantially equal coeducational class in the same subject must be provided.

Clarkdale offers an all-boys class, an all-girls class and a coed class in the fifth and sixth grades. Miller said this is the second year the school has experimented with the single-sex classes, and so far, it is a success.

“In every case they out-perform the coed group,” Miller said. “It has gone over exceptionally well and I would love to expand it to seventh and eighth grades.”

Clarkdale sixth grade teacher Vicki Adcock said her students are a little more anxious than the fifth-graders to reunite with members of the opposite sex, but she believes isolating the sexes is beneficial to the students’ educational development.

“The classes are calmer, there is no friction, no flirting and no one is trying to impress each other,” Adcock said.

Adcock said she also tailors her teaching style depending on which class she is teaching. She said she gets her point across to the students by using an example that interests them. The best part: there are fewer discipline problems than with the coed groups, she said.

Here’s a look at some statistics from Clarkdale Attendance Center’s single-sex classrooms. In each case, students in single-sex classes outperformed their coed counterparts in scores from the Mississippi Curriculum Test. Students in single-sex classrooms also had less discipline referrals than those in coed classes.

Grade 5

Reading MCT Language MCT Math MCT Attendance Discipline

Girls 539.8 545.8 563.7 98 percent 10

Boys 531.2 532.8 572.5 99 percent 64

Coed 509 507 561 98 percent 82

Grade 6

Reading MCT Language MCT Math MCT Attendance Discipline

Girls 549 578 582 99 percent 5

Boys 556 581.5 586.9 97 percent 35

Coed 532 553.8 573.8 99 percent 38

— Source: Clarkdale Attendance Center