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An assessment of the educational and legal issues surrounding single-sex education. Although co-education has been the norm within private and public schools since the 1970s, single-sex education has staged a comeback in recent years as a means of addressing the academic and social problems faced by some students. Single-sex education raises controversy on ideological grounds, and in 1996 the US Supreme Court struck down the all-male admissions policy at the Virginia Military Institute in a decision that has cast a legal cloud over public initiatives. In this work, Rosemary Salomone offers a reasoned educational and legal argument supporting single-sex education as an alternative to co-education, particularly in the case of disadvantaged minority students. Salomone examines the history of women's education and exclusion, philosophical and psychological theories of sameness and difference, findings on educational achievement and performance, the research evidence on single-sex schooling, and the legal questions that have arisen. Seeking to correct many of the misconceptions about single-sex education, she argues that it is a viable option and that the road to gender equality should be paved with diverse educational opportunities for all students, regardless of race, class or gender.