The fluctuating context of higher education incorporates an ongoing evaluation of the importance of single-sex schools. The choice to switch from a single-sex to a coeducational school has become progressively common, with the number of all-female institutions declining melodramatically over the past fifty years. The change has been deceptive with the transition from exactly 230 women's colleges in 1960, to 90 in 1986, and most recently to 57 in 2005 (Schwartz, 2103). A key concern as women's colleges transition to coeducation is how it will change the classroom learning environment for women, particularly whether women's voices will be lost when men are admitted to the institution. Despite this dramatic change in the educational arena, very little empirical research has been conducted on the transition from single-sex to co-ed education. Twenty-five years ago, researchers examined participation in Goucher College classes starting in the first year after the school became a coeducational institution. However, following data collection that began in 1987, no further research on the transition to coeducation has emerged. Although studies on this topic may appear to apply to only a handful of institutions that are transitioning from single-sex to coeducation, the findings of this research are also applicable to elementary, middle, and high schools where many administrators and educators have implemented or are interested in -sex classroom organizations. At the same time, the reported benefits of single-sex education remain difficult to separate from many other factors. The justification for single-sex education is often based on research demonstrating a disadvantage for women in the classroom. Specifically, as the number of women in the class increased, students perceived that the professor put less effort into probing student responses. Classroom climate influences the quality of education a student experiences and how they evaluate their professors. The micro-inequalities identified in the classroom appear to emerge from the behaviors of both students and teachers, both of whom create and maintain the classroom climate. Students and teachers come to the classroom with a lifetime of experiences learning and “doing” gender. Social norms and expectations of women and men manifest themselves in the microcosm of the classroom. Over time, the classroom may have evolved from a cold environment for women to a more complex and implicit system of gender-related messages and cues that influence the learning experience for college students.