New Law Lets Parents of Twins Decide: Together or Apart in the Classroom?

LeAnne Robinson with her identical 6-year-old twins Logan (left) and Luke

A new Mississippi law -- that takes effect July first -- allows parents to decide whether or not to separate their twins in the classroom. MPB’s Sandra Knispel reports.

Many schools in Mississippi routinely split up twins into different classrooms, giving parents no choice in the matter. LeAnne Robinson from Fulton ran into that problem last year when she enrolled her identical twin boys, Luke and Logan, for Kindergarten.

“We actually got letters saying that they were in separate classrooms before school started and they refused to go to school," LeAnne Robinson remembered." Both of the boys said ‘well, we won’t go’”.

A special-ed high school teacher herself, Robinson looked at studies to decide what was best for her twins.

“As I researched I realized that it could be detrimental to their learning process if they were separated too early, and that’s when I really got behind the initiative to push for parent choice.”

The most comprehensive study to date of nearly 900 pairs of young twins, a joint project of King's College in London and the University of Wisconsin, found that twins separated early were more anxious and emotionally distressed than those who remained in the same class. Robinson turned to House Representative Donnie Bell for help, a former colleague. Democratic Representative Jimmy Puckett co-sponsored House Bill 1191.

“I think the parents should have the initial input. The law does give a safeguard to the schools. If something happens and it don’t work out within the first grading period, then they can talk to the parents and tell them that they think it’d be best if they either be separated or put together, Rep. Puckett (D-District 20) said.

Mississippi now joins 10 other states with some form of statewide twin classroom legislation on the books. Nearly two dozen other states currently have petitions or law proposals under way. From 1980 to 1994, the number of twin births in the United States increased by 42 percent, largely because of advances in infertility treatments. In 2006 the national twin birth rate was about three twin births per every 100 births. According to data from the Mississippi Department of Health’s vital statistics, 767 sets of twins, 14 triplets and 1 set of quadruplets were born in Mississippi in 2007, the most up-to-date data available.