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For Immediate Release: Monday, March 21, 2005
Contact: Ranit Schmelzer or Jenice Robinson, 202-588-5180, www.nwlc.org
BUSH ADMINISTRATION WEAKENS TITLE IX
In Typical Administration Fashion, Department of Education Quietly Releases Guidance Friday Afternoon
(Washington, DC) - New guidance released Friday by the Department of Education makes it easy for schools to escape their responsibility under Title IX to provide equal athletic opportunities for women and men, the National Women's Law Center said today.
In the past, there were rigorous requirements for schools to demonstrate that they were treating women fairly and did not need to add more sports for them. The new Title IX policy guidance gives schools an easy out by allowing them simply to send email surveys to their female students that ask what additional sports they have the interest in and ability to play. If the responses do not show enough interest or ability, then a school is presumed to be in compliance with Title IX. Schools also can assume that lack of response to the survey means lack of interest in increased sports opportunities.
"How many people open, let alone respond to email surveys?" said Marcia D. Greenberger, NWLC Co-President. "This is simply an underhanded way to weaken Title IX and make it easy for schools that aren't interested in providing equal opportunity for women to skirt the law."
Under the new guidance, the Department of Education will provide schools with this email survey - or "model survey". The survey is inherently flawed because it presumes a survey alone can accurately measure student interests. The guidance does not require schools to look at other factors they once had to consider, such as coaches' and administrators' opinions or women's participation in sports in surrounding high schools or recreational leagues.
More than 30 years after Congress passed Title IX, women and girls still do not have equal opportunities to play sports. Despite the fact that females make up half or more of students in high schools and colleges, they still receive only about 41 percent of the sports participation opportunities.
The issuance of this policy guidance is the latest move in a years-long attempt to weaken Title IX. The Bush Administration's Commission on Opportunity in Athletics in 2002 made several recommendations that would have weakened Title IX, but the Commission pulled back after significant public outcry.
For more information on the Center's Title IX work, please click here.
To access a copy of the policy guidance go to:
http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/title9guidanceadditional.pdf
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