Leveling the Playing Field: NWLC Files Title IX Athletics Complaint against D.C. Public Schools

Girls in the District of Columbia are being shortchanged when it comes to opportunities to play sports and benefits such as coaching, facilities and equipment, in violation of Title IX. That's what we said in a complaint filed yesterday with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). 

Information provided by DCPS pursuant to a FOIA request shows disparities of over 10 percentage points and as high as 26 percentage points between girls' enrollment and the share of athletic participation opportunities provided to them in the majority of the district's 15 public high schools. These gaps mean that DCPS would need to provide almost 700 additional athletic opportunities to girls to provide parity. The Center's complaint requests that OCR investigate all District public high schools and require them to treat girls fairly. 

Check out the following snippets from the Washington Post, which published a story about the NWLC complaint: 

• Daja Dorsey, who graduated from Ballou in June and played basketball, volleyball, softball and ran track, said the boys' football and basketball teams got more intensive coaching, more attention from recruiters and scouts and more college scholarships than the girls' teams. "It was a whole different approach for the boys," she said. "I wouldn't have minded that." 

• At Wilson High school, freshman athlete Helen Malhotra spent last fall seeing some girls' soccer games bumped from the nicer artificial turf fields in favor of boys' football practice. In the spring, she passed the baseball team playing on a field next to the school as her coach and parents drove heavy softball equipment to a public park and she and her teammates jogged the mile and a half there and back. 

  "It was so unfair," she said. "It makes me feel that the world hasn't changed that much. Even though people say, 'Oh, sexism is over, women get equal opportunities.' It's not true." 

It's been over forty years since Title IX was passed. Failure to comply with the basic provisions of the law is not only unfair to current girls, but also to all the women who blazed the trail before them. The District needs to step up to the plate and make sure it is providing its female students with equal opportunities to reap the many benefits of playing sports.