Althelitc Equality Impossible Through Title IX
Title IX is Not Creating the Intended Equal Opportunity
Title IX states “no person” living in the US and partaking in educational programs or activities may be “excluded from participation in, or denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination” within those programs or activities.
Charles Vergon, editor of Implementing Title IX in P.E. and Athletics, admitted in 1978 while Title IX and other legislation offered an “impetus for change” a variety of factors have “impeded” the progress of equalizing “athletic opportunities for young women and men on a coeducational basis.”
Twenty-nine years later, the government and the committees formed to monitor implementation of Title IX have still come under scrutiny for not incorporating new legislation.
The Three Pronged Test
In order to determine if educational institutions and programs, including athletics, are in compliance with Title IX congress enforced a three-pronged test. The institution’s athletic department only has to comply with one prong of the three-pronged test.
Part one of the three-pronged test is referred to as the proportionality test. It calls for the college or university to ensure that the number of “athletes of each sex should be roughly equivalent to the enrollment percentages.”
Most athletic departments chose to enforce part one of the three-pronged test. According to the 2000 GAO Report 53 of 74 cases used part one of the three pronged test.
The other two parts of the test are a continual history of adding women’s sports and demonstrating athletic “interests and abilities of women are being fully accommodated.” Most institutions do not employ parts two and three because of the ambiguity of the questions.
The Secretary of Education
Since Title IX entered legislation as an education amendment the Secretary of Education is charged with following the its progress.
The Secretary of Education’s Commission on Opportunities in Athletics convened on June 22, 2002 to discuss the progress of Title IX and submitted a report to former Secretary of Education Rod Paige.
Secretary Paige charged the committee with deciphering whether Title IX standards were promoting opportunities for both male and female athletes
Studies and Experts Prove Title IX Has Not Achieved Athletic Parity
The director of research in educational services for the NCAA undertook a study in which he found that, since Title IX was enacted, men’s teams within the NCAA had declined 13.7% and that the number of male athletes had declined 7.7%.
Andrew Zimbalist, In What to do About Title IX, stated Women represent 56% of higher education students, however, they only represent 41% of intercollegiate athletes - supporting the fact that Title IX has not reached parity within athletics.
However, women’s interest and ability cannot be ignored in this case. If women are not collectively interested in a sport like football, then there may never be enough women to create football programs in every college or university that supports a football team.
Senior Fellow for Cultural Studies at the Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis, MN, Katherine Kersten, testified on September 17, 2002 at one of four public meetings held by the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics. Kersten admitted that the “proportionality test needlessly limits male student’s athletic opportunities.”
When applied to academics and extracurricular activities, Title IX shows considerable discrepancies in male and female participation. When the enrollment of a school is half male and half female, 36% of the orchestra was male whereas 64% of the orchestra was female.
In answering Secretary Paige’s first question the commission recommended that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights should implement clearly written and understandable guidelines so that an institution may properly and fairly employ the proportionality portion of the three-pronged test. The commission also recommended that “substantial proportionality” be clearly defined.
Title IX has offered women opportunities in sports
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