Confusion on Title IX Consensus

In a statement that kept both proponents and critics of Title IX scratching their heads, Education Secretary Rod Paige announced Wednesday that the only recommendations he will consider from a blue-ribbon panel that has studied the law requiring gender equity in athletics are the ones all 15 members agreed upon.

“I am pleased that the commission, made up of a diverse group of individuals with vastly different points of view, was able to agree on some important recommendations, and the department intends to move forward only on those recommendations,” Paige said in a statement released within hours of his receiving the panel’s report.

That decision marked at least partial victory for those aligned with dissenters of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics. Earlier in the day, panel members Julie Foudy and Donna de Varona, along with senators Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), appeared at a morning news conference, labeling the report an attack on civil rights.

“We plead with the president and the secretary of education and the Congress to understand the implications of the recommendations,” said Foudy, a U.S. women’s soccer star who helped author a minority report on the commission’s findings. “It could result in substantial losses to women in athletic opportunities.”

By refusing to acknowledge recommendations that didn’t win unanimity, Paige has potentially scrapped recommendations that raised the ire of Title IX protectors. Those suggestions included allowances for schools to exclude walk-on male athletes and older or married female athletes from formal counts on the law’s so-called proportionality prong. Additionally, a proposal to let men’s teams survive on private donations appears dead.

The latter proposal was a favorite of the National Wrestling Coaches Assn., which is involved in a suit against the Department of Education, contending Title IX compliance efforts have resulted in excessive cuts in men’s programs. That suit led the Bush administration to request a review of 30-year-old Title IX by Paige.

Still, Paige’s undeniable political power -- his department houses the Office for Civil Rights, which enforces Title IX -- could lead to revised interpretations of the law.

For example, in one unanimous recommendation the commission wrote: “The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights should provide clear, consistent and understandable written guidelines for implementation of Title IX and make every effort to ensure that the guidelines are understood, through a national education effort.”

Paige can instruct his staff through revised policy guidelines how to interpret the law. Commission co-chair Ted Leland has suggested Paige allow 3% leeway from a 50% standard on the proportionality prong, which mandates that schools are responsible for providing equal percentages in athletic opportunities and undergraduate enrollment by gender.

Leland said his commission found colleges are providing athletic opportunities for 42% of females. The minority report from Foudy and de Varona contends there are fewer females in sports because of “persistent discrimination.”

Leland, the athletic director at Stanford, said he considered Title IX “a national treasure,” but added, “we also discovered there’s work to be done on it. We have a ways to go when it comes to enforcing compliance, making the law clearer and how to more effectively implement the law.”

So, despite Paige’s statement Wednesday, he can still usher in change. He doesn’t have to alter the law through regulations that require public debate or push legislation through Congress.

Another unanimous recommendation reads: “If substantial proportionality is retained as a way of complying with Title IX, the Office for Civil Rights should clarify the meaning of substantial proportionality to allow for a reasonable variance in the relative ratio of athletic participation of men and women while adhering to the nondiscriminatory tenets of Title IX.”

Said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center in Washington: “The secretary’s statement is not a victory for Title IX or women’s sports. “The Title IX policies that guarantee equal opportunity for women and girls are still very much on the chopping block.”