New Title IX debate: how to measure interest?

The math seemed pretty simple to Jeff Steffens. Upon hearing a groundswell of support to start a varsity boys' soccer team at Perryville (Mo.) High two years ago, Steffens, the athletic director, said he could only do it under one condition -- create another girls' team.

Figuring that was the means to comply with Title IX, the law mandating gender equity at all federally funded institutions, Steffens surveyed the entire student body -- as well as incoming ninth-graders -- in April 2005 to solicit their interests.

The students at Perryville, which already had one girls' soccer team, had no interest in adding a second. With the school already offering an equal number of teams for the boys and girls, prospective boys' soccer players were out of luck.

"People wanted to get me fired because I couldn't get enough girls to come out for sports," said Steffens, who just completed his fifth year as athletic director. "I thought girls wanted to play."

Today, on the 35th anniversary of the law's ratification, the crux of the modern Title IX debate between women's rights leaders and advocates for Title IX reform is how to measure interest. Does providing opportunities where there is no precedent for interest constitute a quota system? Or do new opportunities provide the exposure to an activity of which an underrepresented group was unaware?

According to data from the National Federation of State High School Associations, more athletic opportunities were created for boys than girls from the 2000-01 school year to 2005-06, reversing a trend of the previous three decades. In addition, during the same time period, the gap between boys and girls participating at the high school level widened, also stunting a similar trend since the law's introduction.

Meantime, according to the U.S. Census, the number of boys in America, ages 14 to 17, increased by 6.47 percent from July 2000 to July 2006; the number of girls in the same group rose by 7.42 percent.

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"I thought it was a typo. Whoa! Where did this come from?" Donna Lopiano, chief executive of the Women's Sports Foundation, said of the reversing trend. "It's almost reactionary and a reinforcement that every boy should have every opportunity to play. The spirit of Title IX is not just to be responsive if the girls keep calling. It's supposed to create opportunities."

Title IX allows each school the choice of one of three tests to demonstrate compliance: It can show its male and female athletes are proportionate to enrollment; it can illustrate a history of expanding opportunities for females; or it can show it is meeting the interests of its female students.

Most women's groups believe not enough athletic opportunities are being afforded young women; reform advocates argue the law mandates a quota that forces women to take interest, while denying the opportunity for men who have demonstrated an interest.

One of the most ardent supporters of Title IX reform, the College Sports Council, filed a petition with the Department of Education this week requesting that the test for proportionality -- the one used by Perryville High School -- not be used when determining compliance in high schools.

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Reform advocates claim the test is more germane for colleges because they have the ability to recruit their own student bodies. High schools, on the other hand, are comprised differently.

"At the high school level, you don't have recruiting," said Eric Pearson, the CSC chairman. "You have a limited number of students you are trying to attract to your sport."

Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, who along with Pearson, testified on the issue Tuesday before a House education subcommittee, said eliminating the proportionality test at the high school level would hurt efforts at establishing gender equity.

"As a result," Greenberger said, "the efforts that [the CSC] has made to weaken that three-part test would not only lessen the obligation of colleges and universities to provide equal athletic opportunity for their female students, but would also weaken the obligations of high schools around the country to provide opportunities to very young female athletes and students."

Greenberger urged Congress to pass the High School Athletics Accountability Act, which would require high schools to disclose annual participation figures, budget expenditures and staffing provided for each high school team.

Passage of that bill could go a long way to satisfying both sides of this debate. It would provide a standard source of data to satisfy two of the prongs for Title IX compliance -- proportionality or meeting student interest -- and remove that burden from high school administrators such as Jeff Steffens.

Pearson sounded a note of caution.

"The Accountability Act could be a double-edged sword," he said. "It could provide more information, but it could also provide a tool for those who want a gender quota.

"The bottom line is, how do you measure interest?"