By Staff
Athletic Management, 18.6, October/November 2006, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/am/am1806/wuequity.htm
The Michigan-based advocacy group Communities For Equity (CFE) is best known for suing the Michigan High School Athletic Association over its nontraditional girls’ sports seasons. But CFE would prefer that Title IX issues be addressed proactively by administrators at individual schools—not through court battles. To that end, the group has partnered with the Kent (Mich.) Intermediate School District, which includes 20 local districts, to construct a Title IX audit schools can use to track their compliance with the law.
“It’s sort of like an athletic equity report card,” says Diane Madsen, member and former President of CFE. “We’ve created a template that allows athletic directors to collect data and see whether they’re meeting the proportionality requirements and athletic interests of their student body.”
The audit, meant to be completed annually by a school’s athletic director or Title IX coordinator, addresses many aspects of athletic gender-equity. In addition to standard proportionality information (total enrollment and sports participation by gender), it asks about equal access to prime-time contests; presence of a sideline cheer squad, mascot, and/or announcers to support the athletes; availability of concessions and printed programs during events; and pep assemblies for teams.
After a school completes the audit, athletic department officials review the information on their own and send the results to their regional district’s office. The findings are also shared with athletes’ parents at preseason meetings. “When we present it to the parents, we explain how the data reflects the opportunities available to students and the ways they’re taking advantage of those opportunities,” says Ron Koehler, Assistant Superintendent for Kent ISD, who worked with CFE to develop the audit. “It makes parents aware of what Title IX means for their children and how their school is doing in terms of compliance.”
Raising awareness—among parents and administrators alike—is a primary goal of the new reporting system. “Before this, we found that many schools didn’t know anything about Title IX,” says Madsen. “This tool is designed to make schools aware of what the law requires and to help them assess themselves.”
As a companion piece to the audit, CFE has also developed an interest survey to test whether the athletic interests of a school’s student body are being met. The survey asks students which existing sports they participate in or would like to participate in, and which new ones they want to see added at the varsity, intramural, or club level. And in light of the controversial e-mail-based survey method approved for colleges last year by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the methodology is carefully prescribed.
“We recommend that schools pass out survey forms at freshman orientation or make it a mandatory part of physical education class,” says Madsen. “It’s important that the data coming back is valid, and that means all students should be represented.”
Madsen notes that when schools have used similar surveys in the past, they’ve uncovered previously unknown student interests. “Some inner city schools in the Grand Rapids area now offer club jump-roping teams, and they travel to competitions throughout the state,” she says. “A school can look at its survey results and say, ‘We have a large population of kids interested in this, and there are other schools in our area that we could compete against. Maybe we should add a new sport.’”
For now, the Title IX audit is used only in the Kent ISD, which includes about 140,000 students. But CFE has plans to push for its adoption statewide.
“Members of our group have brought it up with other intermediate districts around the state and taken it to the state superintendent, who has shown interest in it. We’ve met with the governor about it, too,” Madsen says. “I think if we can show that it’s helping schools determine how they’re doing with compliance, it will eventually make its way across the state, which would be wonderful.”
At the same time, CFE continues to fight its nontraditional seasons lawsuit against the MHSAA, which took another step toward resolution in August. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Michigan season structure discriminates against girls. The MHSAA has appealed again, and has vowed to fight until all appeals are exhausted.
Visit CFE on the Web at: www.communitiesforequity.com.