Spellings' Attack on Title IX

Apparently "scientifically-based" data is only important when it comes to demanding that test scores should now constitute a re-definition of knowledge by the crackpots in charge at ED. Otherwise, it seems that Internet surveys will do when it comes to school officials who must gather data from students on school athletic interests, as required by Title IX.

Check this out from the Providence Journal on a speech given yesterday by Birch Bayh, the former Senator most responsible for the passage of Title IX in 1972:

The current threat, Bayh said, comes from U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who last spring issued a "clarification" that relaxes the way colleges can demonstrate compliance with Title IX. The famous "three-prong test," crucial in the Brown case, dictates that proportionality, program expansion, or meeting the interests of students are acceptable forms of compliance.

Spellings informed athletics directors that they could use e-mail surveys to determine interest. Bayh and others began "waging a little battle." They hold that it's too easy and inaccurate to conclude that students who do not respond to the survey are not interested in athletics. He urged students to contact their senators and congressmen and express their opposition.

Bayh said that despite the great progress women and girls have made, their participation in sports does not yet match their representation in undergraduate populations. And institutions are spending $2 on men for every $1 they spend on women.

"Unfortnately, some are not content to move forward or stay where we are but want to go back," he said.