JSnrtlanh (Dhseruer NW C ollege C areers
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s p e c ia l
Inly 4. 2012
e d i t'i o n
Equal Academic and Athletic Access
out our nation.”
While best known for its empha
sis on gender equality in
sports, the law has been in
stru m en tal in a d v an cin g
women’s rights in many other
areas.
P resident O bam a, who
coaches his daughter Sasha’s
basketball team, commented
that “Title IX isn’t just about
sports. From addressing inequality
in math and science education to
preventing sexual assault on cam
pus to fairly funding athletic pro
grams, Title IX ensures equality for
our young people in every aspect of
their education. It’s a springboard
for success.”
The Associated Press reports,
before Title IX, fewer than 300,000
high school girls - 1 in 27 - played
sports. Now more than 3 million
The promise of
Title IX
by M arc
H. M orial
The nation recently
celebrated the 40th an
niversary of Title IX, the
landm ark Education
Amendments of 1972,
w hich m andate that
girls and women receive equal ac
cess to academic and athletic op
portunities in our nation’s schools
and colleges.
A White House press release
noted that, "At a time when many
universities barred the admission of
women, and when female sports
teams were scarce, Title IX marked
a momentous shift for women’s
equality in classrooms, on playing
fields, and in communities through
high school girls - 1 in 2 - play
sports. More than 191,000 females
played NCAA sports in 2010-11.
Title IX is also responsible for
the increasing num bers of women
in the nation’s law and medical
schools. E ducation S ecretary
Arne Duncan is right when he
says “Title IX is one o f the great
civil rights success stories in edu
cation.” But it is also true that
g ir ls an d w o m en are s till
underrepresented in m any areas
of education and there rem ain
gaps in Title IX enforcem ent that
must be closed.
A report by the U.S. Department
of Education, Office for Civil Rights
(OCR), notes that “In the last three
fiscal years, OCR received nearly
3,000 Title IX-related complaints -
more than ever before in a similar
period - and launched more than 35
investigations.”
The study also found that while
girls make up 49 percent o f high
school enrollm ent, they still only
com prise 42 percent o f athletes.
And o f the 10,000 schools in the
study that offer single-sex athlet
ics, 57 percent offered few er ath
letic team s for girls than for boys.
In addition, while women out
num ber men in the population and
in college graduation, they remain
w oefully underrepresented in the
STEM fields — the growth indus
tries o f the future. According to
OCR, in 2008-09, wom en earned
few er than 18 p ercen t o f all
bachelor’s degrees in com puter
and inform ation sciences, and
wom en from underrepresented
m inorities earned less than seven
percent o f bachelor’s degrees in
those fields. Less than four per
cent o f degrees in engineering
were aw arded to w om en from
underrepresented m inorities.
C learly , the pro m ise o f T itle
IX has not yet been fu lly re a l
ized. W e ap p lau d the O bam a
A d m in istratio n for tak in g steps
to im prove enfo rcem en t and fu r
ther clo se g en d er gaps. A nd we
w ill in ten sify our ow n effo rts in
su p p o rt o f q u ality ed u catio n for
all, in clu d in g g reater access to
c o m m u n ity -b ased STEM le a rn
ing fo r A frican A m erican boys
and g irls.
Title IX has served the nation
well for the past 40 years. We must
uphold the spirit and the letter of the
law for the next 40 years and be
yond.
Marc H. Morial is president and
chief executive officer o f the Na
tional Urban League.
Schools and Leaving Judgment Behind
school teachers— books like Mike Rose’s
Possible Lives and Gloria Ladson-Billings’
The Dream-Keepers.
Just read the titles. They are books of
hope, the stories of excellent school teach
ers. Ladson-Billings, whose book is sub
titled “Successful Teachers of African Ameri
can Children,” describes professionals who
honor their students’ home culture, help
children understand their world and equip
Teaching to the test
J an R esseger
The blogosphere
went wild recently
w hen R euters re
ported that the Bill
and Melinda Gates
F o u n d atio n
has
granted $1.4 million
to u n iv ersity re
searchers to investi
gate the use of bio
metric, galvanic skin response bracelets to
measure whether teachers are engaging stu
dents’ interest.
This is one more step in the move to de-
professionalize teaching, part of the idea that
it doesn’t help teachers to go through the
college certification process. Today’s so-
called education reformers believe we need
to replace “qualified” (certified) teachers with
“effective” teachers, as measured by stu
dents’ standardized test scores or perhaps
galvanic skin responses.
W e’ve come to trust counting and mea
suring instead of our judgment and our hearts.
1 like to browse among college bookstore
shelves stocking the required books for stu
dents studying to be professional, certified
by
Though the chapters offer a number o f portraits
o f good teachers, there is no single profile o f the
Good Teacher...I recommend no final list o f good
practices...Such profiles and lists have value...but
they also have a tendency to be...reduced to
slogan or commodity.
Author
them to improve it. She celebrates teachers
who understand themselves as members of
their communities and simultaneously life
long professionals called to nurture children
steadfastly, creatively and thoughtfully.
For four years. Rose traveled the United
States, visiting classrooms where fine teach
ers in cities, towns, and even a one-room
P o rtlan d (Dhseruer
E d ito r - in -C h ie f , P ublisher :
Established 1970
Charles H. Washington
EniTOR.Michael L e ig h to n
A ssistant to P ublisher , P i b ik ■ R eiations :
C reative D irector :
M a rk W a sh in g to n
P a u l N e u fe ld t
A ssistant to P ubusher , O ffice M anager /C lassifieds :
A ssistant P ubusher :
commodity.”
These books, published in the mid-
1990s, have becom e classics. I encourage
you to read them , although the students
learning to be school teachers still read
The D ream -K eepers and Possible Lives,
because many o f us outside the colleges
of education no longer understand teach
USPS 959-680 ---------------------
ing as the kind of profession these books
present. O ur understanding o f teaching
has changed, as our understanding o f pub
lic education itself has narrowed.
In a recent graduation address at T each
ers College o f Colum bia U niversity, Linda
D arling-H am m ond, a Stanford U niversity
expert on teaching, declared, “The new
scientific m anagers like to rank and sort
students, teachers and schools, rew ard
ing those at the top and punishing those
at the bottom while issuing m ultim illion-
dollar contracts for testing and data sys
tems to create more graphs, charts and
report cards on which to rank and sort.”
She continued, “The new scientific
m anagers cleverly construct system s that
solve the problem o f the poor by blam ing
the teachers and schools that seek to serve
them, calling the deepening levels o f se
vere p o v erty an ‘e x c u s e ,’ rew ard in g
schools that keep out and push out the
highest-need students.The United States
now has a far higher poverty rate for chil
dren than any other industrialized coun
try. Our leaders do not talk about these
things. They sim ply say of poor children,
‘Let them eat tests.’”
Jan Resseger is minister fo r Public Edu
cation fo r the United Church o f Christ.
47 47 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Portland, OR 97211
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Lucinda Baldwin
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A dvertising M anager , P ubuc R eiations :
school in M ontana’s Grasshopper Valley
inspire children to explore and work together.
Rose begs us not to look for a one best
measurable way to replicate good teachers:
“Though the chapters offer a number of
portraits of good teachers, there is no single
profile of the Good Teacher.... I recommend
no final list of good practices.... Such pro
files and lists have value.. .but they also have
a tendency to b e... reduced to slogan or
Tony Washington
S taff W rit t k /P hotographer : Mindy Cooper
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