The Intended and Unintended Consequences of Title IX

by Whitney Pitcher

I wrote the following post at The New Agenda in celebration of Title IX’s 40th birthday:

Today marks a very important milestone in women’ s history–the fortieth birthday of the legislation known as Title IX. Title IX was introduced as an amendment to the re-authorization of a the Higher Education Act and actually did not even  specifically mention women’s participation in sports, which is what  it has became known for over the decades. The amendment is only one sentence:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

It aimed to offer equal opportunity to women in all aspects of higher education–access to college, sports, other extra curricular activity, specific classes, tutoring, and facilities among other things.  Senator  Birch Bayh of Indiana proposed the amendment, which passed both houses of Congress and was signed by President Nixon on June 23, 2012. Although the legislation was passed as applied to institutions of higher education, the 1979 “three prong test” for compliance has often been applied to any educational institution which receives federal funding, which would include high schools.

Many prominent women have offered their appreciation for the piece of legislation. In an event announcing a new initiative to empower female athletes throughout the world, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted,” [t]he title IX decision was revolutionary, and I think all of us who care about opportunities for girls and women view it as one of the most consequential pieces of legislation for women in our country’s history”. In her memoir Going Rogue, Governor Sarah Palin noted, ” I’m a product of Title IX and am proud that it was Alaska’s own Ted Stevens who helped usher through the federal legislation in 1972 to ensure girls would have the right to the same education and athletic opportunity as boys. I was a direct beneficiary of the equal rights efforts that had begun only the decade before. Later, my own daughters would benefit, participating in sports like hockey, wrestling, and football, which had been closed to girls for decades”.  Tennis legend, Billie Jean King’s  Women’s Sports Foundation notes that female sports participation is 900% since the law’s passage in 1972. Soccer star, Abby Wambach tweeted in honor of the celebration, ” We have to keep believing in the impossible. If they hadn’t 40 years ago, none of this would have happened”.

We all may not have become a professional athlete and we may not have gone on to play at the collegiate level, but we all have our stories–stories of how such legislation blessed our lives–be it directly or indirectly. When I was in high school, I played point guard for my school’s girls’ basketball team, and I was a member of the Math Club. One day during the basketball season, my math teacher brought in her yearbook to tell me about her high school basketball days. She was in high school when Title IX was implemented, and although it didn’t directly apply to high schools, it coincided with the first time her school offered girls’ basketball. She jumped at the opportunity to play. We also smiled over the fact that, as athletes and math nerds, we both shared the number “13”. It wasn’t unlucky for us. Title IX not only provided women with educational and athletic opportunities; it also gave women opportunities for mentorship and provided role models that girls and women previously didn’t have.

A very happy 40th birthday to Title IX! Let’s play ball!

Please check out these links in celebration of  Title IX:

A clip from the Title IX documentary: Sporting Chance  

The Top 40 Female Athletes of the Last 4o Years

Billie Jean King talks to CBS Sports about the Anniversary of Title IX  

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces the State Department’s partnership with ESPN on global sports mentoring program, coinciding with the celebration of 40 years of Title IX

Additional commentary on Title IX: I’m very thankful for the opportunities that Title IX has provide women in education and in sports, but I am of the belief that it needs some serious reforms as well. I certainly believe that female athletes should have equal access to gym facilities and the same scholarship funding opportunities that male athletes do. I certainly believe that colleges should increase women’s sports programs to the extent that they are able to provide greater equality. The effects of the intended consequences have been great for women in education and sports, and these effects have carried with them later in life with the types of skills and lessons that sports can provide all people–how to work as a team, competition, strong work ethic etc.

As with anytime the federal government gets involved in something, however well intended, there has been some unintended negative consequences as well. In the name of gender equality, sometimes things have become less equal for men, which is not right. The effects of expanding women’s collegiate sports has come at the cost of some of the smaller men’s programs. My alma mater, the University of Illinois, cut its men’s swim program in the late 1990s so that they could add women’s soccer and softball programs. This was not fair the collegiate male swimmers. The Women’s Sports Foundation argues that this means of rectifying the inequalities is a result of poor distribution of athletic funding or that funding should increase to a greater extent. This gets into an issue of how much do you increase use of taxpayer dollars or how much do you pester alumni, right now in an economic downturn, to increase donations to an athletic foundation.

Title IX requires that athletes per gender at the school is proportional to total students per gender. This seems like a noble goal, but it also does not take into account that football, the sport that generates the most revenue, is a sport that has more athletes per team than any other sport–22 starters alone, if you assume that players only play one way (offense or defense) and that some starters also play special teams. The Women’s Sport Foundation uses an uncited statistic that indicates that 80% of college and high school football programs lose revenue. However, if you lump in high schools, which are far more numerous than colleges, that has the potential to skew results making it unclear the revenue generation of colleges alone, which is what the legislation was written for–higer education. This brings about another issues as well. There has been dispute over whether or not this legislation applies to public high school since they receive federal funding, which is addressed in subsequent pieces of legislation like the three prongs of test I mentioned in my The New Agenda post. However, the original amendment was part of a bill that applied to higher education. Should reforms be implemented to address this dispute? Should football be exempt since in many situations the revenue that sport generates helps to pay for women’s sports? Perhaps both. I’m not sure of the ultimate solution. Though I don’t agree with every aspect, the Independent Women’s Foundation offers an interesting solution to reform Title IX that’s worth reading.

The unintended consequence of Title IX is that it caused inequalities in men’s collegiate sports in what has become somewhat of a quota based piece of legislation. Additionally, how much should the federal government be involved? A lot of good has come from Title IX, as has some bad. Reforms should be implemented to address the unintended consequences and minimize the bad.

Palin, Perry, Romney, and Pleading the Tenth

by Whitney Pitcher

Federalism is a constitutional principle based in the 10^th amendment that notes  powers not given to the United States nor denied to the individual states are given to the states and their people. It seems, though, some governors in the presidential race use this as a justification for implementing bad, government expanding policy in their individual states. Of course, states do have the right to implement their own laws and policies, but just as Governor Palin has said in response to President Obama’s policies, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”.

Governor Romney often uses the federalism justification to defend his government mandated healthcare reform, arguing that states are supposed to be “laboratories of democracy”, while at the same time, criticizing President Obama’s federal mandate.  It should be noted  that while he now defends hi s policies on the basis of federalism, he did not have a problem receiving massive amounts of federal dollars to pay for his plan. A report published in June by Suffolk University in Massachusetts notes:

The federal government continues to absorb a significant cost of health care reform through enhanced Medicaid payments and the Medicare program.   Health care reform has also increased the rate for Medicare Advantage plans in Massachusetts, which has contributed to an increase in Medicare health care expenditures through prices for medical service delivery.

The study also noted that federal government spent an additional $2.418 billion in Medicaid payments and nearly $1.5 billion in Medicare expenditures, which account for 45% of the costs in its first five years of implementation. Why was someone who defends their policies on the basis of federalism so dependent upon federal funding (and the attached federal requirements) to implement their policies?

Governor Perry is another governor who defends his government expanding state policies, but wouldn’t support a similar federal law. Governor Perry passed a law which allow illegal immigrants to receive in state tuition at Texas universities if they lived in Texas for 3 years, graduated from a Texas high school, an were on a path to citizen ship.  On the Mark Levin show on Thursday, Perry said that he is “absolutely against the DREAM act”. The DREAM Act, which Governor Palin also opposes, is a federal program that grants eventually citizenship to illegal immigrants who complete some level of post-secondary education or military service. After a certain length of time, such students would be eligible for Pell grants and student loans.  Perry also goes on to say that children “shouldn’t be punished for a decision their parents made” and that such decisions should be a “state by state issue”.  Perry says that no one should be punished for someone else’s mistake, but that same principle should be applied to legal immigrants who are abiding by the rules (and paying out-of-state tuition). Are not legal immigrants, who are abiding by the rules, being “punished” when illegal immigrants are receiving preferable treatment? Is it fair to Texas taxpayers who are essentially subsidizing education for illegal immigrants to the tune of more than $30 million in financial aid between 2004 and 2008? Legal immigration is one of the most beautiful things about America. Our melting pot of cultures is what makes America the greatest country in the world, but so does the fact that we are a nation of laws.

Governor Palin, on the other hand, used her gubernatorial tenure to reduce the state’s dependency on federal dollars, rather than increase dependency under the pretzel logic federalism justification like Governor Romney. She reduced federal earmarks by 86% during her tenure by also drastically reducing the number of projects that were federally funded. In addition to this, she used federalism properly. Rather than use it as an argument to defend bad state policy, she used it to protect her state from bad federal policy. Governor Palin twice sued the federal government of their use of the Endangered Species Act to protect areas against oil development. In 2008, Governor Palin sued the federal government over the listing of the polar bear as “threatened” which would require a more stringent review process before resource development would be allowed. In 2009, she sued again—this time over the endangered status of beluga whales in Cook Inlet, which also stood as a road block to development. Governor Palin also used federalism to defend Alaska’s right to establish education standards that were best for Alaska, rather than accept the “one-size-fits-all” federal standards of the Obama administration. Governor Palin noted in a March 2009 press release:

“Alaska’s decision not to participate until after we monitor this is based on our desire to spend our time and public resources to improve instruction in the classroom and to form productive relationships between schools and the communities they serve,” Governor Palin said. “If this initiative produces useful results, Alaska will remain free to incorporate them in our own standards.”

[…]

“The State of Alaska fully believes that schools must have high expectations of students,” Governor Palin said. “But high expectations are not always created by new, mandated federal standards written on paper. They are created in the home, the community and the classroom.”

To his credit, Governor Perry also rejected the federal education standards as well as Race to the Top funding, as Governor Palin did. However, some other federally funded and mandatory coursework in Texas has been questioned.

When it comes to be people seeking to serve in an office which requires you to swear an oath to “uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States”, it would behoove such individuals to understand the proper application of the principles of the Constitution and its amendments. The Constitution should not be used for a defense of bad policy; it should be used as a blueprint for proper governance and the implementation of good policy. 

President Obama’s Budget Loses the Future

by Whitney Pitcher

President Obama released his FY2012 budget proposal yesterday. As Governor Palin pointed out, it is heavy on tax increases and low on the necessary serious cuts needed to address our nation’s dire fiscal situation. In fact, his proposed budget includes 15 new tax hikes. Ever since the 2008 presidential campaign, President Obama has promised to not raise taxes on those making less than $250,000 a year. However, these proposed tax hikes could affect people making less than $250,000 a year, including increased capital gains taxes and death taxes, which includes decreasing the exemption amount for death taxes to $3.5 million. Ask any farm family in Illinois, that state President Obama once represented, how quickly their acreage (which provides their livelihood) adds up to a value of $3.5 million.

Beyond these things, one has to ask themselves, how does President Obama’s budget truly win the future? While Obama’s OMB director claims that his budget provides $1.1 trillion in deficit savings over the next decade, Republicans claim that the accounting gymnastics of the Obama administration really primarily indicate the $400 billion in reductions over 5 years of discretionary spending freezes at today’s levels. However, as Governor Palin, as suggested in her Facebook post following President Obama’s State of the Union address, spending cuts, not spending freezes, are needed (emphasis mine):

The President glossed over the most important issue he needed to address last night: spending. He touched on deficit reduction, but his proposals amount to merely a quarter of the cuts in discretionary spending proposed by his own Deficit Reduction Commission, not to mention the $2.5 trillion in cuts over ten years suggested by the Republican Study Committee. And while we appreciate hearing the same President who gave us the trillion dollar Stimulus Package boondoggle finally concede that we need to cut earmarks, keep in mind that earmarks are a $16 billion drop in the $1.5 trillion ocean that is the federal deficit. Budget cuts won’t be popular, but they are vitally necessary or we will soon be a bankrupt country. It’s the responsibility of a leader to make sure the American people fully understand this.

While the deficit may be reduced over the next decade, the overall debt will nearly double over the next decade to $7.2 trillion dollars and the deficit held in 2011 will reach a record high of $1.645 trillion, as stated by the Heritage Foundation assessment referenced in Governor Palin’s note yesterday. Spending freezes, accounting gymnastics, tax increases, and record high deficits and debt do nothing to derail the bullet train to bankruptcy, but only stoke the fires of the train’s engine.

President Obama’s budget also does not address entitlement programs as his deficit commission, Congressman Ryan, and Governor Palin suggest. Governor Palin wrote following President Obama’s State of the Union address:

On the crucial issue of entitlement reform, the President offered nothing. This is shocking, because as he himself explained back in April 2009, “if we want to get serious about fiscal discipline…we will have to get serious about entitlement reform.” Even though the Medicare Trust Fund will run out of funds a mere six years from now, and the Social Security Trust Fund is filled mainly with IOUs, the President opted to kick the can down the road yet again. And once again, he was disingenuous when he suggested that meaningful reform would automatically expose people’s Social Security savings to a possible stock market crash. As Rep. Paul Ryan showed in his proposed Roadmap, and others have explained, it’s possible to come up with meaningful reform proposals that tackle projected shortfalls and offer workers more options to invest our own savings while still guaranteeing invested funds so they won’t fall victim to sudden swings in the stock market.

President Obama’s spending freezes and limited spending cuts, namely cuts to defense and some cuts to various government programs, only address discretionary spending. However, Presdient Obama’s lack of both political courage and fiscal discipline in reforming non-discretionary entitlement programs indeed “kick the can down the road”, as Governor Palin said. Instead of winning the future, President Obama is losing both the present and the future by ignoring the need to reform of the legislation of the past. How can the future be won if the present debt is equal to the present economy? How can the future be won if future generations are burdened with the cost of unreformed entitlement programs?

One area where President Obama has increased spending is education, to the tune of more than $77 billion, an 11% increase. Department of Education secretary Arne Duncan suggests that in order to win the future, America needs to “out-educate” other developed nations so children would be prepared for the “jobs of tomorrow” and this, of course, requires increased federal spending for education. However, as Governor Palin said:

Take education for example. It’s easy to declare the need for better education, but will throwing even more money at the issue really help? As the Cato Institute’s Michael Tanner notes, “the federal government has increased education spending by 188 percent in real terms since 1970 without seeing any substantial improvement in test scores.” If you want “innovation” and “competition,” then support school choice initiatives and less federal control over our state and local districts.

Governor Palin would know that state and local entities know best how to address education. As Governor of Alaska, she forward funded education on the state level so that districts at the local level could plan ahead appropriately for their own districts. She also recognized importance of more localized assessment and control by forgoing federal standards for the sake of Alaskan developed standards that had an emphasis on rural education, something that a federal standards would not appropriately address. In May of 2009, Governor Palin said:

The State of Alaska fully believes that schools must have high expectations of students. But high expectations are not always created by new, mandated federal standards written on paper. They are created in the home, the community and the classroom.

Governor Palin understands that more federal spending on education does not win the future for American children, but state and locally funded and controlled education is most responsive to America’s future–children– and most responsible of America’s fiscal future. Allowing a massive debt to grow by selectively freezing spending does not win the future, but steals from the future. An unwillingness to reform entitlements does not win the future, but forces future generations to make tough decisions that the current generation should address. Governor Palin promotes sharing true American exceptionalism with future generations as the way to win the future, not passing on the financial burdens of larger government and greater spending.