AAUW sent this call to action to the National Council of Women's Organizations listserve on March 19, 2004.

On March 3, 2004, the Department of Education published their recommended changes to amend Title IX regulations "to provide more flexibility for educators to establish single-sex classes and schools at the elementary and secondary levels." Less than one month before the anniversary marking the 50th anniversary of Brown V. Board of Education, where the Supreme Court stated that separate is NOT equal in education, this Administration will implement new policies allowing gender discrimination in public schools.

The new Title IX regulations would throw out the most basic legal standards prohibiting sex discrimination in education. The Administration's proposed regulation change authorizes the most general and even admittedly unproven assertions as adequate justification for sex-segregated schools and classes. Schools would be able to create and parents would be able to demand separate programs to which only boys or only girls may apply, based on any untested belief that it would bring some sort of educational benefit.

More specifically, the American Association of University Women is concerned about the proposed regulations change because:

1) These regulations divert attention away from real education problems. The REAL problems in education are lack of funding, a shortage of teachers, overcrowded classrooms, inadequate facilities, and poor technology in the classroom. This Administration should be implementing sound, proven strategies that lead to results. The need for "choice" in education — be it single-sex education or vouchers — has become a red herring for the fact that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has resulted in a broken promise. The President recently proposed funding NCLB at $9.4 billion below authorized levels — making NCLB nothing short of an unfunded mandate. Sufficient funding is fundamental to educational improvement. Meaningful school reform — for boys and girls — begins with fulfilling our existing promises to children and their parents.

2) The proposed regulations pose NO accountability requirements consistent with the No Child Left Behind Act. Although NCLB placed a premium on implementing strategies that are based in sound science, the proposed regulations break from this standard. Schools are not required to demonstrate that there is a significant education problem needing to be fixed, and they are not required to demonstrate that single-sex classes or schools will fix such a problem. Schools will have the authority to "tinker" with gender equity without having to provide grounds that such actions are even necessary. Furthermore, while the regulations suggest that schools evaluate single-sex practices periodically, there is no requirement that the schools report these internal evaluations to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), or that the evaluations be scientifically valid or reliable.

3) These regulations are unnecessary. Title IX already allows some flexibility for the establishment of single-sex schools and classrooms in certain commonsense situations, as long as comparable education opportunities are created for the excluded sex. In fact, there are currently 24 single-sex public schools in the United States. Single-sex classes and schools can be created to remedy past discrimination to allow girls and women to overcome historical barriers to equal education. Other specific circumstances in which Title IX allows for single-sex classes are competitive athletics, human sexuality classes, and choirs. Thus, there is no need to gut one of this country's most successful civil rights laws.

4) The proposed regulations would undermine the standard that separate is inherently unequal. Although the regulations require "substantially equal" opportunities for both sexes they do not require equal opportunities class-by-class or even subject-by-subject. Schools are only required to offer a "substantially equal" coeducational class for the excluded sex. By making the case that single-sex classes or schools are better in certain situations, schools would be necessarily creating an unequal learning environment were they only have to provide that benefit to one sex.

Further Resources
AAUW position paper on single sex education (which has been updated to include a specific critique of the proposed regulations) can be found at http://www.aauw.org/advocacy/issue_advocacy/actionpages/singlesex.cfm

AAUW position paper on Title IX can be found at http://www.aauw.org/advocacy/issue_advocacy/actionpages/titleix.cfm

Depart of Education Text of Proposed Regulations can be found at http://www.ed.gov/legislation/FedRegister/proprule/2004-1/030904a.pdf

If you have any questions, please contact Lisa Maatz, AAUW Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, at maatzl@aauw.org or 202/785-7793.