Title IX - Commission On Opportunity in Athletics

Commission On Opportunity in Athletics

On June 27, 2002, Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced the creation of the Commission on Opportunity in Athletics (COA), a blue-ribbon panel to examine ways to strengthen enforcement and expand opportunities to ensure fairness for all college athletes. Co-chairs for the COA were Cynthia Cooper and Ted Leland. The purpose of the Commission was to collect information, analyze issues, and obtain broad public input directed at improving the application of federal standards for measuring equal opportunity for men and women and boys and girls to participate in athletics under Title IX.

The panel held four town hall meetings (in Atlanta, Chicago, Colorado Springs, and San Diego) to allow the general public to comment on the past, present, and future of Title IX. On February 26, 2003, the COA issued its final report. The COA provided twenty-three recommendations to the Secretary of Education. Although many of the recommendations were unanimous, some of the more controversial recommendations passed by an 8‑5 vote. These dealt with considering non-scholarship athletes in prong one of the three-part test for compliance and allowing interest surveys to determine compliance with prong three. On the same day, Secretary of Education Rod Paige announced he would only consider unanimous recommendations, whose effect on the Department of Education was to:

• Reaffirm its strong commitment to equal opportunity for girls and boys, women and men
• Aggressively enforce Title IX in a uniform way across the nation
• Give equal weight to all three prongs of the test governing Title IX compliance
• Encourage schools to understand that the Department of Education disapproves of cutting teams in order to comply with Title IX