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The Challenge:
The Underrepresented Lack Voice

Play 2

Understand Your Student Population

Sport interest surveys are one way that high schools can demonstrate compliance with Title IX. For decades, administrators have used them to show the U.S. Department of Education that their school is meeting the interests and abilities of the underrepresented sex – girls – in a student population. They can be a powerful tool, if utilized. Many schools don’t bother; and, if they do field them, the results are rarely shared with, or easily accessed by, the public. They often are not made available on school websites.

That’s a miss. Schools need to know what students want to participate in to design sport offerings. It can be essential in achieving gender equity, creating systems of accountability, and just building a menu of activities that is most likely to get and keep students physically active. Student voice and choice matter.

Our recommendation for school leaders: Conduct student interest surveys on an annual basis, regardless of whether needed for Title IX purposes. Bolster them with questions that tease out insights that include but are not limited to gender interests. Use surveys that allow analysis by disability, race or ethnicity, and grade level. Ask about the sports students play, want to play, and other health and fitness activities. Ask why they play and why they don’t.

The Aspen Institute did that with its national survey of students. We learned much: Among racial groups, Asian American students were highly likely to say their school doesn’t offer a sport they want.¹⁸ Among private school students who don’t play sports, 25% of Blacks and 40% of Hispanics said they “don’t feel welcome” on school teams. That’s five times the rate of Black students at public urban schools and almost twice the rate of Hispanic students at public urban schools.

A template needs to be created or adapted for use by schools, with the necessary privacy protections. Embracing a common set of questions – on student sport preferences, rationale for participation or lack of participation, and youth/adult relationships in the context of sport – will be helpful for comparison with other schools, allowing aggregated data at the district, state, and federal levels. Right now, the grab bag of unstandardized, Title IX surveys in circulation lack consistency in form or an ability to capture historical or other trends.

By adding qualitative insights and the voice of students, a clear path to program improvement emerges.

WHO CAN HELP

AGENCIES

The U.S. Department of Education can create or endorse a survey instrument that any school can use to demonstrate compliance with Title IX while gleaning additional insights about student interests. Ensure the survey gets developed with input from a range of stakeholders, including youth, school leaders, equity advocates, survey experts, and technologists who can help allow the data to be aggregated and analyzed at multiple levels. Lessons should be learned from the last time the DOE went through this exercise, in 2005, when a Title IX template was rejected by gender equity advocates due to concerns about non-responses counting as a lack of interest in sports.¹⁹

LOCAL SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Encourage the inclusion of these student surveys in the Local School Wellness Policy+ that must be created by schools that receive funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Then, recruit athletic directors or physical educators to participate in District Wellness Council+ activities where they can share results and collaborate with school health leaders in the development of physical activity goals and strategies.²⁰

SPORTS ORGANIZATIONS

National Governing Bodies of sports and professional leagues should treat the data as consumer research – opportunities to approach schools with partnerships to meet the demand for activities that schools may not have the expertise, facilities or human capacity to host.

Business & Industry

Media outlets can expand the purview of the high school sports reporter to include coverage of survey results. Bring in the education reporter. The news and storytelling opportunities will help serve your community.

Families

Know your rights. Beyond surveys, another way that the Department of Education can evaluate a school for Title IX compliance is whether it responded to student requests to add a sport. So, speak up. That doesn’t always mean officials will add a team, but it can force action on how to accommodate student interests.²¹

FINDING SUCCESS

If 80% of a potential roster for Coliseum College Prep Academy (Oakland, California) demonstrates interest in a sport, the school seeks a nonprofit partner to help generate interest for afterschool programming or physical education. Interest is demonstrated through an annual survey of students. “Our reputation as a district is if you have an initiative to pilot, come to us and we’ll figure out how to do it on the ground,” says Amy Boyle, athletic director. Sports and activities that have been introduced include dance, yoga, biking, soccer, baseball, softball, rowing, and lacrosse.

 

Discover what the Aspen Institute learned about student needs and interests in our national survey with Resonant Education of nearly 6,000 high school students here.