The Department of Education (ED) received its first data quality petition February 26, 2003 challenging dissemination of a report examining sports opportunities for women and men under Title IX. The National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) and the College Sports Council (CSC) jointly filed the data quality petition. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 bans sex discrimination in schools, in both academics and athletics. A three-part test is utilized to assess compliance with Title IX. Part one requires opportunities proportionate to gender enrollment, part two requires the ongoing practice of program expansion for the underrepresented sex, and part three requires fulfillment of female students’ interests even when there are fewer females participating in sport. An institution need only meet one part of the test to comply with Title IX. Request for Correction The petition challenged the report released by the Secretary of Education’s Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, claiming it contains statistical errors that violate the department’s data quality guidelines. These alleged errors derive from statistics in two General Accounting Office (GAO) reports that show women’s athletic participation opportunities grew after the implementation of Title IX. In order to correct the data quality violations, the petitioners recommend that the Commission either conduct a new demographic analysis of changes in men’s and women’s sport opportunities or, at the very least, cite the report’s shortcomings. The final report was released two days after the petition was filed, on February 28, 2003. The Commission formed to recommend improvements in applying current equal opportunity standards for participation in athletics under Title IX. In part, the Commission was a response to a lawsuit filed earlier by the petitioners with the ED. Before the department’s data quality guidelines were released in October 2002, NWCA and the CSC issued a joint statement to the Commission explaining the lawsuit on September 26, 2002. The lawsuit and the statement contained many of the same complaints that the data quality petitions asserted. The statement claimed that the soon to be released data quality guidelines would likely “prevent the ED from relying on the Commission’s report to support regulatory action” and urged the agency to review the concerns before disseminating the report. Agency Response On May 19, 2003 the Department of Education rejected the request for correction. The response states that no correction is warranted because the Commission’s report did not rely on the GAO reports. The agency asserted that the report developed recommendations from many sources and used the GAO report mainly as background. Petitioner Appeal The petitioners, insisting the department misinterpreted the original request, submitted an appeal June 18, 2003. The appeal notes that disseminating a report containing false information is the problem, not the reliance on the GAO data. The petitioners’ state in their appeal that under the department’s data quality guidelines, all disseminated information is subject to the guidelines. Appeal Response The Department of Education responded to the request for reconsideration September 15, 2003, again denying the NWCA and CSC’s request. The department points to the data quality guidelines which state only third-party information used for decision-making purposes must have sources and shortcomings of the data available. Therefore, merely disseminating this information would not violate the guidelines. The department emphasizes that it has not used the data for decision-making purposes; the Commission report offered recommendations, but these were not based solely on the GAO report. Furthermore, the letter states that if the Commission did rely in part on the GAO data, the report contains a disclaimer affirming that the views in the report are not necessarily representative of policies and opinions of the department. In addition, the report declares the reasons for shortcomings and limitations in the data and reflects the disputes around Title IX. Due to these factors, the department believes that no correction to the report is warranted. Related Lawsuits The National Wrestling Coaches Association, a member of CSC, filed a lawsuit in January 2002 against the ED, challenging the 1979 Three-Part Test under Title IX and the 1996 memorandum that clarifies the test. This lawsuit was dismissed in June 2003 by a judge and CSC filed an appeal shortly after. In September 2003 CSC filed a suit against the GAO over the 2001 Commission report described above. CSC sued the Department of Education again in December 2003 to repeal the Three-part Test. This is a separate action from the first lawsuit, submitted in order to correct the procedural flaws that the district court charged in the first suit. In a fourth lawsuit, the CSC sued the Secretary of Education Roderick Paige and the Chief Information Officer William Leidinger under the Data Quality Act. This is one of two lawsuits now pending under the Data Quality Act – a third was settled in November 2003. See OMB Watch’s article on the Title IX lawsuit for more information.