A professor in North Dakota has filed a lawsuit alleging that the National Geographic Bee is not making their contests equitable.
Professor Emeritus Eric Clausen (Minot State University) is naming the NGB as well as other entities and charging them with failure to make the geography bee more fair to girls. He filed a previous claim, which included an allegation that he was retaliated against for his complaints, that was dismissed (see our prior post here). This time he has added additional groups to the list of defendants including his own university.
The details offered in the above linked article are not that clear, and I cannot speak to the merits of Clausen's case.
But I can comment on a few things. First, the preponderance of male winners of the national bee is indisputable: only 2 female winners in the 19-year history of the bee. The North Dakota state contest has an overwhelming majority of male contestants. NGB has apparently looked into this, including commissioning a study by two Penn State researchers in 1996. But the study only found that there is a small difference in what girls and boys know about geography. The study is slated to be updated in the next year.
But really, that's it? I hope the conclusions went a little deeper than that and the article just left them out. But this section of the article worries me:
Beverly Sandness, director of the North Dakota bee, was asked if she had a theory on why boys have dominated the competition.
“No,” she said. “Everybody has their own, I suppose, slant on that. I’ve been in education since 1959 and some things are just hard to explain.”
Someone who has been in education for 52 years thinks that gender differences in the ways boys and girls experience the educational system in this country is just "hard to explain." I find that worrisome. I am NOT in primary education, but even I have a few theories as to why the boys might be dominating in these contests that has nothing to do with that so-called slight difference in what they know about geography. Maybe it has something to do with the performance aspect of the event, specifically what it means to perform your intelligence in front of both peers and strangers. This is a contest for students in grades four through eight. A time when girls are ingesting different messages about what it means to be a girl, when being smart is not as highly prized as being pretty, when beating boys might not be as socially acceptable.
These might not be issues NGB can completely alleviate. But they should at least be aware of the issues and be discussing them and their ramifications on NGB contests. Hard to say if a questionable lawsuit will get them there.
Showing posts with label North Dakota. Show all posts
Showing posts with label North Dakota. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Court Dismisses Retaliation Case Against National Geographic
A federal district court recently threw out Title IX claims against National Geographic Society after determining that it did did not retaliate against against the plaintiff, who had been the director of the NGS-affiliated entity that operated the National Geography Bee in North Dakota. This decision caught my eye at first because of the unusual (for Title IX) defendant. Usually Title IX cases proceed against universities, school districts, and other educational entities whose connection to federal funding is obvious. Interestingly, Title IX's applicability to NGS was not in dispute or even explained in this case. It must either be the case that NGS (or the NGS Education Foundation) itself receives federal funds, or that its practice of operating the Geography Bee through an alliance with a local educational institution (in this case, Minot State University) was in the court's mind a sufficient connection to federal funds.
The court's decision itself also warrants some analysis. The plaintiff, Eric Clausen, argued that he had complained that the National Geography Bee was biased against girls in North Dakota, pointing out that boys win 90% of the time. He further alleged that he was forced to resign as a result of his complaints. Yet the court found that he did not state a claim for retaliation because Clausen's complaints about the geography bee's bias was not itself discrimination under Title IX ("The Court finds as a matter of law that an alleged failure by females to win the national geography bee as often as males neither establishes nor supports a Title IX violation. Title IX neither guarantees nor suggests that females must win as often as males."). Thus, his complaints were not "protected activity" as required to establish a retaliation claim.
The court was right that Title IX's focus is on equal opportunity, rather than equal outcomes, and that the law does not "guarantee that females must win as often as males." However, there are two reasons why I think it concluded too quickly that Clausen did not engage in protected activity. First, retaliation law only requires that the plaintiff have a reasonable belief that the conduct or practice they are challenging constitutes unlawful discrimination. Thus, even though the court may be correct that the Geography Bee did not violate Title IX, the right question is whether Clausen reasonably believed that a 80-percentage-point gender gap in Geography Bee winners might be the result of unlawful discrimination.
This brings me to my second criticism of the court's conclusion that Clausen did not engage in protected activity. I think Clausen could have reasonably believed that the Geography Bee was unlawfully biased. Title IX's prohibition is not limited to intentional discrimination; the law also forbids practices that have an unintended discriminatory effect on a particular sex. For example, New York state used to award scholarships to high school students based on their SAT scores, a practice that unintentionally awarded more scholarship dollars to male students. A federal court ruled that this was discriminatory under Title IX, because there were other criteria the state could use that would provide as good or better measure of academic merit and would have a less discriminatory impact on female students. Sharif v. N.Y. State Educ. Dept., 709 F. Supp. 345 (S.D.N.Y. 1989). Viewed as a possible case of disparate impact discrimination, it seems much more likely that Clausen's complaints about the National Geography Bee's tendency to favor male students were rooted in his reasonable belief that it reflected unlawful discrimination. Sometimes test questions -- either because of their content or their format -- unintentionally favor a particular group, and an extreme disparity reflected in the test results is usually the first sign to the testing entity of a potential bias. An employee who points this out and asks the testing entity to correct or at least examine the test for potential bias ought to be protected from reprisal.
Unfortunately for Clausen, even if he successfully appealed the court's conclusion that he engaged in protected activity, he would also have to surmount the court's conclusion that he did not sufficiently allege that he was forced to resign because of his advocacy for gender equity. Apparently there was evidence that he resigned for other reasons relating to business decisions made by the entity that he directed. I leave it to Clausen's lawyer to figure that one out.
Decision: Clausen v. National Geographic Society, Inc., 2009 WL 3271355 (D.N.D. Oct. 10, 2009).
The court's decision itself also warrants some analysis. The plaintiff, Eric Clausen, argued that he had complained that the National Geography Bee was biased against girls in North Dakota, pointing out that boys win 90% of the time. He further alleged that he was forced to resign as a result of his complaints. Yet the court found that he did not state a claim for retaliation because Clausen's complaints about the geography bee's bias was not itself discrimination under Title IX ("The Court finds as a matter of law that an alleged failure by females to win the national geography bee as often as males neither establishes nor supports a Title IX violation. Title IX neither guarantees nor suggests that females must win as often as males."). Thus, his complaints were not "protected activity" as required to establish a retaliation claim.
The court was right that Title IX's focus is on equal opportunity, rather than equal outcomes, and that the law does not "guarantee that females must win as often as males." However, there are two reasons why I think it concluded too quickly that Clausen did not engage in protected activity. First, retaliation law only requires that the plaintiff have a reasonable belief that the conduct or practice they are challenging constitutes unlawful discrimination. Thus, even though the court may be correct that the Geography Bee did not violate Title IX, the right question is whether Clausen reasonably believed that a 80-percentage-point gender gap in Geography Bee winners might be the result of unlawful discrimination.
This brings me to my second criticism of the court's conclusion that Clausen did not engage in protected activity. I think Clausen could have reasonably believed that the Geography Bee was unlawfully biased. Title IX's prohibition is not limited to intentional discrimination; the law also forbids practices that have an unintended discriminatory effect on a particular sex. For example, New York state used to award scholarships to high school students based on their SAT scores, a practice that unintentionally awarded more scholarship dollars to male students. A federal court ruled that this was discriminatory under Title IX, because there were other criteria the state could use that would provide as good or better measure of academic merit and would have a less discriminatory impact on female students. Sharif v. N.Y. State Educ. Dept., 709 F. Supp. 345 (S.D.N.Y. 1989). Viewed as a possible case of disparate impact discrimination, it seems much more likely that Clausen's complaints about the National Geography Bee's tendency to favor male students were rooted in his reasonable belief that it reflected unlawful discrimination. Sometimes test questions -- either because of their content or their format -- unintentionally favor a particular group, and an extreme disparity reflected in the test results is usually the first sign to the testing entity of a potential bias. An employee who points this out and asks the testing entity to correct or at least examine the test for potential bias ought to be protected from reprisal.
Unfortunately for Clausen, even if he successfully appealed the court's conclusion that he engaged in protected activity, he would also have to surmount the court's conclusion that he did not sufficiently allege that he was forced to resign because of his advocacy for gender equity. Apparently there was evidence that he resigned for other reasons relating to business decisions made by the entity that he directed. I leave it to Clausen's lawyer to figure that one out.
Decision: Clausen v. National Geographic Society, Inc., 2009 WL 3271355 (D.N.D. Oct. 10, 2009).
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