Education Amendment Act of 1972

Over time the priorities and concerns of society often change. Take, for example, the Education Amendment Act of 1972, an omnibus spending bill that addressed many education-related issues. Today the bill is mainly discussed for its Title IX, prohibiting gender discrimination, but at the time, almost all of the debate was about the bill's effect on desegregation busing. What were the impacts of this bill that touched on so many areas of education?

Fig.1 - Richard Nixon

Education Amendment Act of 1972 Summary

Although most remembered for Title IX, dealing with gender discrimination, the Education Amendment Act of 1972 covered various education-related issues. These included the creation of the National Institute of Education, beginning direct federal student aid, and money for desegregation. Although President Richard Nixon signed the Act on June 23, 1972, he took issue with some aspects of the bill, such as busing and restrictions on student loans. Still, Nixon viewed the Act as a first step toward meeting his educational priorities.

Education Amendment Act of 1972 Prohibitions

The Act placed prohibitions on the controversial topic of school desegregation through busing students to further away schools to desegregate those schools, often referred to as "busing." The basis for busing was that housing inequality led to segregated neighborhoods, so segregation continued despite being declared unconstitutional when communities became the basis for school assignments and feeders. The 1971 US Supreme Court decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, upheld an earlier federal court decision that the school district in Charlotte should not just passively desegregate schools by allowing both black and white children to attend the same neighborhood schools but work actively by using busing students to a more equitable racial mix in across all of the public schools in the district. Richard Nixon was unhappy that the Act did not exclude children in grade 6 or below from busing and did not define national guidelines on busing.

Fig.3 - Integrated Busing in Charlotte

Busing Prohibitions in the Education Amendment Act of 1972

• Busing would not take place until all court appeals rulings.
• Federal funds would only go to busing when local officials asked for them
• Students could not be forced to attend schools that were academically inferior to their current school
• Students could not be forced to participate in school if it was deemed potentially hazardous to their health
• Unless required by the Constitution, the federal government can not pressure local school boards to use busing

Purpose of Title IX of the Education Amendment Act of 1972

On June 10, 1963, President John F Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, declaring that wages for the same work cannot be different based on sex. As a result of the Act, wages for women compared to men began to increase steadily. Despite these gains, exceptions in the Equal Pay Act of 1963 allowed less pay to women who were executives, administrators, outside salespeople, or professionals. These were some better-paying jobs, continuing wage disparities at the upper end of the economic scale. The purpose of Title IX was to address some of these inequalities left by the Equal Pay Act of 1963, specifically in education.

Changes caused by the Education Amendment Act of 1972

The Education Amendment Act of 1972 raised across-the-board grants to higher education institutions, student assistance, and amounts students could borrow in federally insured student loans. The Education Amendment Act of 1972 created the National Institute of Education to make educational recommendations. The Act granted money to public schools to meet the unique needs of educating indigenous children. Lastly, the Act called for an investigation into whether the federal government needed to become involved in setting safety standards for youth camps.

Education Amendment Act of 1972 Impact

Title IX is the most strongly felt impact of the Act. Women gained higher acceptance into academic institutions as students and professors were more likely to be granted tenure; however, women were still less likely to achieve top educational positions. The investigation into camp safety found that state laws were inadequate but stated that federal laws would not be impractical.

While the 1972 Act limited federal funds for desegregation through busing, the 1974 General Education Provisions Act banned the use of federal funds for busing altogether. Since 1988, racial segregation in schools has steadily increased.

The government ended the National Institute of Education in 1985, spreading its functions across other government agencies. The Watergate scandal distracted the administration from adequately supporting the institute upon its creation.

The institute failed to create relationships with Congress, school administrators, teacher's unions, or anyone else who would fight for it. Conservatives in Congress believed it was attempting to push liberal ideology in education. In the end, its focus on more abstract academic topics, such as studying how people learn, rather than generating actionable results on directly improving specific educational outcomes, left the institute's work with a small audience.

Fig 3. Women's College Lacrosse

College Sports

One of the areas where Title IX had the earliest impact was in college sports. Schools were not required to have all of the same sports open to male or female teams. Still, any sport that was open to one sex must be available to the other if there were a reasonable number of athletes interested in the sport and capable of competing to form a team. It also required schools to have equal opportunities for both teams in a given sport, including equipment, scheduling, facility use, and scholarship opportunities.