United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to Congressional Requesters

December 1994 WOMEN’S

EDUCATIONAL

EQUITY ACT

A Review of Program

Goals and Strategies

Needed

GAO/PEMD-95-6

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

Program Evaluation and

Methodology Division

B-256796 

December 27, 1994

The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy

Chairman, Committee on Labor

 and Human Resources

United States Senate

The Honorable Paul Simon

Chairman, Subcommittee on Employment

 and Productivity

Committee on Labor and Human Resources

United States Senate

This report responds to your request that we review the Department of

Education’s Women’s Educational Equity Act (WEEA) Program. First

authorized by Public Law 93-380, the Education Amendments of 1974, this

program awards grants and contracts to eligible recipients for

interventions to (1) provide educational equity for women, (2) help

educational institutions meet the requirements of title IX of the Education

Amendments of 1972 prohibiting sex discrimination in all educational

institutions receiving federal funds, and (3) provide educational equity for

women and girls who suffer multiple discrimination based on sex and on

race, ethnic origin, disability, or age. WEEA further authorized the Secretary

of Education, through the Office of Educational Research and

Improvement, to evaluate and disseminate, at low cost, materials and

programs developed under this program.

You asked us to address four questions: (1) What interventions were

implemented, by whom, for what audiences, and at what costs, and did

these activities continue beyond the grant period? (2) Did these activities

hold promise of promoting educational equity for women, and did they

reflect the requirements of the legislation? (3) How was information about

the interventions disseminated, and what lessons do these activities hold

for future efforts to spread information widely in this field? (4) How did

changes in program administration affect the ability of the WEEA Program

to achieve its legislative purpose?

This study reviews activities funded under WEEA between 1986 and 1991,

the period for which agency records were available. (No grants were

awarded in 1992.) Although the projects we reviewed are representative of

those funded over this 6-year period, they probably do not greatly

resemble those funded before 1986. For example, continuation grants

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(applications funded for 2 or 3 years) were common in the earlier years

(33 of the 55 grants awarded in 1981 were continuation grants), but there

were only three continuations in the 6 years from 1986 to 1991.

At the end of this report, we discuss changes in the WEEA Program that

were recently enacted as part of the Improving America’s Schools Act of

1994. We believe that the most significant findings of this report still apply

to the WEEA Program as reauthorized. Thus, this report should be useful to

the Department of Education as well as local and state education officials

and other potential WEEA applicants.

Background When last reauthorized in 1988, WEEA authorized the Secretary of

Education to award (1) general grants for demonstration, developmental,

and dissemination projects of national, statewide, or general significance

and (2) challenge grants (not to exceed $40,000 each) to support

comprehensive and innovative approaches to the achievement of

educational equity. The Secretary was also authorized to contract for a

WEEA Publishing Center to disseminate WEEA products.

The WEEA Program was first funded in fiscal year 1976. Appropriation

levels grew steadily, from $6.3 million at the onset to $10 million in 1980,

but dropped in the following decade. In the years between 1982 and 1992,

successive administrations aimed to end the program by not including any

funds in the President’s budget, but some funds were always reinstated by

the Congress. (See appendix I for additional information.)

At one end of the spectrum are supporters who credit WEEA as being

responsible for many exemplary projects that have made significant

contributions toward attainment of gender equity. At the other end are

critics who have described the program as “a money-making machine for a

small network of openly radical feminist groups” and one that has not

positively affected substantial numbers of women and girls.1

With the advances achieved by women over the last 20 years, some argue

that women’s educational equity is no longer an urgent issue. They cite

facts such as the achievement of higher rates of promotion and college

enrollment by women than by men. Others maintain that equity has yet to

be achieved; they cite the overparticipation of women in low-paying jobs,

the glass ceiling, and the lack of attention given girls in comparison to

1

See Tom Miraga, “Women’s Panel Accused of Abandoning Equity Goal,” Education Week, Sept. 29,

1982, p. 7, and Theresa Cusick, “A Clash of Ideologies: The Reagan Administration Versus the Women’s

Educational Equity Act,” Peer, Summer 1983.

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boys by teachers and textbook publishers. (See appendix I for a detailed

history of WEEA.)

Objectives, Scope,

and Methodology

The scope of our review of WEEA grant activities was limited to the years

1986 through 1992 because project records for activities funded before

1986 were unavailable. There were no general or challenge grants in 1992.

Our review was further limited to funded activities because, except for

aggregated data, the Department of Education does not maintain records

of unfunded applications. Aggregated data include such information as the

total number of applications received, the number of applications received

by state and geographical region, and the number of applications by type

of grant requested. By contrast, our review of WEEA’s Publishing Center

activities and of the administration of the WEEA Program is based upon

information we were able to collect on the program’s entire 19 years of

experience.

Information for this study was obtained through interviews and document

review. We interviewed individuals with current and previous program

responsibility and analyzed information from the WEEA Program Office, the

Department of Education’s Grant and Contract Service Office files, WEEA’s

Publishing Center, and independent reviews of the program. We also

conducted telephone interviews with a random sample of 40 former WEEA

grantees. We reviewed 185 applications (184 of which were funded)2 and

105 end-of-grant reports3

 and independently judged

• their connection to gender equity,

• the statutory priority that appeared to be addressed,

• whether the project appeared to be of local or broader significance, and

• whether plans for and results of evaluations were included.

We performed our work in accordance with generally accepted

government auditing standards.

2

Of the 185 applications we reviewed, one was not funded because the applicant refused the grant.

Twenty-one applications were missing; most of these were eligible for disposition under the

Department’s 5-year record retention policy.

3

We were able to retrieve 51 percent (105 out of 205) of the end-of-grant reports. If one omits reports

for 1986-87 grants (which may have been disposed of by the time of our data collection under the

Department’s 5-year record retention policy), the retrieval rate was 47 percent (50 out of 107). We

were unable to determine if the missing final reports had not been provided by grant recipients or if

Department officials had received them but were unable to locate them.

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Results in Brief

Question 1 In answer to your first question about the interventions funded over the

period of this study, we found that the program funded 205 general and

challenge grants between 1986 and 1991. Service activities of career

counseling, remedial academic instruction, and psychological and

supportive counseling were often supported under WEEA. Elementary and

secondary school students were the most frequently targeted participants,

followed by parents and other adults from outside the schools. In terms of

the populations addressed, about half of funded applications were aimed

at the needs of racial and ethnic minorities and other disadvantaged

groups. Colleges received 36 percent of the grants, nonprofit or

community groups received 32 percent, and local education agencies

15 percent.

WEEA operated under annual appropriations averaging under $3 million

during the period studied. General grants averaged $107,344—about three

times the size of the average challenge grant, which was $32,132. Utilizing

a telephone survey of 40 former grantees, we estimated that about half of

the projects that provided student services continued after WEEA funding

ended, although typically through the support of other federal and state

programs.

Question 2 Did the WEEA activities hold promise of promoting educational equity for

women, and did they reflect the legislative requirements? The WEEA

Program addressed gender equity primarily by providing direct

services—academic instruction, career counseling, and some personal

support services—to girls and women, apparently to compensate for past

and current inequities. There was relatively little emphasis in WEEA

projects on identifying gender inequities in the policies and practices of

educational institutions and developing remedies for them.

We examined funded projects in light of priorities for “national, statewide,

or general significance” and found about half the projects of only local

significance. In our view, this is because the Department of Education

regulations define “general significance” unnecessarily broadly, which has

allowed frequent funding of projects of largely local orientation.

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Question 3 How was information disseminated? What lessons were learned about

dissemination? The WEEA Publishing Center prepares WEEA products for

publication, publishes them commercially, and provides other information

and coordination functions. The effectiveness of the Publishing Center is

limited by the local nature of many WEEA projects, which makes them less

amenable to dissemination. Few WEEA grantees develop products; only

about 15 percent of WEEA projects result in commercially available

products. Few WEEA projects are evaluated, which means the Publishing

Center must distribute products that have not been documented as

successful in their original sites.

Question 4 With regard to administration of the WEEA Program, changes since the

early 1980s have reduced the program’s size, funding, and visibility. WEEA’s

program staff declined from about six to one and one-quarter positions. Its

appropriation fell from $10 million in 1980 to $1.98 million in 1994. The

position of program director was eliminated, and the program’s reporting

level within the Department was dropped three levels. One measure of the

impact of these changes is the drop in applications from 955 in 1980 to 247

in 1991.

Applications for WEEA grants are scored on four dimensions—plan of

operation, impact, need, and staff qualifications—producing possible

scores of up to 100 points. Several additional funding requirements have

been added over the years. Only one is incorporated into the numerical

scores: applicants who have not previously received funding under WEEA

or under part C of title IX receive an additional 10 points. Other funding

requirements include mandating special consideration for distributing

awards geographically, instructing the Department to consider annual

funding priorities, funding specific recommended activities, and

supporting activities at four levels of education. These additional

requirements may have limited the capacity to award grants on the basis of

merit. The impact of these added criteria—which are not unusual

legislatively—could be substantial because of the number of additional

requirements and the small size of the program. In short, the description of

the process used to select WEEA grantees suggests that the need to

consider so many funding priorities makes the selection process more a

mechanical application of rules than a consideration of the better

applications.

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Implications of Our

Results

A program with no director, with a staff of one and one-quarter persons

located in two different offices of the Department of Education, and

operating under threat of extinction for a decade, WEEA is now in a growth

situation with an increase in appropriations from $1.98 million in fiscal

year 1994 to $3.97 million in fiscal year 1995. Our review suggests a need to

revisit WEEA’s fundamental goals and strategies if the program is to

maximize its effects on achieving educational equity.

Activities funded by WEEA are typically not provided in close association

with the schools. The dominant WEEA activities are for direct

services—academic instruction, counseling, and personal support

services. Such services are apparently needed because gender-based

discrimination in the schools is still a problem. Yet one of the three WEEA

objectives is to help educational institutions meet the requirements of title

IX prohibiting sex discrimination in all educational institutions receiving

federal funds. However, we found that only 7 percent of WEEA activities

concerned title IX compliance, and we classified only one state or local

education agency grant as having title IX compliance as its primary WEEA

activity. Further, only 17 percent of WEEA awards were received by state

and local education agencies, and we saw little or no evidence that other

grantees (such as universities) were working in close partnerships with

state agencies or local schools to identify and remedy sex equity problems

in the public schools.

WEEA activities thus appear to be out of balance in that too many resources

go for direct services to small numbers of persons and too few resources

go to eliminate systemic inequitable policies and practices that will affect

future generations of girls and women. Department officials need to

consider what the educational equity-related needs of women and girls in

the 1990s are and what role WEEA should have in meeting them.

Critics of WEEA may argue that there are few substantial problems of sex

equity in the schools and colleges and that WEEA funding is unnecessary for

either direct service projects or projects aimed at identifying and

remedying sex inequities in educational institutions. That debate may be

resolved by data to be collected for a mandated report to the President

and the Congress on the status of educational equity for girls and women.

The reauthorization of WEEA requires this report by January 1, 1999.

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Principal Findings

Question 1

Activities Funded by the WEEA

Program

Instruction was the most common class of activity funded in the 1986-91

period, accounting for 30 percent of WEEA activities. Supplementary

education activities accounted for 28 percent, and personal support,

another 24 percent of activities. Professional support accounted for

8 percent of activities, and title IX compliance for 7 percent. (See table 1.)

Table 1: Frequency of WEEA Support

of Activities Activitya Number Percent

Instruction 120 30

Remedial academic instruction 50

Teacher and staff training 16

Instructional materials for students 14

Teacher instruction guides 13

Vocational instruction 12

Enrichment activities 5

Drop-out prevention activities 4

Research 3

Otherb 3

Supplementary education 112 28

Career counseling services 70

Staff training 15

Teacher guides 12

Materials for students 8

Purchase of reference and other materials 5

Otherb 2

Personal support 95 24

Psychological and supportive counseling 32

Allowances for transportation or day care 18

Case management services 9

Staff guides 7

Staff training 6

Materials for students 6

Scholarships 5

Instruction in parenting skills 5

Fitness and wellness training 3

(continued)

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Activitya Number Percent

Otherb 4

Professional support 33 8

Professional networking 11

Professional materials 6

Research 5

Conferences 5

Training 4

Otherb 2

Title IX compliance 27 7

Research studies 9

Teacher and staff training 8

Teacher and staff guides 5

Student materials 3

Otherb 2

Generalc 17 4

Total 404d 101e

aMost common activities within each class are listed with their corresponding number of projects.

bThis category combines several separately coded activities, none of which are as frequently

selected as those that are listed separately.

cThis category includes public address announcements, posters, desk placemats.

dOmits 21 missing cases.

eDoes not total 100 percent owing to rounding.

By far the most frequent activity within the instructional class was

remedial academic instruction. Other popular instruction activities

included teacher or staff training, developing instructional materials for

students, and teacher instruction guides. About half of the remedial

activities are in projects oriented to adults outside the schools and about

half are secondary school student projects.4

The major supplementary education activity was career counseling

services, which was mainly offered to students at secondary schools and

colleges. The main personal support activities were psychological and

supportive counseling services and allowances or stipends for

4

The data in table 1 are based on up to three activities that we derived from the applications. The

analysis on the participants in different activities is based on the primary activity only. Primary

activities are those that appeared to account for more of the project funds than other activities if more

than one activity was included in the application.

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transportation or day care. The most common activity in the professional

support class was networking, while research studies dominated the title

IX compliance class.

Regarding the 184 funded applications that we reviewed, we found that

38 percent of WEEA projects included career counseling activities,

27 percent included remedial academic instruction activities, and

17 percent included psychological and supportive counseling services.

These three activities clearly dominate WEEA funding.

Recipients of Awards WEEA grants were most frequently awarded to colleges and to nonprofit

and community groups as shown in table 2. Local and state education

agencies received only 15 percent and 2 percent of the awards,

respectively.

Table 2: Type of Recipient of WEEA

Awards Type of recipient Number of awards Percent of awards

Colleges 74 36

Nonprofit or community groups 65 32

Local education agencies 30 15

State education agencies 4 2

Individuals 12 6

Tribally chartered 6 3

Othera 14 7

Total 205 101b

aIncludes municipal agencies, state departments of corrections, and so forth.

bTotal exceeds 100 percent owing to rounding.

The college-run grants look much like the other grants, differing mainly in

that their services are somewhat more likely to be targeted toward

postsecondary students and faculties at the postsecondary level and

below. We noted earlier that elementary and secondary school students

and teachers are much more often the primary audience for WEEA projects

than are postsecondary audiences.

Audiences Addressed The most frequent level of participants targeted was elementary and

secondary students (about 36 percent of projects), followed by parents or

other nonschool adults (25 percent). About 14 percent of the projects were

targeted to elementary and secondary school educators, and about

11 percent to postsecondary students or faculty. (See table 3.)

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Table 3: Primary Audience Addressed

by WEEA Awardees Primary audience Number of awards Percent of awards

Elementary and secondary

students

73 36

Parents, adults,

general public

51 25

Elementary and

secondary educators

28 14

Postsecondary students 16 8

Postsecondary

faculty

7 3

Other 9 4

Missing applications 21 10

Total 205 100

About half of the 51 projects targeting nonschool adults focused their

primary activities on instructional services, typically remedial academic

instruction (15 projects) and some vocational training (6 projects). The

other most common activity for nonschool adult programs was personal

support, especially psychological and supportive counseling services (3

projects) and allowances for transportation or day care (3 projects). These

adult nonschool projects were primarily serving disadvantaged

populations, especially poor, Native American, and minority women.

Table 4 shows that about half of all projects were targeted to some

disadvantaged population, often a racial or national origin group. This

degree of emphasis of WEEA projects upon disadvantaged persons is

surprising in that WEEA can fund projects to provide educational equity for

all population groups. However, the pattern of disadvantaged group

targets is clearly consistent with one objective of WEEA, which is to provide

educational equity for persons suffering multiple discrimination.

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Table 4: Extent to Which

Disadvantaged Groups Were a Primary

Target Population in WEEA Awards

Primary target populationa Number of awards Percent of awards

Minority total 56 27

Unspecified 19

Native American 18

African American 8

Hispanic 8

Asian 3

Non-English-speaking 2 1

Low socio-economic

status

20 10

Pregnant or parenting 16 8

Physically or mentally

disabled

5 2

Female offenders 5 2

Migrants 3 1

Disadvantaged

subtotal

107 51

No disadvantaged

primary target population

77 38

Missing applications 21 10

Total 205 99b

aSome decisions on how to classify the target population were difficult and may appear to create

contradictions. “Non-English-speaking” was not included under the Minority category because

some programs were aimed at persons of European origin, a class not commonly considered a

minority status. Migrants often have low incomes, but we retain the specific target populations of

these projects by including migrants as a separate class.

bTotal differs from 100 percent owing to rounding.

Size and Duration of WEEA

Grants

The average WEEA grant in the period was $76,892, ranging from a low of

$67,422 in 1990 to a high of $87,586 in 1989. The average general grant was

$107,344, while the average challenge grant was $32,132. (See table 5.)

Only three applications were funded for more than 1 year, and in some

cases, services were provided for only a few weeks.

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Table 5: Average Amount of WEEA

Grants Fiscal year Type of grant Average amount

1986 $76,502

Challenge 28,046

General 93,664

1987 79,104

Challenge 32,982

General 125,226

1988 70,072

Challenge 33,395

General 104,916

1989 87,586

Challenge 34,480

General 125,072

1990 67,422

Challenge 32,987

General 120,986

1991 84,437

Challenge 30,471

General 106,923

Total $76,892

Challenge $32,132

General $107,344

Continuation of Services Based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 40 former

grantees, we found service activities funded by WEEA often appeared to

continue beyond the funding period. However, continuation was

contingent upon the availability of other outside funding.

The interviewees indicated that almost half of their services funded totally

or partially by WEEA (13 of 29) for the period 1986-91 continued beyond the

funding period, largely through the use of funds from other federal and

state programs. These types of continuations do not, however, necessarily

constitute local institutionalization of federal seed money initiatives in the

usual sense of the term. Indeed, we found only two cases where applicants

decided to continue services with their own funds. (See table 6.) These

findings should be treated as tentative, however, because of the small size

of our sample and because we were unable to verify the information that

we collected.

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Table 6: Continuity and Availability of

WEEA-Supported Services and

Productsa

WEEA activity Student services Product development

Number of grants 29 18

Number providing proposed activity 29 15

Number continued after WEEA funding

terminated

13 13

Source of support for continued services

or products

Funded by other

federal programs—4

Funded by multiple

(federal, state, or

private) sources—6

Funded by the grant

recipient—2

Continued through

volunteer efforts—1

Available through the

WEEA Publishing

Center—4

Published by other 

commercial

publisher—2

Disseminated by

recipient—7

aThis table was derived from the telephone interview responses of 40 former WEEA grantees. The

number of activities exceeds 40 because some proposed more than one activity or product.

Three teacher or staff training activities are omitted.

About 70 percent of applicants who reported they were funded to develop

materials (13 of 18) did produce a product and continued to offer the

product to interested audiences. Interviewees reported that they

disseminated many of these materials themselves. We do not have data on

the quality or utility of these products.

Question 2

Did WEEA Promote Gender

Equity?

The purposes of the act include (1) “to provide educational equity for

women in the United States,” (2) “to provide financial assistance to enable

educational agencies and institutions to meet the requirements of title IX,”

and (3) “to provide educational equity for women and girls who suffer

multiple discrimination, bias, or stereotyping based on sex and on race,

ethnic origin, disability, or age” (P.L. 100-297).

As noted earlier, most WEEA projects provided academic instruction, career

counseling, and personal support services to girls and women students. In

this way, they apparently hoped to provide girls and women with services

to compensate for past—and possibly current—educational inequities.

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We identified a group of 46 projects that provided services to

disadvantaged adults outside the schools, which represented about

25 percent of the WEEA projects.5

 We found that 35 of these projects had

primary activities of instruction or personal support. These projects were

presumably directed toward the third purpose of the act—services to

victims of multiple discrimination. However, it was sometimes unclear in

both the applications and in the reviewer comments written on the

application review sheets whether the concern was with multiple

discrimination (including gender) or with economic hardships facing the

women. For example, a WEEA grant helped establish an educational

resource center for adult women, particularly minority women, to help

compensate for educational gaps associated with the closing of the Prince

Edward County, Virginia, public schools in 1959-63 in protest over school

desegregation. In this case, both men and women were victims because

the discrimination was based upon race and both men and women faced

resulting economic hardships.

Returning to table 1, we found relatively little emphasis on identifying

gender inequities in schools and colleges and on developing remedies for

these inequities. That may be the goal of many of the WEEA activities for

teacher or staff training and activities related to developing instruction

materials for students and teacher guides. However, those activities were

also not very common, representing 17 percent of the specific activities

listed within table 1. An additional class of activity aimed at developing

remedies for sex inequities is compliance with title IX, but these

represented only 7 percent of all activities.

If the focus of the WEEA Program were on identifying gender inequities and

developing remedies, we might expect many awards to be made to local

and state education agencies because they have the authority to

implement procedures and programs that affect present and future

generations of students. However, as we noted earlier, state and local

education agencies received only 17 percent of the WEEA awards in this

period. Further, we found only one education agency project (representing

4 percent of all education agency grants) in which the primary activity was

title IX compliance. In fact, education agency recipients of WEEA awards

were less likely than other recipients to have title IX compliance as the

primary activity. (See table 7.) One possible explanation would be that

there were partnerships of some sort in which universities and community

5

We found 25 percent of the projects (46 of 184) targeted disadvantaged adults outside the schools.

The denominator excludes the 21 missing applications. We did not count pregnancy and parenting

activities as directed at disadvantaged adults; some may have been, but we were unable to determine

that.

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groups identified problems and helped public schools institutionalize

solutions, but we saw few joint approaches, and the combined effects of

small awards and the small likelihood of continued WEEA funding seem to

make such partnerships unlikely.

Table 7: Primary Activity of WEEA

Grants by Type of Recipient Grant recipient

Primary activity

Local and state

education agencies All others

Instruction 39% 34%

Supplementary education 32 22

Personal support 18 17

Title IX 4 12

Professional support 0 9

General 7 6

Total 100% 100%

In summary, it appears that WEEA promoted gender equity primarily by

providing academic instruction, career counseling, and some personal

support services that were not available or not sufficiently available in

schools and, to a lesser extent, colleges.

Did WEEA Meet Legislative

Requirements?

We focused our review of legislative requirements on the priority the WEEA

legislation gives to funding projects of “national, statewide, or general

significance” and on the various funding criteria that emphasize the

support of specific types of activities and categories of applicants.

As noted earlier, WEEA appropriations have never reached the level

specified in the legislation to allow for funding of projects of local

significance. Thus, all WEEA projects are to be of “national, statewide, or

general significance.” Under the law, presumably, demonstration,

developmental, or dissemination activities would serve to diffuse the

lessons from projects with national, statewide, or general significance.6

According to Department of Education regulations, a project of general

significance includes any project whose “potential impact is not confined

to a local area.” Since almost any project could have the potential for some

impact outside its local area—if only through informal discussion with a

few people from another state—the Department’s interpretation appears

6

The act does not define what is meant by the phrase “national, statewide, or general significance,” nor

does it define “demonstration, developmental, and dissemination activities.”

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to limit any priority for projects of national, statewide, or general

significance.

We found only 28 percent of the funded applications we reviewed had

proposed activities that held promise of significance at the national level.

We considered activities that included demonstration, developmental, and

dissemination components or that provided services for individuals from

several states as having promise of national significance. We determined

that 20 percent of funded projects were of potential significance at the

state level in that services were provided in more than one site within a

state or some other broad geographical area.

The remaining 52 percent of the projects in our review of WEEA awards

(and 58 percent of the projects in our telephone sample) appeared to be

primarily of local significance. These projects proposed services for

individuals within a given locality and did not include formal

demonstration, developmental, or dissemination components that would

enable the diffusion of project activities and accomplishments. Such

projects are unlikely to influence practices at external sites and, therefore,

hold little promise of general significance.

For example, a 1991 grant was awarded to fund continuing education

services, including English and mathematics instruction, instruction in life

skills (for example, balancing a checkbook), and General Education

Diploma tutoring, for 100 Native American women living within a

reservation. Services were funded for a year, and the applicant did not

propose demonstration, developmental, or dissemination activities. This

project was typical of many WEEA projects in terms of its local orientation

and targeting of needy adult clients.

With regard to the question of the WEEA funding requirements, we noted

earlier that the legislation specifies awards for general and challenge

grants. Beginning in 1978, the legislation also required the Secretary to set

criteria and priorities for awarding funds. Accordingly, the Secretary

allocates funds to each priority selected. The initial five priorities were

title IX compliance, providing equity for racial and ethnic minorities,

providing educational equity for disabled women and girls, influencing

leaders in educational administration and policy, and eliminating barriers

to equity. From 1991 to 1993, only one priority was selected: programs to

increase the participation of women in instructional courses in

mathematics, science, and computer science. (The priorities for each year

are shown in tables I.1 and I.2 in appendix I.)

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In addition to the two types of grants and the annual funding priorities,

WEEA calls for the Secretary to make awards to applicants proposing

activities at four levels of education and in six specific subject areas. The

Department of Education has classified the four levels of education for

funding as preschool, elementary and secondary, higher education, and

adult education. WEEA identifies the six specific grant subject areas as

(1) the development and evaluation of educational materials; (2) model

training programs for educational personnel; (3) research and

development activities; (4) guidance and counseling; (5) educational

activities to increase opportunities for adult women, including

underemployed and unemployed women; and (6) educational activities to

increase support for women in vocational education, career education,

physical education, and educational administration.

The act also mandates “special consideration” be given to grant applicants

“on the basis of geographic distribution throughout the United States” and

to applicants that have not received previous grants under WEEA or part C

of title IX. The Department of Education also attempts to ensure that it

funds one of each type of grantee each year.

In summary, there are many requirements that govern the allocation of

grants besides the merit of the proposals. We discuss the operation of

these requirements in a later section.

Question 3: Products and

Dissemination

Many federal programs like WEEA that must address widespread problems

with only modest funds are often identified as demonstration,

developmental, or dissemination efforts. That is, ideas and solutions

developed and demonstrated in one WEEA location may do two things: help

educational equity in the original site (through direct project activities)

and also be useful in other locations if the projects are sound and

transferable. Such diffusion can happen in many ways, both informally and

through explicit efforts. Under WEEA, diffusion efforts are encouraged but

not required, and the WEEA Publishing Center helps grantees bring

products to market and publishes them. In addition, the Publishing Center

produces a quarterly digest and monographs to spread knowledge of

issues and research in the area of gender equity.

Two independent estimates suggest that about 15 percent of WEEA projects

resulted in commercially published products. The first estimate of the

production of commercially published products is from table 6 and is

based on our interviews with 40 grantees. The second estimate was

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B-256796 

derived from our review of the origin of products in the WEEA Publishing

Center catalog.

The Publishing Center encourages grantees to submit products to the

National Diffusion Network, a program operated by the Department of

Education to disseminate information describing educational programs

documented as exemplary through rigorous evaluation. However, WEEA

products rarely have such evaluations, and only a few WEEA products have

been submitted to the National Diffusion Network.

Despite declines in WEEA funding and associated declines in funded

projects, the demand for WEEA products as shown in annual sales has not

decreased proportionally. (See table 8.) However, each year the Center has

published products from only an average of 7 to 8 projects since its

beginning in 1977 through 1992, and unit sales remain small.

Table 8: Year-End Sales for WEEA

Publishing Center Products Yeara Salesb

1978-79 $31

1979-80 119

1980-81 138

1981-82 96

1982-83 114

1983-84 81

1984-85 105

1985-86 172

1986-87 116

1987-88 113

1988-89 105

1989-90 135

1990-91 125

1991-92 109

Average 111

Total $1,559

aThere were no sales in 1977-78.

bIn thousands of dollars.

The Publishing Center’s ability to disseminate information gained through

WEEA-funded interventions has been limited by the fact that WEEA does not

require applicants to produce materials and by the focus of WEEA funding

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on service activities and on activities of local significance that are not

easily adapted to dissemination. The lack of sound evaluations of WEEA

interventions means the Publishing Center must distribute products that

have not been documented as successful in their original sites.

Question 4: Changes in

Program Administration

WEEA’s survival was in doubt throughout the 1980s. In 1981, the Reagan

administration asked the Congress to eliminate the program by folding it

into an educational block grant. When this request was unsuccessful, the

administration, beginning in 1981, requested no appropriations for the

program. The Congress appropriated funds each year, but below the 1980

level. These years were also marked by personnel decisions that

downsized the professional staff of the WEEA Program from six (in 1981) to

one and one-quarter (in 1988 through the present) and downgraded the

reporting level of the program. Until the early 1980s, WEEA had a director

who reported to the Assistant Secretary for Elementary and Secondary

Education. At the time of our data collection, there was no director and

the program was three organizational levels below the Assistant Secretary.7

Attempts to eliminate the WEEA Program continued under the Bush

administration, and it appeared that the program would be phased out by

1993. The Congress accepted the Department’s fiscal year 1992 funding

request of $500,000 to support the Publishing Center only. (No new grants

were awarded that year.) The administration requested no funds for WEEA

for fiscal year 1993. Again, however, an appropriation was restored by the

Congress at the level of $1.98 million.

The Clinton administration requested and received an increase in the WEEA

appropriation from $1.98 million in each of fiscal years 1993 and 1994 to

$3.97 million in fiscal year 1995. No changes in the reporting level or the

personnel resources for the program were requested or received.8

 Some

programmatic changes will be required owing to the recent legislation

reauthorizing WEEA, but it is not clear whether the Department will make

fundamental changes in the design and implementation of the program.

7

WEEA is located in the National Programs and Activities Branch, Equity and Educational Excellence

Division, Office of School Improvement Programs. Seven offices report to the Assistant Secretary for

Elementary and Secondary Education.

8

The reauthorization of WEEA does require cooperation between staff of the WEEA Program and the

Office of Educational Research and Improvement on research activities.

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Current Program

Administration

The WEEA Program is currently administered by two mid-level

professionals. One is assigned to the Department of Education’s Office of

School Improvement Program, with full-time responsibility for grant

solicitation, awards, and project oversight. The other is assigned to

Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement and spends

an average full-time-equivalency of 25 percent administering the

Publishing Center contract and overseeing the operations of the Center.

WEEA’s project-to-program officer ratio has increased over the past decade,

and present staffing is insufficient to provide much technical assistance to

grantees. When the WEEA Program had a professional staff of six, one

program officer staffed about 15-16 projects. In the period 1988-91, the

project-to-program officer ratio was about one program officer for every

22 projects. Yet over the later period, many grantees were newcomers to

WEEA (because of the special consideration for new applicants) and thus

were more likely to need help than more experienced applicants. Further,

the large number of missing end-of-grant reports (and the missing

evaluation material that these reports should have included) indicates

lapses in project oversight.

Process of Selecting WEEA

Awardees

As part of our examination of WEEA program administration, we reviewed

the process by which WEEA applications were scored and funding decisions

made. We based this analysis on a sample of original project applications

and related information on those applications from WEEA files, including

reviewer comments and scoring. We also discussed the process of

application review in detail with program officials.

In an earlier section, we noted the two types of grants (challenge and

general) and the provisions to ensure that awards are made to various

categories of applications. At the beginning of each funding cycle, the

Secretary selects one or more funding priorities. The Secretary approves

an initial allocation of funds for each priority and for “other authorized

activities” as well as an estimate of funds available for challenge and

general awards. This information and the estimated number of awards for

each type of grant are made public.

In a year in which there is one priority, there would be four competition

groups (priority area challenge, priority area general, “other” challenge,

and “other” general). Applicants indicate the competition group for which

they are applying. When applications are received, a panel of two or three

reviewers is set up for each competition group. The panel assigns scores

to each application received in the competition group. Department

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B-256796 

officials are present at each panel and seek to standardize the review and

scoring across the panels.

Applications are scored on four dimensions (and subscores within each

dimension). The four dimensions with maximum total points are: plan of

operation (40), impact (24), need (20), and staff qualifications (16). In

addition to these 100 possible points, challenge applications receive up to

5 points on extent of innovation. For both classes of award, applicants

who have not previously received funding under WEEA or under part C of

title IX receive an additional 10 points.

After the applications are scored, a list of applicants for each competition

is produced, as is a consolidated list of all applicants. Department officials

select for funding the highest rated application from each of the 10

Department of Education regions. The remaining applications are arrayed

against the various requirements, as summarized in table 9.

Table 9: WEEA Award Priorities

Funding criterion Definition Target

Selected funding

priority

Initial dollar allocation by priority

Initial estimate of number of awards by priority

Determined

by the

Secretary

Type of award 

(general, challenge)

Initial dollar allocation by type of grant

Initial estimate of number of awards by type

of grant

Determined

by the

Secretary

Geographical region One award for each of 10 geographical regions 10 awards

Level of education

addressed

One award each for preschool, elementary and

secondary, postsecondary, and adult education

4 awards

Classes of activities

proposed

One award each for education materials; model

training projects; research and development

activities; activities for underemployed and

unemployed women; and programs and activities

for women in vocational, career and physical

education, and educational administration

6 awards

Type of grantee One award each for local education agencies,

state education agencies, postsecondary education

institutions, nonprofit organizations, and individuals

5 awards

The initial selection of the 10 regional awards meets the geographic

distribution requirement, but arraying the remaining requirements against

the ranked applications calls for a complex selection process. (See table

9.) According to Department officials, there is no standard approach after

the selection of the 10 regional awards. Even the separation of the

competitions may or may not be retained as the selection proceeds.

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Table 10 shows the number of general and challenge grant applications

and awards for a 5-year period (with no breakdown by priority funding

areas, which vary in number).

Table 10: Number of WEEA

Applications Submitted and Funded Applications 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

Submitted

Challenge 72 71 20 26 38

General 313 278 181 240 209

Funded

Challenge 16 19 12 14 5

General 16 20 17 9 12

Only between 5 and 20 applications were funded each year for each grant

type. Given the small number of actual awards, it appears that more

funding criteria were established than could have been meaningfully met if

the Department were to limit awards to higher scoring applicants. Another

way of viewing the results of this process is to subtract the 10 regional

awards from the total number of funded awards shown in table 10. In the

1988-91 period, that left a range of 7-29 remaining awards to be determined

after the regional selections.9

The Department of Education takes these various requirements seriously.

Lists with categories similar to table 9 are prepared each year for the

actual awards, showing the extent to which the various targets are met.

But there are so many requirements that they cannot be achieved with

uniformity. For example, with regard to the initial allocations estimating

the number of awards of each type, we found a median difference of

25 percent between the projected and actual number of general and

challenge grants. We also found some evidence to question the meaning of

at least one of the requirements—funding priorities. Based on our

interviews with Department officials, we understand that the applicants’

decision to apply under the selected priorities or “other” class is not

questioned. However, in reviewing a sample of proposals for priority and

other awards, we were often unable to see differences between the

activities proposed under the two groups.

It appears that the Department limited the number of new grantees more

through a substantial reduction in the number of multiyear (or

9

This range is derived by adding the challenge and general awards and subtracting 10. The results,

starting with 1988, are 29, 19, 13, and 7. We omit the year 1987 from this analysis because the

legislation mandating the special consideration for geographic distribution was enacted in spring 1988.

Page 22 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
B-256796 

continuation) awards than through rejection of applications by former

grantees. We noted earlier that there were only 3 continuation awards out

of 205 awards, or 1.5 percent, in the period of our study. In comparison,

125 of the 383 awards made between 1977 and 1982 (33 percent) were

continuations.10 We also looked at the number of new, noncontinuation

grants awarded to individuals who had been funded previously during

each of these two 6-year periods. In both periods, about 14 percent of

awards were to recipients who had been previously funded.11 Of course,

applicants may have anticipated a low likelihood of repeat funding, and

few may have applied. The practice favoring one-time funding of

single-year awards allows more applications to be funded, but it

discourages the development of expertise and the refinement of

approaches.

The many funding requirements, when applied to the WEEA Program during

a period of modest appropriations and diminishing pools of applicants,

may have limited the capacity to award grants on the basis of merit.

Although we did not conduct a statistical analysis of the relative influence

of total score and the additional requirements (shown in table 9) in

determining which applications are funded, it appears that the Department

gives serious attention to the additional requirements. The impact of these

added criteria—which are not unusual legislatively—could be substantial

owing to their large number and the small size of the WEEA Program. The

description of the process for selecting WEEA grantees suggests that the

need to consider so many funding priorities makes the selection process

more a mechanical application of rules than a consideration of the better

applications.

Implications and

Conclusions

A program with no director, a staff of one and one-quarter persons located

in two different offices of the Department of Education, and operating

under threat of extinction for a decade, WEEA now has a substantial

appropriation increase. Our review suggests a need to revisit WEEA’s

fundamental goals and strategies.

10We used the years 1977 through 1982 for comparison because data were not available for the years

1983 through 1985.

11For this analysis, a continuation grant counted as one award. From 1986 to 1991, 28 of 203 new grants

(14 percent) went to former recipients for the same period. From 1977 to 1982, 37 of 258 new grants

(14 percent) were awarded to previous grantees during those 6 years. It would have been preferable to

examine repeat funding for the entire duration of the WEEA Program, but we did not have the

resources to do the extensive data collection and aggregation that such an analysis would have

required.

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WEEA was enacted 20 years ago out of a concern that girls and women were

being subjected to fundamental institutional discrimination including

school counseling that steered girls away from higher paying “male”

careers, sex biases in textbooks and other curriculum materials, and

discrimination in admissions by postsecondary institutions. In the 1986-91

period, we found WEEA provided relatively little funding of activities to

eliminate such problems in educational institutions. Instead, projects

typically provided short-term direct services, often career counseling,

remedial and other academic instruction, and personal support services,

such as psychological counseling, that were not integrated with on-going

school-based activities.

Activities funded by WEEA are typically not provided in close association

with the schools. The dominant WEEA activities—academic instruction,

counseling, and personal support services—are apparently needed

because gender-based discrimination in the schools is still a problem. Yet

one of the three WEEA objectives is to help educational institutions meet

the requirements of title IX prohibiting sex discrimination in all

educational institutions receiving federal funds. However, we found that

only 7 percent of WEEA activities concerned title IX compliance, and we

classified only one state or local education agency grant as having title IX

compliance as its primary WEEA activity. Further, only 17 percent of WEEA

awards were received by state and local education agencies, and we saw

little or no evidence that other grantees (such as universities) were

working in close partnerships with state agencies or local schools to

identify and remedy sex equity problems in the public schools.

WEEA activities appear to be out of balance in that too many resources go

for direct services to small numbers of persons and too few resources go

to eliminate systemic inequitable policies and practices that will affect

future generations of girls and women. Department officials need to

consider what the educational equity-related needs of women and girls in

the 1990s are and what role the WEEA Program should have in meeting

them.

Critics of WEEA may argue that there is another possibility, that there are

few substantial problems of sex equity in the schools and colleges and that

WEEA funding is unnecessary for either projects like those we examined or

projects aimed at identifying and remedying sex inequities in educational

institutions. That debate may be resolved by data to be collected for a

mandated report to the President and the Congress on the status of

Page 24 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
B-256796 

educational equity for girls and women. The reauthorization of WEEA

requires this report by January 1, 1999.

We noted earlier that the legislation sets a priority for projects of

“national, statewide, or general significance,” but that only 28 percent of

the funded applications we reviewed had proposed activities that held

promise of significance at the national level. One consequence of this

finding is that the pool of WEEA projects available as good candidates for

dissemination through the WEEA Publishing Center is very restricted. The

Department of Education argued that the act does not define these terms,

and the Department considers any project whose “potential impact is not

confined to a local area” as a project of general significance. One result is

that the legislative priority on disseminating effective practices in

promoting sex equity in education has been limited.

The absence of evaluation information on past WEEA projects means that

the program is left with little evidence of their effectiveness in eliminating

sex bias in education. If the program is redirected, it should collect such

information as a guide toward funding more successful programs. One

result should be that WEEA would build up a base of projects with some

documented effectiveness in eliminating sex bias in education.

We discussed our findings and their implications for the then-pending

reauthorization of WEEA with your Committee staff. In October 1994, the

Congress passed this reauthorization as part of the Improving America’s

Schools Act of 1994 (commonly referred to as the reauthorization of the

Elementary and Secondary Education Act). The President signed this as

Public Law 103-382 on October 20, 1994.

The structure of general and challenge grants along with a dissemination

function implemented through the WEEA Publishing Center appear to be

substantially changed by the act. Two program types are specified:

(1) awards to develop and implement model equity programs and

(2) awards for support and technical assistance. At least two-thirds of

funds appropriated each year must be for the first type of award, which

may be similar to the general grants we studied.

The legislative language on dissemination and the priority for funding

projects of national and statewide significance that had applied to the

WEEA Program are gone. It appears that the dissemination

approach—relying upon WEEA projects as a source of information on

effective gender equity practices and in turn packaging and disseminating

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B-256796 

that information—has been replaced (or at least modified) by an emphasis

on technical assistance and research and development. One form of

support and technical assistance is awards “to implement effective

gender-equity policies and programs at all educational levels.” The second

form is research and development awards “designed to advance gender

equity nationwide and to help make policies and practices in educational

agencies and institutions, and local communities, gender equitable.”

Research activities are to be coordinated with the Office of Educational

Research and Improvement. The act provides separate extensive lists of

specific examples of each of these two forms of support and technical

assistance. Among its other requirements, the act mandates that the

activities “are administered within the Department by a person who has

recognized professional qualifications and experience in the field of

gender equity education.”

Matters for

Congressional

Consideration

The Congress should weigh whatever benefits it perceives from the

various funding requirements—such as the special consideration for

applicants who have not received assistance under WEEA or under part C of

title IX of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the

requirements for a geographical distribution of awards—against any

drawbacks of those provisions. In this small program, the multiplicity of

funding requirements may make the grant award process too mechanistic

and may reduce the likelihood that higher scoring applications would be

funded.

Recommendations We recommend that the Secretary of Education revisit the fundamental

goals and strategies of the WEEA Program. The doubling of the WEEA

appropriation makes it particularly important to steer resources away

from local delivery of direct services and toward the broader elimination

of inequitable policies and practices that may otherwise affect future

generations of girls and women. Finally, the Secretary should take steps to

ensure that the program is supported by adequate evaluation of funded

projects and sufficient administrative support.

Agency Comments We requested and received comments on a draft of this report from the

Department of Education, which generally reaffirmed its belief in the WEEA

activities and projects it has funded over the years. The full text of their

comments and our response to them are in appendix II.

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We will be sending copies of this report to the Secretary of Education and

to other interested parties. Copies will also be made available to others

upon request. If you have any questions or would like additional

information, please call me at (202) 512-5885. Other major contributors to

this report are listed in appendix III.

Robert L. York

Director of Program Evaluation

 in Human Services Areas

Page 27 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix I 

History of the WEEA Program

Legislative History

Special Projects Act of the

Education Amendments of

1974

Under the sponsorship of Representative Patsy T. Mink and then-Senator

Walter F. Mondale, the Congress enacted WEEA in 1974 as part of the

Special Projects Act included in the Education Amendments of 1974. The

WEEA legislation authorized the Commissioner of Education (later, with the

creation of the Department of Education, the Secretary) to award funds by

grants and contracts to individuals, public agencies, and nonprofit

organizations for an extremely broad range of activities to provide

educational equity for women. The act specified that these activities

include

• the development, evaluation, and dissemination of curricula, textbooks,

and other educational material;

• preservice and in-service training for educational personnel;

• research, development, and other activities designed to advance

educational equity;

• guidance and counseling activities, including the development of bias-free

tests;

• educational activities to increase opportunities for adult women; and

• the expansion and improvement of educational programs and activities for

women in vocational education, career education, physical education, and

education administration.

The authorization included several stipulations:

• All projects receiving grants must fall into one of two categories: one was

a general range of activities including the six areas described above and

the other was small grants (not to exceed $15,000) that funded “innovative

approaches” for the achievement of educational equity for women and

girls.

• Applicants were required “to set forth policies and procedures which

ensure adequate evaluation of the activities intended to be carried out

under the application.”

• All supported activities had to be administered or supervised by the

applicant.

• All supported activities had to show promise of making substantial

contribution toward attaining the purposes of the act.

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Appendix I 

History of the WEEA Program

WEEA established a National Advisory Council on Women’s Education

Programs within the Office of Education. The Council consisted of: 17

members appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate for

terms of 3 years; the Chairman of the Civil Rights Commission; the

Director of the Women’s Bureau of the Department of Labor; and the

Director of the Women’s Action Program of the former Department of

Health, Education, and Welfare. The Council was responsible for advising

the Commissioner of Education on general matters regarding gender

equity, recommending how funds be allocated, and developing criteria for

the establishment of program priorities.

Education Amendments of

1978

WEEA was reauthorized in 1978 as title IX, part C of the Elementary and

Secondary Education Act. The amendments included several notable

changes. First, language describing the purpose of the act was expanded

to include providing financial assistance to enable educational agencies

and institutions to meet the requirements of title IX of the Education

Amendments of 1972. Second, the Commissioner was directed to establish

funding priorities. Third, the ceiling for the small grant program was raised

to $25,000. Fourth, prior language stipulating that funds shall be used for

the six activities listed above was broadened with new language stating

that funding may be used for activities in these areas.1

 Finally, priority was

given to demonstration, developmental, and dissemination activities of

national, statewide, or general significance.

WEEA Amendments of

1984

The 1984 WEEA amendments included two changes. First, the stated

purpose of the act was expanded with the following language:

“it is also the purpose of this part to provide educational equity for women

and girls who suffer multiple discrimination, bias, or stereotyping based

on sex and on race, ethnic origin, disability, or age.”

Second, the small grant program was replaced with a challenge provision,

which authorized the Secretary to award grants of up to $40,000 to

activities

1

In addition, the law authorized grants of local significance to assist school district and other

institutions in meeting title IX requirements. The implementation of this program was dependent upon

the level of WEEA’s appropriation. Once WEEA’s funding reached $15 million, all money beyond this

amount was to be directed for projects of local significance. (Although the triggering funding level was

reduced in subsequent reauthorizations, WEEA’s funding never reached the level required to

implement this provision. A high of $10 million was reached in 1980, and funding declined steadily

thereafter.)

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Appendix I 

History of the WEEA Program

“to develop comprehensive plans for the implementation of equity

programs; innovative approaches to school community partnerships; new

dissemination and replication strategies; and other innovative approaches

to achieving the purposes of WEEA.”

Finally, the act required the Secretary to ensure that at least one grant or

contract was available during each funding year to support each of six

activities authorized in the 1974 amendments.

Hawkins-Stafford Amendments

of 1988

The Hawkins-Stafford Elementary School Improvement Act of 1988 further

amended WEEA. First, the act abolished the National Advisory Council on

Women’s Educational Programs. Second, it required “special

consideration” for applicants who had not received previous funding

under the WEEA Program or under part C of title IX of the Elementary and

Secondary Education Act of 1965 and for proposals from applicants on the

basis of geographic distribution. Third, the act emphasized that activities

be funded at all levels of education, including preschool, elementary and

secondary education, higher education, and adult education. Finally, the

act transferred responsibility for publication and dissemination of WEEA

products from the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education to the

Office of Educational Research and Improvement.

Regulatory

Developments

The 1980 WEEA

Regulation

In response to the new statutory requirement that the Secretary set

funding priorities, the Department of Education issued regulations in 1980

that established five priorities and a sixth category: “other authorized

activities.”2

 Under the rules, the Secretary would select one or more of

these priorities and allocate funds to each. Remaining funds would be

allocated to the “other” category. Applicants would compete only against

others who chose to compete under the same selected priority. Applicants

who did not indicate a priority or who addressed a priority that was not

selected by the Secretary competed in the “other” category. Thus, several

competitions were conducted annually, one for each of the announced

priorities and one for applicants competing under “other.”

2

45 C.F.R. part 1601.

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Appendix I 

History of the WEEA Program

Beginning in 1982, small grant applicants also were required to select a

priority, resulting in separate competitions for each priority area and

“other” for both general and small grants. Table I.1 displays the announced

and established priorities for the years 1981-88.

Table I.1: WEEA Funding Priorities From 1981 to 1988a

Model projects 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988

Title IX compliance X X X X X X X

Providing educational equity

for racial and ethnic minorities X X X X X

Providing educational equity

for disabled women and girls X X X X X

Influencing leaders in

educational policy and

administration X X

Eliminating persistent barriers

to educational equity for

women X X X X X X

aAn “X” denotes the annual priorities selected by the Secretary.

The 1989 WEEA

Regulation

In 1989, the Department published a new regulation with six new priorities

that replaced the 1980 priorities.3

 The “other authorized activities”

category was retained. As before, the Secretary was to select one or more

priorities from this list and conduct various competitions for each priority

selected and for those classified as “other” for both challenge and general

grants. Table I.2 displays priorities announced for 1989 through 1994.

A comparison between the funding priorities established by the 1980 WEEA

Regulation and the 1989 WEEA Regulation indicates a change in the

Department’s goals for the WEEA Program. The 1980 funding priorities

emphasized the development of model programs to provide educational

equity for women and girls, including those who are members of minority

groups or disabled. The funding priorities established by the 1989

regulations call for the development and expansion of programs that

increase opportunities for women, including those who experience

multiple discrimination, and tend to narrow WEEA’s focus to specific

curricular areas such as mathematics and career education.

3

34 C.F.R. parts 245, 246, 247, and 745.

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Appendix I 

History of the WEEA Program

Table I.2: WEEA Funding Priorities From 1989 to 1994a

Projects 1989 1990 1991 1992b 1993 1994

Develop and test model programs and materials that could be

used by local educational agencies and other entities in

meeting title IX requirements X

Develop new educational programs, training programs,

counseling programs, or other programs designed to increase

the interest and participation of women in instructional courses

in mathematics, science, and computer science X X X

Develop new educational programs, training programs,

counseling programs, or other programs, or expand existing

model educational programs, designed to enhance educational

achievement for women who are economically disadvantaged X

Develop or expand guidance and counseling programs

designed to increase the knowledge and awareness of women

regarding opportunities in careers in which women have not

significantly participated

Develop new educational programs, or expand existing model

programs, designed to reduce the rate at which women drop

out of formal education and encourage women dropouts to

resume their education X

Develop new educational programs, or expand existing model

educational programs, designed to enhance opportunities for

educational achievement by women who suffer multiple

discrimination on the basis of sex and race, ethnic origin, age,

or disability X X

aAn “X” denotes the annual priorities selected by the Secretary.

bNo priorities were selected in 1992 because grants were not awarded that year.

Funding History Historically, the WEEA Program has been funded at very low levels. It was

funded first in 1976 with an appropriation of $6.27 million. Its

appropriation grew steadily through 1980 to a high of $10 million in that

year. Support for the WEEA Program declined in the 1980s. These years

witnessed several attempts by successive administrations to devolve the

program through zero budgeting. The Congress restored funding during

the appropriation process, but WEEA appropriations fell steadily. The level

of WEEA’s authorizations and appropriations by fiscal year is listed on table

I.3.

Page 32 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix I 

History of the WEEA Program

Table I.3: WEEA Authorization and

Appropriation Levels Fiscal year Authorization a Appropriation a

1976 $30,000 $6,270

1977 30,000 7,270

1978 30,000 8,085

1979 30,000 9,000

1980 80,000 10,000

1981 80,000 8,125

1982 6,000 5,760

1983 6,000 5,760

1984 6,000 5,760

1985 10,000 6,000

1986 12,000 5,740

1987 14,000 3,500

1988 16,000 3,351

1989 9,000 2,949

1990b 2,098

1991b 1,995

1992b 500

1993b 1,984

Total $94,147

aIn thousands of dollars.

bThe 1988 amendments did not establish authorization levels for fiscal years 1990-93.

Page 33 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix II 

Comments From the Department of

Education

Note: GAO comments

supplementing those in the

report text appear at the

end of this appendix.

Page 34 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix II 

Comments From the Department of

Education

See comment 1.

Page 35 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix II 

Comments From the Department of

Education

See comment 2.

See comment 3.

See comment 4.

Page 36 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix II 

Comments From the Department of

Education

Page 37 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix II 

Comments From the Department of

Education

The following are GAO’s comments on the June 13, 1994, letter from the

Department of Education.

General Comments The Department of Education, commenting on a draft of this report,

reaffirmed its belief in the WEEA activities and projects it has funded. The

Department states, first, that success in generating and testing new

strategies for gender equity is more important than whether projects result

in systemic, institutionwide change. Second, they maintain that projects

“properly authorized by a statute, by definition, are carrying out the

purpose of the statute.” Third, the Department concludes that GAO’s

“evidence shows that WEEA-funded projects do serve the purposes of the

legislation.” Fourth, they argue that the statute requires funding of direct

services and activities as a means for providing gender equity.

We agree that WEEA has funded useful activities and projects; however, our

report questions the pronounced past emphasis in WEEA on providing

services to compensate for past and possibly current educational

inequities. The result is that relatively few WEEA resources are directed at

identifying sex inequities in schools and colleges and developing remedies

for those inequities. On the Department’s first point, we saw no evidence

to suggest that WEEA is generating and testing new strategies for gender

equity.

Second, our point is that while the activities funded by WEEA are

authorized by the statute, the mix of projects funded is such that issues of

identifying and removing systemic barriers to sex equity are receiving

much less emphasis under WEEA than those of providing services to a small

number of persons. The result is that WEEA projects do little to reduce the

negative impact of sex inequities in education for future generations of

girls and women. We have expanded our discussion of these findings in

the Implications and Conclusions section of the report. (See pp. 23-26.)

Third, the Department argues that the fact that over 70 percent of

applicants funded to develop educational materials produced products

and continued to offer them is evidence that WEEA projects serve the

purposes of the legislation. We agree that this finding represents an

accomplishment of the program, although we think that more than

15 percent of WEEA projects would result in commercially published

products if they had the potential for replication and dissemination. The

Department also cites our finding that almost half of projects providing

student services continue beyond the WEEA funding period as evidence of

Page 38 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix II 

Comments From the Department of

Education

success. However, we also noted that these continuations were largely

sponsored by state or other federal grants rather than being adopted as

regular programs of local government agencies or the institutions

receiving the WEEA grants.

Fourth, the act authorizes direct services such as instruction, counseling,

day care, and transportation, but we see no basis for the Department’s

statement that the act “requires funding of direct services and activities.”

We believe the question of whether or not WEEA overemphasizes direct

service activities deserves thoughtful consideration.

The Department also argues that our report provides little discussion of

WEEA products and WEEA’s dissemination efforts. We agree that there are

strengths in the WEEA dissemination efforts: the WEEA Publishing Center

actively seeks products to disseminate, works with grantees to make

products marketable, publishes products commercially, and also performs

useful coordination and technical assistance services. The dissemination

effort would be improved if WEEA supported more projects with a

favorable dissemination potential (supporting demonstration,

developmental, and dissemination activities of national significance). Few

new products have been developed for dissemination each year. Further,

the value of Publishing Center products is uncertain because of the fact

that WEEA grantees rarely submit products for dissemination that have

been evaluated for their effectiveness in providing gender equity.

We recommended that the Department revisit the fundamental goals and

strategies of the WEEA Program. In response, the Department stated that it

had requested reauthorization of WEEA and increased funding and has

determined that curriculum development and “implementation of effective

gender equity strategies” are desirable. This does not appear to change the

fundamental goals and strategies of the existing program. After years of

reacting to a variety of external pressures, WEEA would benefit from a

broader, constructive effort to determine how it can more effectively

promote gender equity in education.

Specific Comments 1. The Department sent a description of projects, noting that they had

provided this to us earlier but we did not include it in our report. We had

reviewed this list earlier and found that many of the projects had been

funded a decade ago and were thus outside the time period of our study.

For the more recent projects, when we matched these descriptions with

the information from project records, we decided to rely upon the

Page 39 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix II 

Comments From the Department of

Education

information in project records and from our telephone survey, both of

which appeared to be the best sources of information on the nature and

scope of the projects.

2. The Department argues that the application ranking process has

produced the current balance of awards to nonprofit organizations and to

state and local educational agencies. That may be true; however, our

concern is that the application ranking process as it now works is not

producing a set of funded projects that share a clear potential for reducing

future gender inequities. There are too many factors to consider besides

the merit of the application.

3. The Department requests that we explain how we determined the

“national or general significance” of projects and how we determined that

most challenge grants were “‘conventional’ and not innovative.” We have

expanded the text to clarify how the national or general significance

categorizations were made. (See p. 16.) We have deleted the discussion

about the extent of innovation among challenge grants.

4. The Department maintains that it provided all records us in a timely

manner. Although we found the Department reluctant at first to allow us

direct access to project records, we agree that this problem was resolved

and did not result in substantial delays. We have deleted the comment

concerning timely access from the report. However, the Department is not

correct in stating that the only records it was unable to provide us were

those that were destroyed under the Department’s 5-year record retention

policy. As we note on page 3, the Department was able to provide us with

only about half of the end-of-grant reports that were less than 5 years old

at the time of our data collection.

Page 40 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
Appendix III 

Major Contributors to This Report

Program Evaluation

and Methodology

Division

Kathleen D. White, Project Manager

Frederick V. Mulhauser

George H. Bogart

Venkareddy Chennareddy

Jennifer Salzman

(973772) Page 41 GAO/PEMD-95-6 Women’s Educational Equity Act Program
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