In other words, the public schools were thoroughly politicized and the educational establishment used as a tool for pursuing the social agenda of one of this country's most powerful special interests. The Department of Education's Office of Gender Equity, with its own staff, is headed by a Special Assistant appointed to watch the progress of retraining and to collect and sort education data by gender. Public schools that failed to take these new instructions into consideration were likely to be unsuccessful when applying for the blocks of federal funding provided under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In 1994, serious investigation into any of this was all but non-existent. When I called the AAUW at the time to request copies of the original documents, my request was met with surprise.
Most journalists just ask for the executive summary.
For example, the report admitted that there was considerable evidence that girls earned higher grades than boys throughout their school careers, and that girls were more likely to complete high school and go on to college than boys. Black girls it seemed, have significantly lower dropout rates and higher college enrollment than black boys. Sometimes, the manipulation of the data created a nearly implausible finding. While the press reported all this dutifully, some AAUW sympathizers were alarmed at the manipulation. Nevertheless, not even the incredibly high figures for harassment rang warning bells in the press.