
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, October 1, 1993                   TAG: 9310150367
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAULA G. WILDER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

GIRLS ARE BEING HARMED IN SCHOOL

FIXING schools is as popular a topic these days as the weather. As with the weather, everyone has an opinion. As with the weather, too, the subject is complex. Increasingly we understand that school solution-finding involves complex analyses, taking systems approaches.

The American Association of University Women's "How Schools Shortchange Girls" and "Hostile Hallways" are part of a 10-year research cycle, focused on one part of the system where we have developed expertise and believe interventions can help girls achieve their full potential.

"Hostile Hallways: Sexual Harassment in America's Schools," published in June and conducted by Louis Harris and Associates, consisted of more than 1,600 field surveys of public school 8th- through 11th-graders in 79 schools across the United States.

How confident are we about the findings? "The sample of various groups was large enough to analyze with statistical confidence ... . The findings are projectable to all public school students in 8th through 11th grades at a 95 percent confidence level. The margin of error is plus/minus 4 percent."

What is sexual harassment? The pollsters define it as "unwanted and unwelcome sexual behavior which interferes with your life." It's not "behaviors that you like or want."

More than four out of five (81 percent) students surveyed indicated some type of sexual harassment in school. The report details types of harassment, locations, grade levels when it starts (7th grade being the highest reported grade for first incidents), frequency, cause, who does it and who students tell.

What educational harm does harassment do? Approximately one in five of all the students surveyed report chilling effects. The following figures are based on 81 percent of the students who indicated they experienced harassment and represent a few of the effects:

Twenty-three percent of the students did not want to attend school (33 percent girls; 12 percent boys). Twenty-three percent did not want to talk as much in class (32 percent girls; 13 percent boys). Twenty-one percent or approximately one out of five of the total number of students surveyed responded that they found it harder to pay attention in school (28 percent girls; 13 percent boys). The data did not reveal how long these effects lasted.

How serious is this? Four percent of the students said the experience "made them doubt whether they had what it takes to graduate from high school" (almost one in 10 African-American students, one in 20 Hispanic children and one in 25 white children).

This is alarming because initial indicators that prompted the research suggested that harassment is on the rise. Again, we don't know how many do drop out, but this kind of self-doubt is not a positive ingredient in anyone's system analysis of academic achievement and excellence.

AAUW challenges "parents, teachers, and administrators [to] acknowledge that sexual harassment in school is creating a hostile environment that compromises the education of America's children." AAUW also urges schools to develop and publicize harassment policies, since 57 percent of the students surveyed were unaware of existing policies.

The Roanoke Times & World-News published a column on Sept. 27 by George Will entitled "Kindergarten sexual harassment: a crisis?" indicating that "Hostile Hallways" called for federal money. Not so. "How Schools Shortchange Girls" made 40 recommendations; four specify federal funding, predominantly for research, and 36 identify other interventions, many locally based.

Will suggests that AAUW has become recently radicalized. Perhaps. It has a long tradition of being "radical." Of course, one person's radical is another person's progress. In the 1880s, for example, we conducted research that demonstrated that women could withstand the rigors of a four-year college education. Radical or progress?

Will says our reports are "long on alarm and short on plausible data." He's right - we're alarmed. He's wrong - the surveys in "Hallways" and the research in "Shortchanging" are scientifically sound. At any rate, perhaps to Will's consternation, AAUW will continue to promote quality education for women and children and freedom from sexual harassment, and build on the existing research base about what helps women and girls reach their potential.

When we shortchange girls, we shortchange America.

Paula G. Wilder of Blacksburg is president of the Blacksburg/Christiansburg branch of the American Association of University Women.

by CNB