On June 23, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits gender discrimination in any federally financed education program or activity. Title IX is far-reaching, but the law is most often associated with school and college athletics. Title IX allows schools to prove their athletic compliance in one of three ways, known as the "three-prong test." They can provide a proportional number of athletic activities for boys and girls based on their overall school populations, prove they are increasing athletic activities for girls on a continuous basis, or prove they are satisfying girls' interest in athletics. Experts are unanimous that progress has been made toward the elimination of gender discrimination in high school athletics, based on participation figures alone, but they also say there's still plenty left to do. In 1971-1972, the school year leading up to the passage of Title IX, 294,015 girls took part in high school sports, compared with nearly 3.7 million boys, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, or about 3.4 million more boys than girls. Fast forward to 2010-2011, which yields the most recent available data, and that gap shrinks by more than 2 million, with nearly 4.5 million boys and 3.2 million girls participating in high school sports. Still, the number of female athletes in the 2010-2011 school year does not even match the number of male athletes from 1971-1972. Now, having opened up athletic opportunities to millions more girls each year, Title IX has made sports go from "a freakishly rare part of girlhood to an absolutely typical part of girlhood."