Competitive Classes
May 7, 2013
After the classifications and divisions for MHSAA tournaments in 2013-14 were posted on mhsaa.com last month, there were more questions and comments than in previous years.
Some of this results from electronic media – how quickly our information gets distributed far and wide, and how easy it is for people to email their opinions. This isn’t bad.
But we were able to discern in the feedback that there is poor public understanding of school enrollment trends in Michigan. For example, many people objected that the spread between the largest and smallest schools in the classifications and divisions has grown too large.
In fact, taking the long view, the difference between the largest and smallest schools has been shrinking:
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In Class D, the difference between the largest and smallest school has trended downward over the past 25 years, and will be approximately 20 percent smaller for 2013-14 than in 1989 (to 189 from 247).
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The same is true in Class C, although less dramatically (to 221 from 259).
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The same is true in Classes B and A, although less consistently (from 496 to 464 in Class B; and from 2,111 to 1,888 in Class A).
If there is need for more than four classes in basketball or girls volleyball, or for more than four “equal divisions” in most other sports, it is not because of the reason most often cited. That reason – that the enrollment spread is growing too large – is not supported by the facts.
Integrated Learning
July 1, 2016
One of the positive aspects of life that school sports and other after-school activities do better than most everything else is to build a sense of community. Another is to teach teamwork. And both are mostly missing in the world of individualized, online learning.
It sounds good to advocate for personalized, learn-at-your-own-pace “curriculum” (one can hardly call it “instruction”), but that model misses so much of what education is supposed to help a civilized society accomplish.
Benjamin Riley, founder and executive director of Deans for Impact (deansforimpact.org), makes this point in his May 18, 2016, Opinion on EdSurge (edsurge.com), “Bursting the ‘Personalization’ Bubble: An Alternative Vision for Our Public Schools.” Mr. Riley advances four principles:
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Teachers – not technology – should be the primary designers of students’ learning experiences.
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The experiences that teachers design should emphasize the social aspect of learning.
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The experiences that teachers design should be informed by learning science.
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Teachers should primarily use technology to identify social learning opportunities.
Mr. Riley concedes that these four principles are just a sketch – an outline for a different conversation than that which currently dominates education reform. “But there is one point on which I’m unyielding,” Riley writes: “We begin to forge the character of our country in our public schools. At a time when I feel our nation pulling further apart, I hope we start thinking and talking more about how we might move closer together, and promote the integration – rather than the personalization – of our learning experiences in public education.”
It is not Mr. Riley’s point, but it is mine, that school sports – including the requirement that participants be full-time students in the schools they represent on interscholastic sports teams – promotes the integration of the learning experience which is critical to shaping the character of our country.
The integration we speak of is developing the whole child through direct interaction daily with a diverse student body and a wide variety of curricular and extracurricular activities. This builds students, schools and society.