Hit Again
April 1, 2013
Education reform needs a Mulligan. A do-over. The opportunity to go back to “Go” and start over. For example . . .
-
Back to a time before the attack on neighborhood schools closed those schools and contributed to neighborhood collapse and community disconnect.
-
Before suburban schools were allowed to prey on and profit from an urban school’s misfortunes.
-
Before large buses lumbered down narrow residential lanes to transport our littlest learners from the shadow of their local school to another across town, where all the other littlest students were gathered for more “cost-effective” education.
-
Before schools shuffled off low-achieving students to alternative schools in order to elevate their ranking on standardized test scores.
-
Before teachers based their lessons more on test preparation than learning.
-
Before education re-segregated through specialized charter schools with non-inclusive curricula.
-
Before public schools were barred from beginning their instructional days before Labor Day, or whenever their community thought it best for the education of its students.
-
Back to a time when pedagogy more than politics planned and delivered education.
Let’s tee it up and hit again.
Advancing CPR
November 24, 2015
This fall was the first for the requirement that all high school varsity head coaches have current certification in CPR.
If a coach was not CPR certified by the deadline (which was Sept. 17), that coach could not coach at or even be present at the MHSAA tournament where his/her team would be participating.
Only three of the MHSAA’s 750 member high schools failed to comply with that requirement. That’s progress.
But what we also hoped for was that schools which were not already doing so would use this new requirement as a means of providing or requiring CPR certification for assistant and subvarsity coaches as well. And it appears we’ve made some progress on this as well.
Of 640 responses received so far, 80 percent of schools arranged in-person CPR training for all high school varsity head coaches, and 67 percent included assistant and subvarsity coaches in this in-person training.
In the future, the MHSAA Representative Council will be considering refinements of the CPR requirement in order to increase the quantity of certified coaches and improve the quality of programs that are approved to fulfill the requirement. Continuing progress is imperative.