It’s Change, Not Status
January 5, 2016
When I see a professional sports team install a scoreboard that is more expensive than the total of the interscholastic athletic budgets of the two dozen high schools closest to that stadium, I gripe.
When I see a half-dozen medical professionals scamper out to attend to an injured college football player, and then watch a local high school junior varsity soccer game where no medical professional is present, I grieve.
But in spite of these dispiriting moments, I never wish that my life’s work had been at those higher levels. Long ago I was impressed by the statement that we should measure impact by change, not by status.
It is at the school sports level, much more than at so-called higher levels, that lives are changed. No glitz. No glamour. Just huge results, with limited resources.
Standards Promote Value
October 29, 2012
I can’t speak for every state, but it is probably true for most states, that (1) no school is required to provide a program of interscholastic activities – such are not curricular activities; and (2) participation in voluntary interscholastic competitive activities is a privilege offered to those who meet standards of eligibility and conduct of the school and standards of ability for the activity involved.
It is not a liability but an asset of competitive interscholastic activities that they are not co-curricular, but extracurricular – voluntary programs with extra standards, extra requirements, extra expectations.
We don’t need to sell the public on the value of participation; they desperately want their children to participate, and they will even sue us for the opportunity. What we have to do is sell the public on the value of the standards we maintain for participation.
Much of the value of school activities results from the standards of school activities. Many of the benefits of school activities accrue from the requirements of school activities. Raise the bar, raise the value. Lower the bar, lower the value.
Activities are much less capable of doing good things for kids and good things for schools and their communities where there are lower standards of eligibility and conduct. It’s the difference between interscholastic and intramural, between tough and easy. It is because schools have raised the bar for interscholastic activities that these programs have value to students, schools and communities.