We Must Do Better
July 16, 2012
Everybody is expressing opinions about the US Supreme Court’s various written opinions regarding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
However, my mind goes back to the heated debate the previous year, to a passage about this topic in a July 13, 2009 Businessweek column co-authored by Benjamin E. Sasse, US Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2007 until taking a teaching position at the University of Texas in Austin in 2009, and Kerry N. Weems, an independent consultant who previously served 28 years in federal government, most recently as the head of Medicare and Medicaid.
Sasse and Weems wrote: “. . . passionate certainty that things are broken is not the same as dispassionate clarity about how to fix them.” They were critical of people on both sides of the health care debate who were “still campaigning on the issue when what’s needed is a detailed conversation.”
What bothered Sasse and Weems on July 13, 2009, seven months into President Obama’s first term, has only gotten worse on July 13, 2012, four months prior to the next election. Many are campaigning – on health care, as well as the economy, the environment, education and every other pressing issue of our times and our children’s times – but few are truly leading on those issues.
Borrowing from the title of Bill Bradley’s latest book, which he borrowed from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, "we can all do better." In fact, we not only can, we must. It’s a matter of will more than it is of wisdom.
Official Feedback
June 10, 2014
We receive much unsolicited comment about the performances of officials and the conduct of spectators. Here’s some of what the MHSAA does to actively solicit input from its key constituents.
Since 1956, the MHSAA has required member schools to provide numerical ratings of officials who work their contests. Since 1998, the system has also allowed schools to cite particular areas of perceived weakness; and doing so is required whenever a school provides a rating of “5” (worst) on the 1-to-5 scale.
There are many deficiencies in a system like this, including that it sometimes means that coaches or administrators are doing the rating, and some of them have never officiated and may not know the rules and mechanics as well as the officials. The rating can also be affected by whether the school won or lost.
Nevertheless, the system has value, not as a true evaluation of an official’s performance for any particular contest, but – when the ratings of all schools are combined over a three-year average – as a number that the official can use to understand his or her abilities relative to all other officials. And it’s a number the MHSAA can use, along with recommendations of local officials associations and assigners, when considering assignments to various levels of MHSAA tournaments.
It is also noteworthy that for 25 years, the MHSAA has used a reporting form allowed in some cases and required in others, whereby officials report unusual events to the MHSAA office immediately after contests. During a typical fall season, about 300 such reports will be filed; about 250 each winter season; about 200 each spring season. Any school which receives three or more negative reports over three seasons receives a letter of concern from the MHSAA and the school’s name is published in benchmarks; and any school that receives no such reports over three seasons receives a letter of praise.
In 2008-09, the MHSAA also began a program whereby officials could rate school sportsmanship. During the winter season of 2013-14, there were approximately 4,000 reports filed, including 2,400 in basketball. The Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan honors the best 100 schools where BCAM members are coaching.