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.
What We Do
August 16, 2012
It is not infrequent that suggestions are made that the MHSAA do something it is not presently doing, the something being a project or problem that conforms to the special interest of the one making the suggestion. That person will usually be incredulous when we respond that the project or problem is beyond the authority of the MHSAA or beyond the capacity of the MHSAA’s resources. The criticism is at least implied that if the MHSAA really cared about kids, it would do this thing that is important to the critic.
So, how does the MHSAA decide what it will do?
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The first criterion is to determine if the subject matter is a school district-wide concern or is sport-specific. If the former – like sexual harassment sensitivity training – then it is school districts’ responsibility to provide the service for all their faculty, including athletic personnel. If the subject matter is sport-specific – like weight control in wrestling – then the MHSAA should consider the possibility that it is the organization uniquely positioned to assist by providing leadership and support services to its membership in this narrow area of athletic-related concern.
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The second criterion is to determine if there are any other agencies, institutions or organizations better positioned or more capable to provide the service. For example, the American Red Cross is already in place with programs and personnel to provide first aid, CPR and sports safety training to athletic personnel throughout Michigan. So even though it is sports-related, it might create wasteful duplication for the MHSAA to start doing what the American Red Cross is fully capable of, prepared to do and already doing.
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The third criterion for determining what the MHSAA will do is to ascertain what its member schools want the association to help with. Schools have asked for assistance in establishing a minimum rule for the eligibility of transfer students; therefore, the MHSAA has promulgated such a standard for local adoption. But school districts have not asked for assistance in establishing rules regarding eligibility after tobacco and alcohol use or after allegations or convictions for crimes or misdemeanors; therefore, no MHSAA minimum standards exist.
The MHSAA provides services in the sports sub-set of issues with which schools must deal, and only after the MHSAA membership identifies the need and the MHSAA leadership prioritizes all of the identified needs and provides the resources necessary to address the needs of highest priority.