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Dodgeball banned as ‘human target’ game

March 31, 2013 by

Due to concerns about bullying, dodgeball and other “human-target games” are now banned in Windham, New Hampshire schools, reports the Eagle-Tribune.

“We spend a lot of time making sure our kids are violence free,” Windham superintendent Dr. Henry LaBranche said. “Here we have games where we use children as targets. That seems to be counter to what we are trying to accomplish with our anti-bullying campaign.”

The banned “human target” games include prison ball, slaughter, bombardment and others.

Dodgeball is “an elimination game,” said Andrew Mead, program manager of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education. “Games like dodgeball and tag don’t keep kids involved and physically active. They objectify slower students who don’t catch as well.”

I always hated dodgeball (though I was OK with bombardment). But don’t all games objectify students who are slow, clumsy, etc.?

Two school board members said some human-target games have inappropriate names, reports Ed Week. They probably were thinking of  ”slaughter,” which was popular at Windham Middle School.

Filed Under: Bullying, Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

Evaluation overkill hits PE teachers

March 29, 2013 by

Evaluating teachers’ impact on student achievement is “a necessary reform,” writes Terry Ryan on Ohio Gadfly. But it can go too far. Ohio will evaluate phys ed teachers on their students’ skipping, throwing, dancing and batting skills and knowledge. Among the goals:

*Consistently demonstrating correct skipping technique with a smooth and effortless rhythm;

*Able to throw consistently a ball underhand with good accuracy and technique to a target (or person) with varying distances.

The suggested written test for K-2 students (five to eight year olds) includes:

To throw a ball overhand with your right hand, you should step forward with your left foot.

A. True B. False

For a good overhand throw, you should bend the elbow in the shape of an “L” behind the head before throwing.

A. True B. False

Instead of throwing balls, kids will be taking tests on how to throw balls. Teachers think this is stupid, writes Ryan. Parents think it’s stupid. Everyone thinks it’s stupid except for the Ohio Department of Education.

Filed Under: Education, Sports, Testing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

In a word, yes

March 24, 2013 by

Is it fair to put the total blame on a student’s academic performance on his or her coach?

That’s one of the questions with which Valerie Strauss (it must be a Strauss sort of day; my last post was spurred by her as well… so many thanks to Ms. Strauss) ends this blog post, which discusses some comments from our nation’s Secretary of Education.

The larger question at issue is whether college coaches — particularly public university coaches — should be fined for athletes’ failure to graduate.

I say that the answer is obviously yes. And the reason is this: it’s not that the coach has control of the student’s academics… but the coach does have a surprising amount of control over who gets admitted to the school on the basis of athletics. If coaches know that they’ll be held responsible, there will be an incentive not to recruit students who don’t have a realistic chance at graduating.

That’s where you’ll see the effect of this sort of policy.

The trick is that you need to make it so that the penalty for having non-graduating students is bigger than the payoff for having a winning team. Otherwise, the behavior will still persist, because it’s just a smaller incentive pointing in the same direction.

Now, maybe that means that you end up “pricing out” all the best coaches from public universities, so that only private schools like Notre Dame (football) and Duke (basketball) can afford the best coaches. Eh… so what if that happened?* That doesn’t seem like such a bad outcome to me. I’m all for college sports. But they’re called college sports and not just “the minor leagues” for a reason.

I don’t begrudge coaches their millions; I’m a fan of free markets. But a coach is a university employee, and that means that one of their jobs is (or should be) upholding the mission and reputation of the university. And that mission should — and I say “should” in the most skeptical sense — be about turning out educated minds, not about hanging championship banners.

Coaches are also hired to do that, but that job should be tempered by their broader institutional commitments. The job of a university isn’t to make money. That’s simply something universities have to do in order to accomplish their mission.

* (I’d note that neither Notre Dame nor Duke really has the same sort of problem with sports and academics that many big public universities seem to have.)

Filed Under: College, Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

A (anatomical) boy in the girl’s restroom

February 23, 2013 by

A boy who identifies as a girl has the right to use the girls’ restroom and play on girls’ sports teams, the Massachusetts Department of Education has told schools. Transgender girls have the right to use boys’ restrooms and play on boys’ teams.

The guidance said some students may feel uncomfortable sharing those facilities with a transgender student but this ‘‘discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student.’’

Students who “consistently and intentionally refuse to refer to a transgendered student by the name or sex” they choose should face discipline for bullying, the guidance advised.

Filed Under: Bullying, Education, Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

Schools excel in sports — and academics

February 7, 2013 by

Ohio high schools that invest in athletic success also produce more academic success, concludes a study by Jay Greene and Dan Bowen published in the Journal of Research in Education. A winning sports team and higher student participation in sports correlated with higher test scores and a higher graduation rate, writes Greene in Education Next.

A 10 percentage point increase in overall winning percentage is associated with a 0.25 percentage point increase in the number of students at or above academic proficiency. When we examine the effect of winning percentage in each sport separately, once again winning in football has the largest effect. Girls’ basketball also remains positive and statistically significant (at p < 0.10), but boys’ basketball is not statistically distinguishable from a null effect.

Adding one winter sport increases the percentage of students performing proficiently by 0.4 of a percentage point, while an additional 10 student able to directly participate in sports during the winter season relates to a 0.6 percentage point increase in students at or above proficiency.

A winning sports team may create a sense of pride in the school and bond students and parents. Playing on a sports team may inspire students to show up at school every day, keep their grades up to maintain eligibility and learn responsibility, teamwork and goal setting.

Filed Under: Education, Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,

2nd graders correct NFL players’ tweets

February 3, 2013 by

Second graders at Elmwood Franklin School in Buffalo “applied their lessons in proper sentence structure, noun and verb usage, spelling, and punctuation to correct the tweets of professional football players, posting their corrections on the school’s Facebook page. The most common mistake was the incorrect spelling of “a lot.”

The students corrected a tweet by San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver, who made headlines this week for an anti-gay remark, reports the Daily Caller.  Students fixed the spelling in “I pray to God I’m never dieing broke,” though they didn’t translate it to standard English: “I pray to God that I don’t die broke.”

Second Graders Correct Tweets From NFL Players And It's Magical

Detroit Lions wide receiver Titus Young also drew the students’ attention by tweeting: “It’s true I could be alot better, But wit the football.”

New England Patriots wide receiver Wes Welker erred in a “Merry Christmas” message by adding: “My God bless you all!”

All three players are college graduates, according to the Daily Caller.

Filed Under: Education, Sports Tagged With: , , ,

Robotics is on a roll in Minnesota

February 2, 2013 by

Minnesota has more high school robotics teams than boys’ hockey teams, reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. It’s “chic to be geek.”

“Varsity robotics” is treated like an athletic sport.

Robotics team members are getting varsity letters and patches, being paraded before school assemblies like other sports stars and seeing trophies in the same lobby display cases as their football, basketball or baseball counterparts.

At the state tournament, teams compete for the championship by building robots to perform a task set every year. Last year, the robots shot basketballs. This year, they throw Frisbees.

Filed Under: Education, Sports Tagged With: , , , ,

Ed Dept: Disabled have right to compete in sports

January 28, 2013 by

Disabled students must have “equal access” to school sports, the U.S. Education Department ruled Friday. If there’s no “reasonable” way to include disabled athletes on school teams, schools must set up separate programs.

“Participation in extracurricular athletics can be a critical part of a student’s overall educational experience,” said Seth Galanter, of the department’s civil rights office. “Schools must ensure equal access to that rewarding experience for students with disabilities,” he added.

The directive doesn’t require schools to open sports teams to everyone, regardless of athletic ability, officials said. But it’s not all clear what will be considered “reasonable.” One example — providing “visual clues” in addition to a starter pistol to allow hearing disabled students to compete in track events — seems like the sort of thing any school would and should do. The second — waiving the “two-hand touch” finish at swim meets to allow one-armed swimmers to compete — also seems fair. But it raises a question: Can a one-armed student swim fast enough to make the team?

In 1972, Title IX forced schools to offer equal athletic opportunities to girls. But there are lots of girls in high schools. There aren’t that many one-armed students who want to compete in swimming.

It was also welcomed by disabled student competitors, among them Casey Followay, a 15-year-old high school track athlete confined to a wheelchair by a birth defect, who under current rules, has to race on his own.

“This will help me become a better athlete conditioning- wise, because I have something to push for,” said Followay, who filed a complaint with the U.S. Office of Civil Rights in 2011 asking that he be allowed to run alongside, but not against, the able-bodied.

If he’s not running against able-bodied runners, is he really on the team? He needs to compete against other wheelchair athletes. Schools are supposed to work with community groups to set up regional teams, if they don’t have enough disabled athletes in each sport. That could be expensive.

“The problem is this was done without any deliberation in Congress and no public input and it is not clear how expansive it will be,” says Fordham’s Mike Petrilli. “Just how far must a school district go to be compliant?”

Expect lawsuits charging “separate and unequal” sports opportunities for disabled students, predicts Rick Hess in When Good Intentions Run Amok.

Filed Under: Disability, Education, Sports Tagged With: , , , , ,

‘We came here to play FOOTBALL’

October 5, 2012 by

Ohio State third-string quarterback Cardale Jones tweeted: “Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain’t come to play SCHOOL classes are POINTLESS.”

Jones’ comments and his Twitter account have been deleted.

Ohio State ranks in the top 10 percent of Division 1 football teams on the Academic Progress Rate, notes ESPN.

Filed Under: College, Sports Tagged With: , , ,

Title IX: Is there a right to equal cheering?

July 8, 2012 by

Title IX guarantees girls an equal right to play sports, but does it guarantee a cheering crowd? Joshua Dunn and Martha Derthick, writing in Education Next, are dubious.

In a 2009 lawsuit, Indiana parents complained that nearly all boys’ basketball games, but only half of girls’ games, were scheduled for Friday or Saturday nights. Girls drew smaller crowds, creating “feelings of inferiority,” plaintiffs charged.

The school’s athletic director, Beth Foster, said she’d tried to schedule more girls’ games in prime time but could not because she “can’t get anybody to come play us on those nights.”

The case was thrown out, then revived on appeal by a Seventh Circuit panel.

The court started its decision with the image of a typical Indiana Friday-night game: “A packed gymnasium, cheer-leaders rallying the fans, the crowd on their feet supporting their team, and the pep band playing the school song.” Without similar support from the community, the court speculated that “girls might be less interested in joining the basketball team because of a lack of school and community support, which results in the perception that the girls’ team is inferior and less deserving than the boys’.” As a result, girls might feel like they are “second-class.”

“The appellate judges seemed to be very close to announcing a right” to large, cheering crowds, write Dunn and Derthick. “What if the school schedules more girls’ games in prime time and the fans still don’t come? Or don’t come in the same numbers they do for boys’ games? One glance at the Nielsen ratings for women’s and men’s NCAA tournaments would suggest that this could occur.”

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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