Student Athlete

Remember those? You may have to fire up the Way Back machine but it is worth it. Once you get your bearings you'll realize that one key difference between Student Athletes and today's Jocks is that the Student Athlete had to compete, successfully, in the classroom in order to play on the field.

Now how can that be any fun? Well, it isn't so we got rid of them.

First by using selective grade inflation to ensure that every boy good at juggling three balls was "qualified" to play. Perhaps this was the beginning of ends justified means that has brought rampant cheating to a school in your neighborhood. Maybe not. Maybe they'd have become cheaters without Friday night lights. Then there was the irony of hold-backs--kids that needed an extra year, not for academics as they are all Four-OH students, but an extra year to beef-up that lineman, sharpen that line backer or catch the growth spurt for the star forward. Then the under-the-table transfers. This was all a slippery slope greased with the sweat of jocks chasing championships.

Given today's sad state of public school academic achievement and unbalanced budgets that give voodoo economics a run for the money it is time to revitalize the concept of Student Athlete, but on a grand scale.

This incarnation must be much more than the individual "A fer Play" of the past. It must apply system wide and sustainable, objectively measured academic success is a prerequisite to begin and maintain any non-curricular program. Including athletics.

How will this work?

First, shut down all extra-curricular programs throughout the district. Sell off the equipment and other assets, using the money to support core education.

Next is the hard part: educate our children and prove it. But in this case "prove it" doesn't mean an endless stream of platitudes, it means:

• 95% minimum graduation rate for each of the trailing three years using the national graduation accounting methodology
• 70% minimum participation on the SAT with 95% of participating students scoring over 500 on the each of the Mathematics and Critical reading sections
• All other students must take Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery and 80% of those students must score 10% above the highest minimum score required by any branch of Service.

Until these conditions are met, no extracurriculars throughout the entire school system. If in any one year these fail to be met, all existing extracurriculars are shut down until the district re-qualifies by meeting these requirements. 

No IFs. No ANDs. No BUTs. Not at "your" school. Not at any other school just because it "passed" in a failed district.

The financial benefits are immediate and enduring with the reduction in personnel costs and re-purposing of expensive facilities and equipment. It is also produces demand for extracurricular activities delivered by churches, social centers, clubs and private enterprise, a model that works well today with art, music, competitive swimming and tennis, and league softball. We may find that as our schools focus on education, the other activities will have been taken care of.