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Smart List: 60 People Shaping the Future of K-12 Education
As a football coach I am naturally biased. But what evidence is there that players grades suffer when they play a sport? My antidotal evidence is that players do better when on a team as they are typically trying to maintain eligibility, are part of a group enterprise, and more closely monitored.
I do not agree with the contention that if boys were not in sports that they would them be spending all their time on academic pursuits. Accordingly, I am hostile to the idea of taking away what boys enjoy and are good at, in the name of academics, you are just chancing them away, usually to less structured and divisive activities.
Excuse me, but that article reeks of finding evidence of a previously held belief. In the football program I help coach we progress monitor our players grades year round and make grades the first priority of our program. We hold our players to a higher standard than our state association does. We even hold out top performing students from competition if they let their grades slip below their ability level.
In my opinion, coaches who do not put in place an academic support system that holds their players accountable for their grades ought not coach.
At the same time, I think that schools and districts do a poor job of showcasing academic achievements as well as athletic achievement.
I am not a coach, but I have worked with several coaches who run their programs along the lines that the commenters above describe. Some parents at our school have even set their own standards and matter-of-factly held their children off teams if they got a C. (The teams do well most years.) I admire both the coaches and the parents who enforce academic standards, because the typical fan wants a win above anything else. The school leaders need to make sure the educational goals aren’t being disregarded.