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Continuing Education
February 17, 2012
Eight MHSAA staff devoted an entire Friday late last month to discussions with a visitor from another statewide high school association. The focus was on what that association was doing, how and why in the areas of electronic media, marketing, merchandising and branding and the dozens of sub-topics these categories spawned.
Two weeks earlier, five MHSAA staff joined staff of ten other similar associations for two days of meetings in Chicago. There was sharing on topics ranging from student leadership programs to information technology.
A few days before that, I joined my counterparts from 45 other states for discussions of a variety of topics important to school sports in general or the administration of our serving organizations. I amassed 13 pages of notes from comments made by speakers and colleagues over three days.
Meanwhile, the MHSAA office hosted 12 MHSAA committee meetings during January. Each committee focused on a particular sport, or on a specific topic that affects all sports. Their recommendations will be vetted this spring and considered by the Representative Council by May.
Ideally, every month presents opportunities for us to learn, but last month provided a particularly broad and deep curriculum.
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Suspicious Solutions
January 17, 2017
Fifty-two weeks ago yesterday I had hip replacement surgery on my right side. My recovery was so speedy that most people outside the offices of the Michigan High School Athletic Association never noticed, and I was back to my normal activities and workouts very quickly.
But gradually during late summer and then dramatically in early November, my body reacted. It has been giving me pain from hip to foot on my left side, a limp I can’t disguise, and a metaphor for this message.
It appears that correcting one thing adversely affected another thing; and the second problem is much more painful than the first one was.
So-called solutions often have unintended consequences, worse than the original problem. For example:
- Every expansion of the MHSAA Football Playoffs has had an effect opposite of what was intended. Each has added additional stress on local scheduling and league affiliations; and each expansion has increased the likelihood of repeat champions.
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Seeding MHSAA Basketball Tournaments, seen by some people as a solution so that the best teams will square off later in the tournament trail, will have those same consequences – stress on scheduling and leagues, and more repeat champions.
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Relaxing requirements for cooperative programs once seemed like a good thing, but now it is more frequent that schools take the easy route – sending their students off to play on another school’s team – rather than doing the hard thing – providing and promoting the sport themselves. The former provides far fewer participation opportunities than the latter – the opposite of the intended purpose for cooperative programs.
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Charter schools and School of Choice policies were supposed to force schools to improve through competition, but this “solution” devastated neighborhood schools. These policies didn’t “empower” parents, they created estrangement between schools and communities.
I could go on. The point is, my limp is a reminder to be on the lookout for the new problems inherent in so-called solutions.