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It’s a Blizzard

March 18, 2015

Like the good people in Boston and other eastern cities and towns who couldn’t find anywhere to put all the snow they were getting this past winter, those in charge of school sports can’t find anywhere to put all the advice and expertise pouring down on us. We are well beyond the tipping point between too little and too much information regarding concussions.

In one stack before me are different descriptions of concussion signs and symptoms. I could go with a list as short as five symptoms or as long as 15.

In a second stack before me are different sideline detection solutions – tests that take 20 seconds to more than 20 minutes, some that require annual preliminary testing and others that do not.

In a third stack are a variety of return-to-play or return-to-learn protocols, ranging from a half-dozen steps to more than twice that number.

When I read that the National Football League, with all of its resources, was “overwhelmed by all of the expert opinion right now,” I was not comforted.
We have to cut through the clutter and provide our constituents clear and concise recommendations for the efficient education of coaches, student-athletes, parents and others; for electronic sideline detection solutions that are not only quick and effective in assessing injuries but also provide immediate reports and permanent records of concussions; and for protocols that place return to play well behind return to practice and further behind return to learn.

Bad Choice

September 11, 2015

It’s time to admit that school of choice may do more to harm than to help public education.

From our vantage point, we saw years ago that “choice” was disrupting schools more than it was improving them, and hindering more than enhancing the academic accomplishments of students.

What we saw years ago was that choice was more often exercised for adults’ convenience – to schools closer to child care or parents’ jobs – than for students’ academic improvement. Studies now tend to prove that observation is correct.

We also saw years ago that choice was mostly a chain reaction of prickly people. Students or their parents unhappy with their local school for one reason or another would move to a nearby school where, simultaneously, unhappy people would be moving from there to another nearby school. Studies now show that about half of choice students return to where they began; whether or not they ever accept that the fault was their own and not the fault of the first school is more difficult to discern.

In July, Michigan State University reported some of the most recent research about, and some of the faintest praise for, school of choice; but because previous studies have demonstrated that students’ learning diminishes as their mobility increases, there should have been much more scrutiny of Michigan’s school of choice policy when it was introduced 20 years ago, and as it has spread to 80 percent of Michigan school districts since 1994.

As a means of improving schools, choice has failed by making poor schools worse. As a means of integrating schools, choice and charter schools have actually re-segregated schools. And as a means of destroying neighborhoods, choice has been the perfect weapon.

You want to rebuild Michigan? Then start with neighborhoods, at the center of which will be a grocery store and a school, both within walking distance for their patrons who are invested in them.

School of choice has created problems for administrators of school sports. But what’s far worse is the damage it has done and continues to do to our students, schools and society.