By Eric Sondheimer, Varsity Times Insider - LA Times reporters blog about high school sports across the Southland | http://lat.ms/LlUYHF
June 8, 2012 | 8:31 am :: School boards that are quick to cut sports budgets might want to look a little closer.
New statistics from the Los Angeles Unified School District given to the City Section athletics office show evidence that participating in high school sports can have a huge impact on academic performance.
“What was proven is that students in our schools who participate in athletics attend school significantly more often, have higher GPA’s and score higher on the CST’s in both English and Math, when compared to the rest of the student body,” according to a memo sent to LAUSD schools from Barbara Fiege, the commissioner of athletics.
There are approximately 35,000 students in LAUSD who are on athletic teams, and they attended school 21 more days than the non-athletes during the 2010-11 school year, Fiege said.
Athletes also achieved between .55 and .74 higher grade-point averages than non-athletes.
Fiege said the numbers “prove what has generally been assumed, that participation in high school athletics, on average, positively enhances the student's academic progress in comparison with the rest of the student body.
“I believe that a large part of this is due to the intervention and guidance provided daily by qualified coaches, who understand the relationship between academic and athletic success.”
smf: Note to the data-driven academic pencil-pushers and bean-counters at Beaudry: “Stats” = “Data”. Not necessarily data that proves what you want to know (everyone’s favorite kind) but data that proves what you need to know.
And the results reported can be duplicated to some degree among all extra-curricular activities – because coaches and play-production teachers and band teachers and drill team coaches and librarians and all the rest don’t just know the student’s names, they know who the students are.
The reason is simple: students must have a 2.0 GPA to participate in sports. Some schools even go further to require no Fails or U's on eligibility report cards. Students who are in sport risk losing their spot on the team if they do poorly in school.
ReplyDeleteDoing well = playing time
Failing = getting cut from the squad