This month, at the urging of its
new superintendent Warren Drake, the School Board plans
to lower the GPA requirement indicative of a ‘C’ average currently at
2.0-3.0 by a half-point. This would mean, according to Louisiana High School Athletic
Association standards that require that all participating athletes maintain a C
average, that students earning as low as an overall 1.5 GPA would be eligible
to play organized sports (this would equate, on the eight-point scale used in
schools, to an average score of 76 percent as opposed to the 80 percent
standard at present). Only the Caddo and Jefferson Parish districts would still
define the lowest boundary for a C average as 2.0.
Drake, a former coach, said he did
not consult research on the impact of what more generally are called “no pass
no play” laws on improving student academic performance and thereby graduation
rates but that his impressions over the years are that increased ability to
participate in extracurricular activities engages more students, where research
he has noted shows students who do this perform academically better. In other
words, he believes participation drives willingness to attend school and to progress
to graduation, and to make participation too restrictive discourages some
students to the point of leaving school.
The alternative view that argues
for higher standards says to make standards too low provides inadequate
encouragement for academic achievement. In other words, extracurricular
participation acts as a reward earned for doing better than below mediocre work
and can pull students up from that, both by acting as a carrot to continue to
elicit adequate performance from those intelligent and organized enough to do
it and by serving as a corrective to those who don’t, by taking away the many
extra hours a week extracurricular activities that students could spend and instead
leaving those as a resource to channel into extra study in the hopes of
regaining eligibility. Greater attention to studies then translates into a
higher chance of graduating.
Thus, the two views are
incompatible. Drake’s maintains that higher standards discourage too many
students from staying in school and graduating as they cannot attain them,
while his opposition argues that too low of standards by negating use of a
motivational tool inadequately encourages students to perform well enough to graduate.
Both claim their approach increases the chances of graduation.
To determine which argument has
more credibility, both conceptual and evaluative dimensions of these must be
explored. Starting with the former, note that both approaches rely upon
participation as a motivational tool, but with different objects. Drake’s
motivates students to stay interested in school, with the assumption that this
increases graduation chances.
But this view ignores a harsh
reality. To graduate high school in Louisiana, one must pass a certain number
and kind of classes. Of course, internally to a high school, standards
generally could be lowered to allow the most floundering of students to score
adequately enough on very undemanding assessments. However, the fact that
students must
score adequately enough on enough state-administered end of course tests
and that schools and districts get graded for accountability purposes on these
ameliorates the incentive to lower standards.
Thus, if a school wants as many of
its students to graduate as possible, it has the incentive to create stimulants
for students to pass these exams – including raising standards to participate
in extracurricular activity, relying on the different motivation of using a
higher standard to increase graduation chances. As opposed to Drake’s
assumption, this does not assume that a student can trundle along at a 1.5 GPA
and have just the fact of staying in school necessarily taking care of adequate
end of course exam scores for all, but that a higher GPA ensures the student
just doesn’t float along and that some will need this additional motivation of
ability to participate to pass these exams, so more will do so than under the
lower standard.
Evaluating the policy corroborates
this view. Not a lot of research is out there, and sometimes appears
contradictory, but the most recent and comprehensive of it demonstrates “no
pass no play” generally
has an overall positive impact on graduation rates It may vary by racial/ethnic group (appearing
to work positively for blacks but negatively on Hispanics) or by gender (women
respond more positively), and its
impact varies by its implementation, but on the whole the policy has more
positive than negative outcomes.
Yet an implementation issue does
loom large in the policy’s ability to succeed. As Drake points out, almost no
districts use the 2.0 standard, with none around his, nor do private schools
have to follow it. Thus, students that might be helped by it, who need the
additional motivation in order to graduate, can escape from more demanding
districts to other nearby systems or non-public schools to avoid it and thereby
reducing the policy’s effectiveness for the more demanding system.
This can be avoided by the state
passing a law or promulgating a regulation stating that certain scores must be
met on certain exams for eligibility for extracurricular participation. For
example, mandates could be created that entering freshmen must have scored at
the “basic” level on their LEAP tests, or that sophomores must score “fair” on
their English II end of course exam, and so on, in order to participate. This
would moot gamesmanship concerning the defining of letter grades.
In a larger sense, the conflict
represents a tussle between two views of education’s purpose. Behind Drake’s
lies the thought by many that it is something they must endure to become
competent enough to do what they really want, such as play football for money,
get a job they tolerate that earns enough so they can enjoy your weekends and/or
raise a family, or to put them in a school or work situation commensurate to a desired
extra strategy from nubility. For these people, it’s just putting up with
something that in order to check off a box along the way to achieving other
aspirations.
That lowest common denominator
conceptualization isn’t what it should be. Education should prompt a desire to
continue to learn throughout life, even if only for the instrumental reason of
increasing remuneration. Better, wanting to keep educating yourself, whether
formally, after leaving high school can bring so many other benefits to life,
among them (besides boosting one’s earning potential or fulfilling career
aspirations) promoting a better understanding the world, informing relationships
with others, and improving self-awareness and knowledge of oneself. And the
lower you make its standards, the less likely it is secondary education will
prompt this attitude to blossom among students.
Education for education’s sake historically
has not been valued in Louisiana. Only indirectly does the value of education
relate to the resources devoted to it; rather, its quality is defined by presence
of an attitude in students that values knowledge acquisition and critical
thinking abilities. Naturally, a significant portion of the population won’t
think it of this way, and this proportion seems higher in the state more than
in most if not all others. Policy-makers are derelict if they fail to encourage
the realization of education as good unto itself, as Drake is here and if elected
officials accede to his view.
No comments:
Post a Comment