grade requirements for sports/extracurricular

I would like to gather thoughts about the policy of excluding students
from sports and other extracurricular activities based on their grades.

Donna Metler...

develop some solid arguments against this policy,

I don't understand the rationale behind it... it seems punitive. I'm

Bob LeChevalier...

Probably because it is.

Of course it can also be described as a natural consequence. If you
aren't spending sufficient effort to pass your classes, then the
school should not be providing you with opportunities to further
distract you from the supreme goal of "No Child Left Behind".

sure many kids who wind up quitting school may have decided to just
struggle through if they were part of a team. Full disclosure :-) :
my second son got an F on his report card and couldn't join track. I
couldn't answer his simple question: 'What do my grades have to do with
how fast I run?'

Bob LeChevalier...

Nothing. But every minute of time he spends on the track field when
he is failing to get the abysmally low 60-65% that is the minimum
standard for passing (you won't get a driver's license with a 65%
grade) is a tradeoff that the school should not be abetting. If the
parent wants their son to join a private track club, that is a
parental decision and not subject to the school's approval. But the
public interest is in the test scores, not in making students happy.

(My answer was slightly tongue in cheek, trying to show you the
thinking while not necessarily agreeing with it. The point is that a
lot of kids and their parents are more interested in how their kid
does on the track team than in the biology classroom, but the other
taxpayers that are paying for the schools don't want to financially
support what they feel is a misplaced set of priorities).

toto...

While his grades may have nothing to do with how fast he runs, his
grades (and his education) are the point of being in school. This
policy assumes that practice and track meets would take up too much
time that would be better spent on bringing up his grades.

I would like to develop some solid arguments against this policy,
and any thoughts - whether pro or con - would be helpful.

Donna Metler...

A better question is-"What does running fast have to do with school?" The
focus of education should be education, not athletics. Athletics take a huge
amount of time, and if a child is using athletics as an excuse for not
getting school work done, benching a child until the grades improve is a
logical consequence.

Until recently I was a school music teacher, and taught classes which had
both an academic and performance component. If my students weren't
performing appropriately in class, they didn't perform on stage, period. The
academic part of the class was the class-but going on trips to perform
around town and getting the kudos for doing so were extracurricular
activities and treated as such. It wasn't a hard and fast rule-I had
students who had to struggle to make a D, but who were paying attention in
class, attempting all assignments, and generally trying, and they didn't get
benched-and I had kids who I would bench with a D because a D, for them,
indicated completing little work and generally phoning it in-they had the
capacity to do much better. And poor conduct got you benched immediately
from me.

Not surprisingly, I had the best record of grades, attendance, and behavior
of any extra curricular director/coach-because I set standards, expected my
kids to meet them, and benched them if they didn't, even if it did mean
going into a concert with only one trumpet player.

LAH...

I really have mixed feeling about this issue. I've seen some students
respond very well to this incentive. It becomes their primary reason for
studying. I've seen others who end up feeling even more disenfranchised and
it becomes the final little push to drop out altogether. In my district
grades are figured up weekly and eligibility is a week to week thing.
Sounds OK but sometimes at the beginning of a grading period, one poorly
done assignment or pop quiz can render a student academically ineligible for
the week even though it may have been an anomaly. It becomes a bigger
problem if the teacher is not in the habit of assigning daily work and the
following week is devoid of assignments and opportunities to bring up the
grade. Sometimes as I watch the extracurricular activity and see the kids
who are not eligible standing on the sidelines with the team (as required by
the coach) but not suited up or playing, I can't help but think that perhaps
we should have just sewn a scarlet letter to their shirts and been done with
it. There is something about the public humiliation that just makes me
uncomfortable. This kid may very well be reaping what he has sewn but that
doesn't make me anymore comfortable.

I've yet to hear of any policy in regards to eligibility that is to my mind,
perfect. I would hate to see eligibility standards completely eliminated
but would be very open to some well thought out changes or suggestions. I
have found the replies to your original post very interesting and I look
forward to reading any others that might be forthcoming.

Donna Metler...

Absolutely-and I said that in my post. I've had students who really, really
had to try to pull passing grades at all, and as long as such a student is
putting in the effort, I won't bench them, while another student with the
same grades would be benched because they had to completely let academics
slide to get that far.

toto...

I think that bringing up his grades in order to join a sports team
should be an incentive for him to study so that he can join next term.

Life is not all about sports and neither is school.