School Choice and High School Athletics

Regardless of how you may fee about the current administration and this thread is not to discuss that nor the positives or negatives of school choice and school vouchers.

My question is: What impact will school choice and/or school vouchers have on high school athletics?

If school choice and vouchers become the norm I think that this will cause havoc with the whole athletics system.

If your DD or DS is very good at a sport and the local school sucks at that sport, but the next school over is a nationally recognized high school program, I can foresee abuses and unofficial recruiting being an issue day one.

For members who live in an area that already have these programs how has this been addressed?

"What impact will school choice and/or school vouchers have on high school athletics?"

Personally, I would love to see high school sports, and the associated politics, competed out of existence. I think we all know that in most areas now most sports offered in high school would thrive just fine if high schools didn't have them.

What I already see here in NY and PA is top athletes transferring to the Catholic schools. Sure hasn't helped Notre Dame though.

Good question.. I don't know why they couldn't use the same rules in place now. For example, in our district you can play for your zoned school, but if you transfer to another school within the district you have to sit for a portion of the season. My daughter just transferred and is having to sit out 1/2 the season for the first year.

I believe in MN if the school/district has open enrollment you can play right away. If transfer a second time have to set out a full season. We have had this for 20+ years and really has not been a problem.

99% of kids around here use vouchers not for sports but to get into a charter/private school for the education. There are a couple of districts that are so bad, its scary, like sub 50% grad rate.

Doug Romrell said:

"What impact will school choice and/or school vouchers have on high school athletics?"

Personally, I would love to see high school sports, and the associated politics, competed out of existence. I think we all know that in most areas now most sports offered in high school would thrive just fine if high schools didn't have them.

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This is such a bad, bad thought.

Without high school sports, there are literally thousands of high school kids in my city alone who would have absolutely no opportunity to play organized athletics at an age when it's absolutely vital for them to be engaged in extracurricular activities.

Not everybody is playing sports at a high level for the purposes of getting a scholarship or going pro, and I'd bet my life that the people who run these organizations you hope kill off high school athletics would cut off their own heads before they'd offer all these kids the chance to play for free.

cvsoftball said:

What I already see here in NY and PA is top athletes transferring to the Catholic schools. Sure hasn't helped Notre Dame though.

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Agreed. The upcoming state tournaments in girls and boys basketball will be loaded with private schools. This has been the case since I graduated from high school nearly 30 years ago. But if a public school has quality coaching and is willing to invest in their athletic programs (fields, gyms, etc.), they are still very competitive. What I am curious about in the OPs post is transfer policies. Will students be able to transfer from school to school at will because they don't care for the coach or because they are second string, when mom and dad feel they should be the superstar? Unless there are some types of rules concerning transfers, I could see it going very badly.

If school choice and vouchers become the norm I think that this will cause havoc with the whole athletics system.

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I agree but I also think that while it could be good for some, it would also be bad sociologically in other areas. contributing to a loss of the sense of community

OlatheDad said:

My question is: What impact will school choice and/or school vouchers have on high school athletics?

If school choice and vouchers become the norm I think that this will cause havoc with the whole athletics system.
If your DD or DS is very good at a sport and the local school sucks at that sport, but the next school over is a nationally recognized high school program, I can foresee abuses and unofficial recruiting being an issue day one.

For members who live in an area that already have these programs how has this been addressed?

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We already have that with private schools (religious or not), charter schools and magnet schools.

Florida generally puts the recruiting private schools up a class or two because it has been going on so long and frankly they like it because they would REALLY have no competition if they were not. This still doesn't always work well and they all generally make at least regionals until they run into another similar school, but it is something. Many of these schools consistently make and win states in their division.

The harder ones are the 'public schools'. Charter schools are of such a wide range of competency that you can't classify them easily. The 'best' two local charter schools has 5x people entering the 'lottery' to get into the feeder middle schools and the high school than they do students but somehow the best athletes do get in all the time. Totally stacked teams. One of the local magnet schools miraculously got the head coaches DD and 6 of her travel friends in though the magnet program. But they are all classified as all public schools are (primarily by student body size).

So yeah, it will get a LOT worse as there becomes more and more paths to attend schools outside of your zoning and opportunities to game the system become available.

--> one caveat. There was concern that next school year was going to be the year that it got a lot worse... however there is a provision that students can't transfer into schools that are above 100% design capacity and parents are responsible for transport to the school of 'preference'. This basically guts the program as ALL the good high schools are already well above 100% capacity. So for the most part it is perfect politically - politicians can pat themselves on the back for doing something (or for opposing it) but there will be nothing that actually happens of any significance.

Doug Romrell said:

"What impact will school choice and/or school vouchers have on high school athletics?"

Personally, I would love to see high school sports, and the associated politics, competed out of existence. I think we all know that in most areas now most sports offered in high school would thrive just fine if high schools didn't have them.

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Doug, what type of community do you live in? I live in Small Town USA. Our HS teams mean a lot to our community. In fact, on a Friday night in the fall, pretty much all of the three towns that comprise my HS will be at the football game. Same in basketball. If you go to the local Deli, on the walls are old uniforms of the glory days of so many from our town. Heck, on one of the walls of one of the buildings is a mural of one of my towns past greats who went on to play MLB. Our home values are directly tied to the school district that has been nationally recognized and to our sports teams. I guess what I am saying is that here, HS sports is still a big deal.