At a recent WSSDA Conference, Thelma Jackson, former WSSDA President, summarized the enormous complexity of being a School Director by advising, "You just do what's best for kids." As we approach the new millennium, in a state committed to improving public education, it is timely for us to reexamine what's best for students in public school athletics.

For years we've espoused the educational value of athletics - the development of teamwork, sportsmanship, cooperation, competition, work ethic, and more. Supporting our anecdotal perceptions, a recent PBS special entitled, Sports: Get in the Game, reported that, "The evidence supporting sports participation is overwhelming...It has the power to combat everything from racism, to low self-image, to the high-school dropout rate." In 1997 a North Carolina study of more than a quarter million athletes found that athletes make higher grades, get into less trouble, graduate at a higher rate, dropout less often, and have higher GPAs than non-athletes. And for girls, the Women's Sports Foundation observed that female athletes were 92% less likely to be involved with drugs, 80% less likely to get pregnant, and three times more likely to graduate from high school.

Unfortunately, although it is clear that participation in athletics has many educational benefits, Directors in many school districts ignore an embarrassing irony - we accept and support athletic programs that exclude those students who stand to benefit the most from athletic participation - the low skilled, the low self-esteem, the later maturers, and students whose parents did not or could not support AAU and private instruction. We ignore the fact that many of our athletic programs are out-of-touch with the educational goals espoused in our mission statements and demanded in our academic programs. In academics, learning experiences are designed to meet the needs of all students - boys and girls, high and low achievers, those with special needs, and all socioeconomic levels. Lest we forget, a whole host of legal mandates remind us of our duty towards ensuring equity and the illegality of discrimination. Sure, many kids would do better if slow learners, special needs children, and otherwise disadvantaged students could be eliminated from our classrooms, but we accept that both ethically and legally we serve the entire community of learners.

Unfortunately, the same claim cannot be made of athletics and many co-curricular activities. In most school districts, these programs are organized contrary to the legal and ethical standards guiding our classrooms, focusing instead on the needs of an exclusive elite.

Ask why this exists and invariably you will hear it is a budget issue - we simply can't afford to support all students who wish to participate. This response is both simplistic and misleading. In reality, it is a question of priorities not money. Ask how many students have been eliminated from your athletic programs and you'll quickly discover that the figure is so small as to nullify any budgetary savings. However, just this quarter an estimated 2000 Washington State students were deprived of the opportunity to participate in athletic programs

As Directors we support practices that would be intolerable in the academic program, yet both are publicly funded and both take place in ostensibly "educational" settings. Many of us have been seduced into supporting a professional sport model that has replaced the educational role athletics are supposed to be serving. We believe that athletics are a community commodity responsible for our entertainment, and that wins, trophies, and titles are paramount objectives. Publicly we would never admit it, but our actions speak otherwise. We imagine that protesters would swamp our Board Meetings were we to question the educational value of our athletic programs. Maybe in some communities this is true, but we should remind ourselves that most of the significant improvements in the civil rights of African Americans, individuals with disabilities, and women were not achieved easily or without sacrifice by those who perceived the "realities" of our communities to be in need of change.

Promoting more of an educational climate for our athletic programs will not be easy. Tradition is resistant to change. However, in the spirit of doing what’s best for kids, it’s time we as Directors took seriously our responsibility for aligning public school athletics with the educational environment envisaged for children in the 21st century.

(Dr. Steve Jefferies is a Professor of Physical Education at Central Washington University and the author of coaching education materials used in the National Federation of State High Schools’ Coaching Education Program. He is also a Director in the Ellensburg School District.)