rick7425

What are the primary objectives of high school sports? I don't think enhancing the college scholarship opportunities of the annual handful of truly elite athletes would rate very high on that list, certainly not higher than the benefits intended for the broader masses of student-athletes. If I'm right about that, then I question whether the costs of year-round football to kids (the ones who want to participate in multiple sports but would be pressured to skip other sports for football) and schools (whose programs in other sports may suffer from having fewer potential participants) would be justified by a few instances of 3-star recruits becoming 5-star recruits.

Sorry, PH, I'm completely lost. It seemed to me that you were suggesting that there could be no constitutional issue with trying to establish geographic attendance zones for private schools. It also seemed to me that you were suggesting there actually was some sort of constitutional issue with having a large number of private schools in a small geographic area -- although I don't see how that deprives anyone of an opportunity for a secular education, which also seems to be one of your assertions. This really doesn't make much sense to me, especially if the result of my modest effort to decipher it is correct.

What does this mean???

Any moment we should be cutting away to Rod Serling....

BH, to understand the wisdom of a rule like this you have to get beyond the focus on "abuse" involving some individual student. Preventing abuse is not the sole objective of the TSSAA rules. TSSAA is an organization of schools. The rules are designed to provide a competitive balance between very different types of schools. You can call it competitive equity, a level playing field, whatever terminology suits you for this concept of fairness. The restriction of aid for varsity athletes to "need-based" aid promotes competitive equity between private schools that can't afford scholarships and those that can. I understand the reasoning behind the rule. I probably should have said "it is a bad rule". The kids still are forced to choose between accepting the scholarship and playing a sport. Come on, BH, the rule helps to achieve its objective. Just because in the process it requires some difficult choices doesn't make it a bad rule. If you do away with the rule, then the choice you describe doesn't have to be made, but you'll tilt the playing field -- is that a better rule? Besides, the kids aren't having to choose anything. Their parents are choosing. Parents who can afford the tuition (remember, this is not need-based aid we're talking about) and who have choices about which schools to send their kids to are sending them to this one on scholarship, knowing the consequences for their children when it comes to TSSAA varsity athletics. The parents apparently value the savings of a scholarship more than they value their child's chance to play varsity sports, or at least they did when they started out. It was their well-informed choice to make.

BH, to understand the wisdom of a rule like this you have to get beyond the focus on "abuse" involving some individual student. Preventing abuse is not the sole objective of the TSSAA rules. TSSAA is an organization of schools. The rules are designed to provide a competitive balance between very different types of schools. You can call it competitive equity, a level playing field, whatever terminology suits you for this concept of fairness. The restriction of aid for varsity athletes to "need-based" aid promotes competitive equity between private schools that can't afford scholarships and those that can.

I don't see anything bad about this rule or anything unfortunate about the consequences when the choice between a scholarship or participation in TSSAA sports was clear from the outset. Not every rule is written to serve the interests of the individual athlete. Some rules like these are written in furtherance of competition among teams or schools.

Seems you could be talking about the same type of athletic competition that occurs in travel soccer or baseball or AAU basketball. I think there is a difference between these types of athletic competition and the athletic competition that is conducted among schools. There are some missions served by school sports that are a different than just maximizing an individual student's opportunities for athletic success. These include the missions of insuring that school sports are kept in their proper perspective (secondary to and supportive of the primary academic mission of secondary education) and avoiding the potential for exploitation of kids in their education for the sake of athletics. In addition, sports competition is not just about the individual student-athlete. I believe that in the setting of school sports, there is value in some limitations that promote a level playing field among schools with widely differing resources, so that the benefits of competition and success can flow to a broader range of students and schools. So, when you are talking about educational athletics, as opposed to the various types of athletic competition independent of the school setting, I don't think your idea is necessarily a good one. It may be fine in a particular case, but rules are written to serve larger programmatic purposes, some of which I do not think your idea takes sufficiently into account.

BigShow1 and PHargis, as I said before, my opinion is based on my own limited experience. I don't profess to be an expert in what constitutes the best model for delivering educational services at the elementary or secondary level. I have observed that school systems generally seem to favor smaller elementary schools, which suggests to me that there is something considered there that goes beyond just the number of children that may be in an individual classroom. In my early school years, I attended neighborhood schools. As I was transitioning from junior high to high school grades, my public school system was in a state of transition as a result of a federal court busing order. The first comprehensive school of the school system also was opening. Some neighborhood schools were shutting down. My personal observation was that when we lost the neighborhood schools, we lost something of the sense of community that accompanied the neighborhood schools. No longer did we see our teachers at the neighborhood cleaners or drug stores. No longer were we consistently in school with classmates who we had known outside of school for years. I think that loss of a sense of community contributed to the erosion of behavior standards inside the school building. I also think it contributed to a loss of parental support for the efforts of the teachers. I never personally attended a comprehensive high school. My oldest daughter did. I do not view it as a positive experience. She was plenty intelligent, but she needed to be pushed -- not only at home, but also at school. I did not get the sense that she was receiving the personal interest from teachers that I recall being more common in the smaller schools that I attended, where the teachers got to know students throughout the building. I also observed the daughter of a close friend get "lost in the shuffle," so to speak, at my oldest daughter's school. Consequently, I made the decision to send my next child to high school at a private school. It wasn't because I didn't think quality educational services could be had at the public school, but rather because I worried that my next child was someone who would get "lost in the shuffle" if I put him in an environment where that was allowed. My opinion was that in a smaller school setting, where teachers really get a chance to see the same kids all day long and get a chance to really know them, it was more likely that the teachers generally would take more of a personal interest in him. I was pleased with the results. By the way, my younger son is now about to graduate from the University of Tennessee with honors. A large institution indeed. But there is a dramatic difference in what makes good educational sense for a 13 or 14 year old as opposed to an 18 year old who has had a chance to mature and figure out what it takes to be successful. So that's my personal experience, upon which my opinions about large comprehensive schools are based.

stbulldog, my own limited experience (in my own upbringing and in the raising of my children) leads me to the same conclusion as you. I believe the smaller neighborhood schools provide a better educational experience for students at the secondary level. I recognize that it is difficult and perhaps impossible in some places to have neighborhood schools when housing patterns can lead to the result that those schools are racially segregated. I also know that there are theories about trying to provide students with a broader range of opportunities, recognizing that the college track is not the track for all. But I haven't seen anything in the large comprehensive school setting that makes me think that it represents, overall, an improvement in secondary education.

Teacher pay in Tennessee comes in two parts, the state minimum portion of the salary and the local supplement. The state minimum is based on the teacher's degree and years of experience. It is consistent across the board in part because the Tennessee constitution mandates equal educational opportunity, and variations in the state-mandated portion of the salary from one locality to another arguably would be contrary to that constitutional mandate. The local supplement is set by local boards of education. Local school boards typically will set local supplements based on degree and years of experience as well. They do so as a matter of convenience, not because they are required to by law. In addition, for the last several years state law has allowed local school systems to adopt differential pay systems. While the Tennessee Education Association lobbies at the state level, it is the local "teachers union" that may have some influence on salaries for teachers in a particular local school system, by negotiating with the local school board over the local supplement portion of the teachers' salary. In a school system where a majority of the teachers choose to be members of the local teacher's union, that union has the power to engage in collective bargaining with the school board. In a school system where the local board of education treats its teachers as valued employees, the teachers union probably won't enjoy majority support, and therefore won't have the power to engage in collective bargaining -- the school board can set the local supplement portion of teachers' salaries as it sees fit. Even where there is collective bargaining, ultimately the school board doesn't have to agree to anything, and state law effectively prohibits teachers from engaging in a strike to get their economic demands met. The local teachers union does not have the power to set the salaries. The "teachers union" has become a convenient whipping boy for what ails public education, but in reality the responsibility for this government operation lies with the public officials who are elected or appointed to run it.

BigShow1, you and I probably can't agree on the constitutional issues. While I tend to think that the original intent of the framers ordinarily should control, as a society we have to admit that some things have changed since then (such as the abolition of slavery, granting women the right to vote, etc.). The way that the constitutional provisions like the equal protection clause are read must change to some degree with those changes. Fifty-five years ago in Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court decided that the "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson was wrong and that separate was not equal when it came to race. I don't think even the most ardent originalist on the Supreme Court, Justice Scalia, would argue that Brown v. Board of Education was wrongly decided. As for the whole recruiting issue, we're probably not going to agree on that either. It has a little something to do with my philosophy about what high school sports should be about. While winning is important in any endeavor where the score is kept, sports are played in the schools (as opposed to independent leagues like AAU basketball and travel soccer) in order to support the educational missions of those schools. I think the educational missions, not the sports, should lead the way. I also think that terrible and long-lasting harm can be done to a child if that child is lured to a school where he is an academic or social misfit for the sake of sports success. While I would hope that his parents usually would not let that happen, we all have seen too many situations where parents get too caught up in their child's athletic exploits. In my way of thinking, success in high school sports on the scoreboard or the won-lost record is just not important enough to rationalize the damage that can be done to a child by recruiting for the sake of sports.

BigShow1, I will respond to the last part first just because it is the simplest. If the only issue were the right of parents to choose whether their child will play football for this coach or that one, you would be right. But recruiting, by its very nature, goes beyond just the parents making decisions and gets into coaches and others trying to influence those decisions -- and not necessarily with the child's best interest as the foremost consideration. As for the issues involving the constitution, you're probably going to find yourself in disagreement with the Tennessee Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court, and federal judges in a lot of places. Does the federal government belong in education? Maybe not. That's a matter of educational philosophy. but they are in it, with Title I, the IDEA, and a host of other programs (some funded and some not). And once the federal government is in a program, then the federal constitutional requirement of equal protection of the laws is an issue. At the state level, the Tennessee Constitution includes a guarantee of equal educational opportunity (the basis upon which the entire funding mechanism was changed for public education as a consequence of the Small Schools litigation). In addition, the Tennessee Constitution grants to the state legislature the exclusive authority to determine the makeup and structure of public education in Tennessee. This means that state constitutional provisions calling for equal protection of the laws, as well as the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (which applies to the states), must be considered when you are dealing with public education in Tennessee. Merely saying that anyone can choose any school doesn't necessarily mean that educational opportunity is equal. Transportation is indeed an element of insuring that the opportunity is indeed equal. That is part of the reason why there no longer are traditional neighborhood schools in many metropolitan school districts and why federal courts have used busing orders to insure desegregation of the schools. If you put your choice system in place, and you wind up with de facto segregation, I don't think the fact that inner city kids from poor homes without a means of transportation had "equal opportunity" to enroll in the good schools, if they could figure out some way to get to them, is going to get that school system out of litigation for violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Again, just my opinion.

BigShow1, I think that some of your efforts to draw analogies between public education and the private sector fail because of some realities you are disregarding. Public education is funded with taxpayer dollars, so you can't decide you are just going to leave out those who can't afford transportation or whatever else it takes to avail themselves of equal access to the good schools. When the government decided that it was going to be in the education business, then constitutional principles became a part of the public education process (some who favor a lot of government intervention into the field of health insurance might want to consider this). One of those principles is the Fourteenth Amendment requirement of equal protection of the laws. Fifty-five years ago, the United States Supreme Court declared that separate is not equal. You can't just disregard these principles and take a sort of survival-of-the-fittest approach to education in the public sector. Of course, the shortcomings that these principles cause are among the reasons for the growth of independent schools. As far as the idea that Walmart Super Centers and schools are comparable, I respectfully disagree. The first is a retail store, the second a service business. When it comes to service, I think of restaurants; and I will take a small local restaurant where they know me and consequently give me great service over the larger chain restaurant any day. I don't profess to be an expert on matters of education philosophy, but I grew up in the Metro school system in the days of neighborhood schools, before the advent of the large "comprehensive" high schools. I think neighborhood schools, where the teachers and parents saw each other at the grocery store; where the teachers and administrators knew all of the students by name; and where there was true community support for the schools, were better places for learning than the larger schools we have now. Just my opinion. Of course, since this is largely a board for posting matters related to athletics, there remains that issue you raised of having high school coaches recruiting 13-year-old children for sports just like the colleges recruit now. Some folks (me included) might think that would be a really bad idea. That gets into the purposes of high school sports, the risks of exploitation of young children, things like that.

What is the more effective educational model -- large schools with students from a large geographic area, or smaller neighborhood schools? What happens when there aren't enough spots at the "good" schools for the kids who want to go there? What happens when poor families can't send their children to the "good" schools because they can't transport them there? What if unlimited choice in the public schools leads to de facto segregation? And what do you do about the substantial number of people, both parents and educators, who believe that the type of athletic recruiting that happens at the college level is not appropriate when you're talking about 13-year-old children? Just a few questions that come to mind.

Heard Pelosi declare that health insurance is now a right, not a privilege. For the taxpayer in America, keeping a reasonable portion of what you work hard to earn is a privilege, not a right.

Mr. Williams is spot-on. I must say that I am also disappointed that the Republicans opposing this bill once again lost their way. They got sidetracked trying to score media points with criticisms of special deals or parliamentary processes. While those criticisms may be valid, I believe that spending time on them cost the Republicans a lot of momentum. The essence of what is wrong with this bill is the cost. The part of the cost that the Dems admit is there will be paid by cutting Medicare (which we all know Congress won't have the political will to do when the time comes) and by raising taxes (adding a new Medicare tax on top of the tax increase that those making $200K or more will see next year). Who cares if it is deficit-neutral, or even if it reduces the deficit in some relatively small amount over ten years? It does so only by raising taxes so the government can spend more of what some people earn on those who haven't earned it. And in the process of raising taxes, it is just going to make the recovery from the economic slow-down that much harder. I don't care what sort of piddly incentive Congress may offer me on the employer's share of social security for a new employee. I see what is ahead for me in my taxes, and I wouldn't dream of taking on the added expense of a new employee now. And this discussion doesn't even get to the part of the costs the Dems don't talk about. We're going to add millions of people to Medicaid, a giant unfunded mandate on the states. It is easy for the federal government to cut the deficit if they are shifting costs of their programs to the states. But at the end of the day, the problem is that the effect on the taxpayer is the same. The states will have to increase their taxes to fund these new Medicaid expenses, so that will be yet another tax increase for us. I used to figure that I worked about the first five months of the year for one level or another of the government. I think it is going up to about seven months. As unhappy as that makes me, here is what bothers me just as much -- for the first time in my adult life, I don't feel like I have a President. This guy has become so partisan in his own remarks (did anyone listen to his speech to the Dem caucus on Saturday?) and so mean-spirited in his attacks on anyone who dares to oppose him that I can no longer stand to listen. I realize that people oppose each other in politics and that elections have consequences. But once someone rises to the Presidency, it seems to me that he has to work hard to make sure that he is perceived as concerned about the welfare of us all, even those of us who didn't vote for him or don't agree with his policies. But this guy still seems like he is running for office and in the attack mode against anyone who questions or challenges him. Today I pay quite a lot of my money to the government so it can be given to others; yet I feel completely disenfranchised.

I suspect it is the local TV station, not TSSAA, that controls local television programming. I also suspect that the local TV station that considers whether to broadcast DII basketball championship games has to consider things like (1) network broadcast requirements, including other sporting events, for the Saturday of the games, and (2) expectations of advertisers who are paying for Saturday advertising slots. Come on, BH, quit looking for something to gripe at TSSAA about. The people who run local TV stations aren't ignorant. I'm sure they know they can get the feeds for these games if they want them. But if they decide that more of their viewers and advertisers would rather see Andy and Barney reruns, there's not anything TSSAA can do about it.

If TSSAA has the feeds available, then it seems like maybe it is the local TV stations that need to hear from the DII people.

Dandy, I think you are right. I've become convinced that the Prez is a well-educated, well-spoken radical who is being used to try to sell radical plans to those who don't know any better. Well, here's how it all works for me. I am not a millionaire or a fat cat. I am not rich. But I do have my own small professional business. I delayed earnings by 7 years to avail myself of the higher education needed to pursue my profession. I then started at the bottom and worked my way to where I am now, 29 years later. I spent most of my working years doing 60-80 hour work weeks. I didn't get overtime pay, but I was working my way to my current state of success. I missed out on a lot of my kids' time growing up, because I was working hard to help make sure our family would be able to live comfortably -- not lavishly, just comfortably. I didn't ask for anything. I worked my tail off to earn it. So here I am. My taxes are going up. The rate will go up, and the rate at which I can claim deductions will go down -- a double whammy. With the health care bill, I'll take an additional tax increase on my medicare taxes. A tax increase is no different than a cut in my pay ... it all hits the bottom line just the same. So what will I do? I have a part time employee that I will get rid of because I will no longer be able to afford her. I'll try to cut back on some of the supplies and services that I pay for -- which means the businesses that provide those supplies and services will get less from me, so they will have to make some cuts. I will cut back on my personal consumption. That car I was going to trade in last fall is still in my garage and will be for the next few years. I'll eat out less. I'll won't take my whole family on a vacation this summer as I had planned. It all hacks me off because I've worked hard and "paid my dues" to get to where I am. But beyond my own agitation and the lifestyle changes I must make, the reality is that for everything I cut, someone else is going to receive less from me, which means they will have to make cuts also. And there are millions of other folks out there just like me -- not rich, but still facing tax increases that they have to account for somehow in their daily lives. Millions of us cutting back so we can send more money into the government. All that cutting back just means more job losses and more economic suffering for others whose livelihood depends on us spending the money that the government is now going to take. This is so elementary, it continues to astound me how so many people just can't understand it. This is not about health care, jobs, the environment, or anything else. The stupid government is just spending too darned much money, and I'm sick of it.

I listened to Lamar Alexander's opening remarks at the health care "summit" a little while ago, and he wisely told the President that if he wants a truly bipartisan effort, he needs to take the big comprehensive bill off the table since Americans have tried every way they can to let Congress know that they don't want that bill, and the Dems need to take the nuclear option of the table. He offered about a half dozen proposals that he thought Reps and Dems could agree on. He said that they need to deal with health care issue-by-issue, focusing first on things that can be done to reduce the cost of insurance. He did a very good job of putting the Dems on the spot about the nuclear option. I hope Obama's opening remarks get posted somewhere, because he himself acknowledged that the Reps have been offering proposals -- they aren't just the party of "no" as the liberal pundits try to portray them. I cut it off during Pelosi's remarks. I was starting to yell at the radio. How in the world you can seriously suggest that a new multi-trillion dollar program will somehow help with deficit reduction -- when half a trillion of the cost is to be funded with pie-in-the-sky cuts in a Medicare program that will already be broke in five years and the rest will either be funded with higher taxes (which will worsen the recession and unemployment) or more deficit spending -- is completely beyond me. I don't know if she's that stupid, or if she's just arrogant enough to think the rest of us are that stupid.

And here we go again. A day after offering up his 2011 budget complete with more extraordinary deficit spending and recovery-killing tax increases on families making over $250K (rates go up, deductions are reduced, and capital gains rates increase), the Prez sends the Secretary of Defense out to announce that his department is going to do a one-year study on repealing the "don't ask don't tell" policy, and that the military will be lenient in its enforcement of the policy while that study proceeds. Last I heard, this policy actually was a law passed by Congress (10 U.S.C. Section 654). Seems it should be up to Congress, not the Prez, to repeal that law; and seems the Executive branch of the government should be bound to enforce the law until it is repealed. Then again, we can't allow that pesky Constitution and its separation of powers to get in the way of what our dictator wants. Actually, I figure most soldiers can take care of themselves. As long as we don't court-martial a good soldier for kicking the #### out of the gay guy who is ogling him in the shower, then I could care less what Congress does with this law. But we don't need the defense department spending a year to "study" this. This is nothing more than an election-year gimmick to make sure the Dems get the gay vote in the fall. The Prez needs to stop trolling for votes and start pushing for some serious cuts in government spending and some serious tax relief so people will have more of their own money to spend in order to get the economy moving again. The defense department needs to focus on how to kill the bad guys and win wars with minimal allied casualties. Wasting time (and you can bet some big money if there is going to be a "study") on gays-in-the-military crap, in a fairly transparent effort to make sure the issue is still on the minds of the gay community when they vote this fall, is an example of why the people of this country have become so disenchanted with our government.

Where are all the Joe Wilson critics? The Prez did something quite inappropriate in this address, directly attacking five members of the Supreme Court who paid him the customary respectful courtesy of attending this reading. Aside from the whole separation of powers thing, I just found it quite improper for the Prez to do this. There always will be ideological differences that frame the way members of the Supreme Court view cases; but we don't need a product of the Chicago political machine trying overtly to politicize the one federal government institution we have that is still worthy of respect, even when we disagree with a particular outcome. I personally found this, coming from a guy who was elected to what is supposed to be the most powerful position in the free world, to be quite undignified and a whole lot more offensive than a congressman raising his voice to point out what was indeed a false statement.

Amazing how for the first year of the Obama dynasty, Republican proposals never got out of committee and the Prez would hold meetings on the hill with Dems only to talk about how to get things passed. Didn't need the Republicans to pass anything ... but if he could get Olympia Snowe to go along with something, he could say it was "bipartisan." But now that the Republicans have that 41st seat in the Senate, he decided to talk about bipartisanship tonight. What a joke. By the way, did anyone count how many times he said "I" and "me" when he was supposed to be talking about the country? It was plenty in the early parts. Then I got so sick of it that I decided even my wife's American Idol reruns would be more tolerable.

It won't slow Pelosi. For Obama, the spin has begun. Saw a clip of his interview with George Stephanopoulos -- the Prez is trying to suggest that he and Brown were elected on the same wave of dissatisfaction with "the last eight years." Still trying to point the finger at Bush. Remember that Brown openly used stopping the health care bill as a reason why he should be elected. Brown's election is quite a clear repudiation of the Obama and Dem agenda. But the Prez is so smitten with himself that he still thinks he can sell his swampland to the American people. The Reps need to recognize that the Dems are now positioned to argue in the midterm elections that it is once again all the Reps fault because they are using their 41 votes in the Senate to block any meaningful reforms to help with the economy, health care, etc. The Reps need to be putting out some proposals of their own to deal with the economy, and they need to be selling them to the American people even if they have no chance of passing with the Dem majority in Congress. Otherwise, the near-term benefit of this win may be lost in the elections next fall.