SwamiSays

Any schools guidance department should be able to do the conversions. There is a formula to convert block hours. Its not hard and is used all the time. It is possible that credit recovery may have to happen, but its usually only for a class or twothat hasnt been taken at all with a block schedule. Block semesters will give a full credit where as a traditional schedule semester only gives a 1/2 credit. Contact the school where the student will be enrolling and ask for a guidance counselor.

Clawball, Are you sure that Hillsboro is open zoned? I was under the impression that in Nashville, only the magnet schools and the schools on the state failing list were open enrollement.

Maybe thats what we should do. Pool all the athletes togther. Have an outside source rank them. Then have an assignmet proccess to divvy them to the schools. Everyone gets the same number of athleted and that have a cummulative score that is identical. Thats about as asanine as what we are doing now. Right?

I have said it before that a multiplier is unfair. Your idea of the merit system is intriguing, but how do you make it work? Are there still classifications? And then if you win a championship at your classification, would you move up to another classification based on your successs of the previous year? As an aging athlete, I used to play in a softball league that basically did just that. If you won a division, or if you won too many games, you were foreced to move up. Then of course, you got the snot kicked out of you, you had a miserable season, and then you went back down in classification. I also played on a very elite team that was in the highest division, and we would occassionally sandbag a game to set up who we would be playing somewhere down the road. I know that are not too many similarities between the two sports, but using those ideas to show what I am trying to get at, how do you keep a merit system from becoming innately unfair as well?

I'm afraid you may be exactly right.

The game hasnt changed as much as all the other stuff outside the lines. The idea of what it all about has completely changed for many. Win at all cost, and if I cant beat you, I can come up with an excuse of why I didnt win. And if you win too much, you must have some unfair advantage that I dont have; that seems to be the way many think these days. I remember back to some of my old coaches...and I mean very old school. Yelling, screaming, jerking me around by my helmet, thumping me on the back of my head, making me bear crawl for what seemed like miles, putting me in a pit against a guy 3 years older and 50 pounds heaver...and I loved almost every minute of it! We survived those coaches and were proud of it, and the wins were an added bonus and the losses taught us lessons on how to be a man no matter what the situation. Yet those days are gone, and will never be again. And so the world of athletics, in many places, has become a world of bickering and finger pointing, and has lost the idea of what the original intent was all about.

I agree. If they are charging tuition for athletes to come in from other areas, then they do need to have some sort of handicap. Has anyone ever looked into how many athletes are being charged tuition at the schools you mention? And to me, it brings up the question; is there any type of financial assistance given? I serioulsy doubt it, but it does leave the door wide open for someone other then the parents to pay that tuition. Lordy, what a can of worms.

In the great words of our moderator, "Wrong wrong wrong." Seriously, my friend, I am certainly not who you have referenced

I can definitely see why it can look unequal. Can someone from USJ or CPA speak to the effects of the multiplier? Did the multiplier cause the drop in wins, or was there other factors? Was it just the natural ebb and flow of talent that sometimes occur and happened to coincide with the multiplier era? Are they having trouble adjusting to the new classification? Did they lose athletes because of the multiplier? Lots of questions! Jaxman, are you a USJ supporter? can you tell what happened there? Is it all multiplier related?

I see your point. My question is this, is it actually a "larger" advantage for small open zoned publics, or is it the same advantage and you are saying that there should be an equal handicap for both public and privates alike? I think you are saying the latter. And I totally agree that there should be equal handicapping, if any at all. I honestly dont know the answer to this next question, and hope someone can tell me...are there small privates, that were winning championships before the multiplier, and are now losing programs because of the multiplier? My original point, several posts ago, is that many have forgetten the lesson of athletics, and have lost it to the thinking that only winning is acceptable and valued. While multipliers do seem unfair in one light, they are see as fair in another. Its a very difficult situation to make it fair all the way around.

In many ways, I agree with your proposal. The only point that I was trying to make, and having been on both sides of the fence, it that by nature, publics will always be lagging behind privates. Because of that, in many ways, privates will have an advantage. One problem with open zoned multipliers is that you will en essense be creating more classifications. From what I understand, Memphis is basically open zoned. Several of those schools are already in the largest classification. If you give them a multipiler, it either changes nothing and they stay in the largest classification, or you create an even larger classification. If you are talking about smaller publics that have open zones, are you talking about open zoning, or are you talking about out of zone students? Open zones are still limited to the county lines, a large area indeed, but it is still not the expansive area that some privates pull from that cover several counties. Again, my point is we have what we have. There will always be exceptions to every situation. There will always be a perceived unfairness by someone. I personally dont like the multiplier at all, but I do understand its purpose. Has it kept winning programs from winning? I dont have the complete answer to that, but from what I have seen, no it has not. Some say it has hurt the smallest of the privates, but how many championships were they winning before the multiplier hit? I am not trying to be insulting at all. Has anyone, and I'm sure they have, done any studies on teams that were at the top of their classification before the multiplier, and now are no longer competitive since the advent of the multiplier? Can it be directly tied to the multiplier, or is it other factors that have happened i.e; coaching changes, loss of talent, school climate changes, etc.?

Coach, the only problem I have with the merit system it that ultimately, it punishes a team for its success, only in a little bit slower and innocuous way. With this system, the better you do, the higher you move up in classification. I agree whole heartedly that performance is what the final analysis should be about. But a true merit system would eventually have small schools forced to play large schools based on their success, unless you limit who they can play based on size, and then you are not a true merit system any more. I'm sure I am worng somewhere along the way here, so please correct me.

hhhmmmm...I'm not sure how to respond to this post. You seem to be intentionally argumentative and very immature in the way you chose to write your post. I can visualize you throwing a temper tantrum and beating your fists on the desktop. As you put it, "Wrong Wrong Wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" how silly of you. Apparently, you missed the point of the golf analogy. It isnt about playing golf, for goodness sake. Its about the advantage of offering a superior product. In your own words, "I hate to burst your bubble" but private schools have been around for thousnds of years, long before countries like the US even existed. Privates were created to give advantages to a select few, typically those who could afford it. There were exceptions and benefactors, and there was the Catholic Church who had a mission to try to educate all, but education as a whole, over centuries was reserved for a privileged few. Countries who had the wisdom and means to provide free education to all knew they were doing so against traditional educational philosophies, but did so anyway. Public education has always been trying to catch up to private. Unfortunately for privates, the one area where many publics have been able to catch and even exceed privates is in athletics. When the privates found a way around that, the public powers that be put in rules to limit that. Is that wrong? In my opionion, yes it is. Is that what we have? Yes it is. Can privates, even small privates, win within that? Of course they can. And have they? Yes they have. And there is nothing sad about what compelled(you actually said impelled, whatever that means) me to make my "first" posts on CoachT. Unfortunately, like the rest of your post, it is immaturity and ignorance that led you to making such a statement. I have been on CoachT for years. Years that go back beyond yours. My original member number was about half of yours. The number of posts, nor the recent rejoining of CoachT has nothing to do with the legitimacy of my opinion and what I have posted here. As an athletic minded person, you should know that it doesnt matter when you join the dance, all that matters is that you are on the floor. I think you might better be called an instigator, not a moderator. I once had the honor of sitting on a presidential summit on education. President Reagan and I talked briefly at the conclusion of the meeting and we talked about leadership and leadership styles. He told me that no matter the situation, he always tried to maintain the position of the most mature person in the room. As a moderator, you might want to try that.

I think the biggest difference that I have seen is that the private school students are typically there as a matter of a positive choice made by the family. The public school kids, where there have been zoning rules, are there by a matter of enforcement of zoning. That completely changes the atmosphere of a school. Honestly, it has been my experience that many publics offer an education that is in many instances superior to privates. Because of sheer size, they have a much greater range of course offerings and AP courses. With that being said as an advantage for publics, privates have the advantage of atmosphere. My public experiences have shown me that in many cases, there is a general uncouth and base behavior that occurs in many public schools. A kid in a public school has a much greater chance of hearing profanity or seeing a fight than in a private. Therefore, parents who do not want their kids to see these types of behaviors(and almost all parents fall into this category), and can afford to or can find a way to, will almost always chose a private over a public. So now you have a distinct advantage slanted towards privates. You have to ask this question; why are the kids in privates schools there? Because someone in their lives didnt want them in a public. Why are the public kids in publics? Because, for many of them, there was no other choice or alternative. You are definitely correct in that the small privates are paying the price for what the large DII privates have caused. Even with that being the case, I don't believe it is that detrimental to the privates to have a multiplier. I personally think that it provides a greater challange and can lead to a greater sense of accomplishment when the successes do occur. And from what I have observed, a lot of the privates who have not been that successful since the advent of the multiplier were not that successful before. I do not mean that in an insulting way at all. Also, there is a natural up and down of wins and losses with most programs. Some happened to be on a downswing when the multiplier came into effect, the downswing was made more glaring by the multiplier, but ultimately it has been the multiplier that was solely blamed for the losses. As for magnets, the could have a very distinct advantage if it were just a matter of choice by a kid to go there. Its not. They must meet certain requirements as far as test scores and academics, and in most cases, they are responsible for their own transportation. Both become prohibitive to many students and the families that want their kids to attend. I am sure there are many more than I am aware of, but know of only a very few magnets who have won state championships, and none to the extent of many publics and privates alike that have won multiple year after year championships

I really don't want to get into any kind of argument with you, coach. It seems that in some of your responses that is the direction you want to take things. I am a supporter of both public and private and the lessons that athletics teach. As far as the differences in public and private and the difference between free or cost, that makes it that much easier for privates to get who they want in their building. We are all aware of schools that have found ways of assistance to bring in students who have a particular talent. Back to the golf course thing, because of its exclusivity of a country club, it makes it more desireable for the masses to find a way in. If some how, some way, a way onto that course appears, do you think someone will turn that down so they can keep playing on their "free" but run down and worn out course? Probably not. That is the reason for the multipier. A better product has advantages because they are a better product. Do I think thats fair? No I don't. A Big Bertha driver has advantages over a k-mart Northwestern. Do you handicap the Bertha? No. Would it be fair to do so? No. But you cannot deny that the advantage exists. Some disgruntled and possibly misguided individuals found a way to get an unfair handicapping system in place in high school sports. Its wrong. Period. There is no way to level any playing field. The whole purpose of playing any game is to figure out who is better, ergo the team with more advantages. After a number of instances when the perception was that some privates had too many advantages, a system was put in place to try to limit those advantages. My point is that everyone needs to begin to better face the cards they are dealt. A handicapping system is in place with the multiplier. It has affected some greatly, others none at all. But all are under that system and must play within those boundaries. The only fairness to about any sport is that you get to play. In football, put your best 11 on the field and expect the other team to do the same. The publics are handicapped by being public and are very limited in their attractiveness. The privates are being handicapped because of their attractiveness. So which is better or worse? It doesnt matter. Its what we have and no matter what it put in place, one team will win, and one will lose. Someone will go home happy and the other will go home less than happy. People (coaches, parents, athletes) need to stop getting their self worth tied up in their wins and losses. It seems that too many people have forgotten that its ok to lose, if you do it with your head held high and with your best effort. There are lessons to be learned with losses that are just as important as lessons to be learned iwth wins. Coach, I have read yor posts for years. You are an intelligent and well read person. I know you will apply your form of logic and perspective to pick apart my post and thats fine. Just try to do it with a little more universal perspective, not just one of a small private school who is feeling picked on for being small, private, and with its share of successes. I've been in schools of over 3,000 and in schools of less than 500. I've been public and I've been private. I feel I have a broad enough and deep enough understanding to speak fairly intellligently to both sides of the equation.

You are right, the privates did get punished for their success and for the perception that they were recruiting. But because a private is a typically more attractive educational setting, they do have an innate advantage that the publics will never have. In many cases, the only inducement an open zoned public can offer is that they are an open zoned school. Privates are basically the same as far as zoning(open), with the added advantage of being able to tout a more attractive education package. When the publics started offering open zoning, they in essence were trying to self level the playing field with the privates that were by nature already open zoned. I dont know if you are a golfer or not, the the advantages of privates over publics can be looked at like this; where would you rather play golf? The municipal course that is a little shabby, a little run down, and who knows who will show up and be playing in front of or behind you? Or would you rather be playing at a country club, with exclusive membership, plush greens, and a guy handing you a towel in the restroom? The question is definitely rhetorical, but I think it goes a long way to prove the point...by nature, privates have advantages that publics will never have. Wins are wins, losses are losses. There are lessons to be learned from both. Ultimately, high schools sports are about teaching and learning those lessons, not about the win/loss column. Many of us often get caught up in the stats and trophies and forget the purpose of even having athletics to begin with. When a school gets a "national ranking" because of their success at a sport, great for them. It makes all Tennessee athletics look better and makes no difference if they are public or private. People look and say, "wow, they've got some athletes down there in Tennessee." They dont typically say, "wow, I bet they are recruiting in Tennesse and that multiplier they have isnt working at all."

I think on an individual basis, many of the concerns voiced here are valid. However, I don't think most are looking at the bigger picture that has been happening for a long time. With the influx of privates that have sprung up in the last 40 years as a response to desegregation in the larger urban areas, the privates have pulled many of the top athletes away from public schools. Whether by intentional recruiting or by offering the perception of a better education, this is what has happened. Whether or not the education is better or not is up for debate and answered on an individual basis by each student and their family. The more rural areas then jumped on the private institution band wagon and several privates have opened up in those areas. In many districts around the state, the public schools began to offer open zones to allow parents a choice. The choices then became not just a public or private school, it became a choice of several publics or whatever privates may be in the area. The open zoning is an effort by public schools to keep or bring back the kids they lost to privates. In urban school districts, open zoned schools became a reality with the advent of No Child Left Behind, and were originally intended only for schools that were deemed failing schools. This is not much of an advantage for any school. No matter the athletic ability of a kid, most parents wont let their child go to a failing school just to play a sport. Public districts also have opened magnet schools as another enticement to retain or gain back students lost to privates. However, there are academic admission standards that must be met by students that are can be restrictive. So that also makes it very difficult to use that as a tool for publics to bring in enough top quality athletes to allow their teams able to compete with schools with multipliers. My point? While there does seem to be a case for a multiplier for open zoned publics, and magnets, when looked as a whole, the advantage of these schools minimal at best. Publics in many cases just cannot match up to privates. A failing public school system as a whole has lead to some fantastically talented private teams. A failing public system has also lead to some fantasticly talented ACADEMIC private schools, but there is never much argument about that, is there? There are some fantastically successful publics out there, both academically and athletically. With sports minded competitors, advantages are always exposed and complained about. Everyone wants to win. But not everyone gets to. Thats life. Privates do the best they can to attract students, and so do publics. Thats the nature of the beast. I have worked in both public and privates, as a coach, a teacher, and administrator in both settings. I have sat on committees and boards at each of those positions. I know what is said behind closed doors. There is no answer to the problems that everyone thinks they are pointind a finger at. There is a dichotomy that cannot be solved with a multiplier or a different classification or a merit system. This is just they way things are with the world we live in. Practice your teams and play your games. If you win, learn to win with grace and humility. If you lose, learn the same lesson. Hard work does not always pay off, on the field. Great talent does not always pay off, on the field. It is the lesson learned from those experiences that does pay off. Coaches nad parents, set that example for your kids, and the lessons that sports are supposed teach will be learned by all of those who are privileged enough to ever step foot on any court or field of organized high school competition.