Schools Don’t Sacrifice Academics For Athletics

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vectorboysoccerFrom Your Health Journal…..”I have not promoted the Education Week web site in a while, as it is one of my favorite web sites. Recently, I found an article by Bryan Toporek called Schools Don’t Sacrifice Academics For Athletics. So many times here, we have discussed the correlation between physical activity and cognitive skills. In fact, I 100% believe that children who regularly participate in sport and fitness (as well as physical education) benefit academically. Related to this, academic and athletic success may actually be correlated. The authors of a recent study found that schools which emphasize athletic success and participation also tended to have higher scores on standardized tests and higher graduation rates. The authors of the study call for further research into determining whether there is a causal relationship between athletic and academic success. Still, they’re confident enough to say, based on their findings, that winning on the field and winning in the classroom tend to go hand in hand. Please visit and support the Education Week web site (link provided below) to read the complete article.”

From the article…..

High schools that succeed athletically are not necessarily punting on their academic success, according to an analysis published recently in the Journal of Research in Education.

As it turns out, academic and athletic success may actually be correlated. The authors found that schools which emphasize athletic success and participation also tended to have higher scores on standardized tests and higher graduation rates.

The authors, Jay P. Greene, the head of the department of education reform at the University of Arkansas, and Daniel H. Bowen, a distinguished doctoral fellow of education policy at the university, set out to investigate the link between athletic success and academic success in Ohio high schools.

They weren’t initially sure what they’d find. In the introduction of the analysis, the authors theorize that “producing success in one arena” (athletics) might cause a reduced “investment in success in another” (academics). However, they also suggest “the potential for synergies in education,” with athletics being able to teach students skills such as self-discipline.

As it turns out, the latter theory appears to be more on target.

The authors examined data from 657 public high schools in Ohio over a five-year span and found that “a school’s commitment to athletics is positively related to academic success,” according to the analysis. A 10 percentage point increase in a school’s overall winning percentage was associated with a 1.3 percentage point increase in an estimate of its high school graduation rate.

Football produced the largest impact of any sport, but each sport analyzed “independently produces a positive, significant effect,” the authors found.

The number of sports that each high school offers also appeared to have an effect on academic success. The estimated graduation rate of a high school rose by 0.3 percentage points for every new sport added.

Athletic success also appeared to be correlated with academic proficiency. Increasing a school’s overall winning percentage by 10 percentage points was associated with a 0.25 percentage point increase in the number of students achieving academic proficiency or better. Adding one sport increased the number of students reaching academic proficiency by 0.2 of a percentage point, the authors found.

To read the full article…..Click here