Will School Choice Kill Athletics?

Nancy Bailey, a retired teacher and longtime blogger, asked a good question this week-- Will school choice destroy athletics as we know it?

Let me provide the answer from Pennsylvania-- the shape of high school athletics "as we know it" is already deeply influenced by school choice.

It's worth remembering that we have always had school choice-- what we're talking about these days is really taxpayer-subsidized school choice. But the school choice we already have in Pennsylvania is more than enough to shape the athletic landscape.

Right now, the top rankings of high school basketball are dominated by Catholic high schools, with a few private schools thrown in for good measure. Flip back through the years on sports site MaxPreps, and you'll see the same names year after year. Same thing for girls' basketball. You can see the same thing in football, though not quite as pronounced. 

But if you are a Pennsylvania high school enjoying a really good year in sports, you will almost certainly meet one of the usual private Catholic schools on your path through the playoffs. 

The secret is recruiting, and it works just like college. Woo the family, promise a good spot on a successful team, and throw in a hefty scholarship. Plus, perhaps, some help in relocating the student or even the family to the location. In my state, Catholic and other private schools recruit-- and they recruit hard. We think of "school's choice" as gatekeeping-- the school just sits there and sifts through the applications that come in. But for high stakes operations like these, recruitment is a big deal. Schools actively choose students without passively waiting for them to show up.

Pennsylvania privates enjoy an extra advantage. We classify school sports through A rankings (Single A all the way up through 6A) based on enrollment size-- not the size of the population the district serves. So 2A public schools with small student bodies get to compete with 2A Catholic schools that also have small student bodies--but which can draw from students anywhere in the state. (And if you call them out on this in, say, a local newspaper column, their athletic director will send you a cranky letter filled with non-denial denials.)

Recruitment is a feature of choice, and always has been (it was used by the "miracle" T.M. Landry school). Because schools need to be able to do marketing, they will go after students who can help them with that marketing, whether it's by strengthening a sports program or helping a high-profile marching band or keeping test numbers up. Turning school choice into taxpayer-subsidized school choice just supercharges the whole business, putting more money into the recruitment kitty. 

Nancy Bailey's piece covers other states and has some excellent references-- you should read it and keep in mind that in some states, the transformation of school sports by school choice athletics began years ago, much to the frustration of many public school programs.