Season 2, Episode 4: Should there be in-person sports when schools are remote?

Hey, Michael.

Hey, Diane. How you doing?

I am so happy right now. My son is home for the weekend from college and that's the one emotion. The mixed emotion is he's brought a few friends with him. And I'll be honest. MICHAEL how's that? Well, it's amazing. And at the same time I realize, like there's so much shame attached with this virus and I feel really kind of nervous and kind of worried. And I it's the most joy I've had in a long time to be around sort of college aged energy. So.

Well, I'm glad. I'm I'm glad, frankly, that the joy is outweighing, outweighing the guilt, because the guilt is definitely something I think we feel because there's social pressures around us, there's norms. We're judging ourselves even if others aren't judging us as we think they are.

Indeed. Indeed. I went to the grocery store and had all this food and I was embarrassed. You know, I was worried that the person at the checkout was going to say, hey, are you having a party? And so, yeah, it's a dilemma for sure.

Well, I think you're reflecting again, you know, why we're having this conversation, because you're not the only parent who's having a lot of mixed emotion educator as well, in your case, who's trying to sort out all the different things going on. So with that, I'd love to dive in because I've been holding a topic out for you for a few weeks now that I'm getting, dying to get your take on for several reasons. And the headline is this, DIANE which is that Great Schools, the organization that offers schools ratings and is used by real estate agents and people to make decisions about where they will move and how much value they ascribe to their house and everything else. They've changed their rating system in an effort to delink it from race and poverty.

MICHAEL that's a really good one. It's much more than a superficial headline or clickbait. There's something very real there. And you know, I have brought I really want to hear your thoughts on the stance that I'm seeing parents and kids take across the country, and that is even though school is virtual, they want sports to be in person. And not surprisingly, they're encountering a bit of resistance from the schools themselves on this one.

I can imagine. So let's start there.

DIANE Great. Okay. So, Michael, although the numbers aren't exactly clear, we do know that a significant number of schools across the nation continue to be completely virtual without any students engaging in physical buildings. There is a whole bunch of conversation, and that's a whole other dialogue, as you know, about what that looks like. But what we're seeing in many places is that parents and students are insisting that even if school's virtual, they want an in person activities. And this is heavily focused on sports.

Of course it is. It's America.

Exactly. And not surprisingly, heavily dominating the headlines of football. So. And you know what, though? In some cases, the school boards and school leadership are really resistant to this. And the case that they're making is if it isn't safe to be in school at. In school, in person, in a building, sports where kids are in contact with each other, they're breathing heavily, they're in huddles, they're sweating, they're doing all of that. That's not safe either. And so some school systems are going even further and making the point that the first priority of school is learning. And if that's happening virtually, then we certainly can't prioritize sports being in person. And so, as I look at this playing out across the country, what I think is really interesting is something that we've been aware of, Michael, since last March when the pandemic began, and that distance learning has made really clear to people, and that is that school serves not only an academic and learning purpose or needs, but as we've talked about, it's also about childcare. And that has been front and center. Something that's really emerged as the fall opened up and that is this intense focus on schools serving the purpose of social engagement and active engagement and time with friends. And, you know, this is something that families, I hear more and more say is the number one priority for why they want to get their kids back into the school building is social, you know, engagement. And so, Michael, you think a lot about the job of school and the job that school is supposed to do. And so I'm so curious to hear your take on this.

Yeah. So I have a few reactions and I confess, obviously you've taught me a lot about this from the first season and caused me to write about it for Forbes. Not the sports aspect of it, but the social aspect of it. So I have a few reactions and I'll just give first a few observations. First, having fun with friends, that's a, that's core to what schools do from the perspective of students themselves. They want to have fun with friends, and schools in the best of times, they do that really, really well. Second, unsurprisingly, Perhaps from the perspective of parents, they too want their children to have fun with friends when they go to school. And socialization, honestly right now is the number one reason I hear when parents say, oh, we're sending our kids back to a hybrid arrangement rather than all virtual, because they want their kids in a schooling environment that is social. Now, what's striking to me in that, and this is not an observation, this is opinion, is that traditional schools, as you've pointed out in ordinary times, are, are not actually particularly social in the learning environments themselves. Even worse this year, right?

Yes.

I mean, that's why we pulled our kids into a homeschooling pod so that they could get that socialization and real socialization in the learning. Now, third reaction that I have is that outside of the quote, unquote coasts, if you will, of America, I think this reflects that people's sense of achievement in the country is, is multifaceted. It's not just test scores, grades, and elite colleges like they are in certain communities, but they value other forms of achievement. And I'll give something here that's also not an observation, but a bit of an opinion, which is that, and maybe a little counterintuitive for me, but I think it's really healthy that we don't. That we have pockets of this country still that don't put their entire self worth in those three elements of elite colleges, grades and test scores. I look at a place like Korea or Japan where, you know, I've spent time in both places looking at their education systems. And the only way to be successful in their societies is through tests. And I just think that gating function on one thing is so misplaced, Diane, because there's lots of ways to be successful in society, and that's the part of America that I think is valuable when we go beyond just tests is that indicator. Now, the fourth thing I think is that I think this shows that nostalgia is deep in the minds and hearts of parents and communities, and parents are a deeply conservative force countering chances of change in schools. And I think this illustrates that, right? They're saying, okay, our kids are home, but we still want sports. And then the last thing that occurs to me is that, you know, it just, it's not an. It's not a new observation, but an observation nonetheless, which is that sports has a big stranglehold in the American culture. And it's not just in schools, but in all facets of our lives. And I confess, I get it. I'm a sports nut. I was big into sports in High school tennis. And I would never have been introduced to cross country and sort of fitness had it not been for high school sports. And I would also say for me personally, in high school, I learned that when you invest in sports and in the school culture, you get more out of it personally, out of the school itself. And so, you know, I think there was a lot of value there. But. But I just so often wish we could separate sports out from schools, certainly at the collegiate level, where I think, just to be blunt, Diane, there's a lot of student athletes, quote, unquote, who are just getting screwed right now by schools that are making millions and millions of dollars off their likeness and images and so forth. And those kids get nothing. They get a scholarship out of it for being there for a year or two with hopefully a ticket to the big leagues. And I just think it's so exploitative at that level. But you know, even at the level of K through 12 schools, I was talking recently with a tennis coach that I've worked with and my kids work with, and she's also a teacher at a school and a coach at that school. And she was just saying, you know, because of all the restrictions that they're putting around face to face contact, what they're seeing is that parents are opting for their kids to have sports outside of the school. And I just think on some level that makes a lot of sense to separate these things out. I'm curious your take on that.

All fascinating points, Michael, and as always, you made me. I'm really still processing your comments around Japan, where I've also spent some time looking at their education system. Super interesting insights. I want to pick up on these last points you're making. The nostalgia and then the outsize impact of sports, because this is what's really sitting heavily with me on this topic. First, Americans often can't imagine a school without sports teams. It's just like schools are sports, right? And yet what I don't think most Americans realize is that in many, many other countries, sports are discoupled from the schools. They're not attached. And so, Michael, this trend of what you're describing, of parents actually just moving outside of that and oh, by the way, this is a trend that's happening with elite high school athletes already with all this math class, for sure, it's

been going on for years, right?

But this decoupling is natural in the majority of the world, I would argue. And you know what's interesting about it is I actually think it might be better for kids, athletes Schools and everyone else who is involved, because really, at the root of it, the. We ask our schools to do too many things. You know, this notion of a comprehensive school goes against every best practice that anyone knows of an organization or a company everyone knows to be great. You can't focus on 100 different things. You actually.

Right. If you focus on 100 things, by definition, you have no priorities.

Exactly. And I think that's what we're seeing here, is that, you know, and I will tell you, in my history of being a school leader and a systems leader, I've always been concerned. Concerned with the outsize impact that sports have on every single child in a school, even those who aren't playing them. And. And let's be clear. On average, fewer than 30% of students in your typical American high school actually play any sort of Sport. Fewer than 30%.

That's so striking. That number. That is so striking.

And yet sports end up dictating so much of what happens for every single student in the school. And this is what I think people don't really understand because you've got to look under the hood here. So, for example, the bus schedule, which many kids still get to school via a whole intricate bus system, drives the master schedule, which drives every course that's offered, when it's offered to whom it is offered, who can take what. People don't understand that the start of the day, the end of the day, is often driven by the bus schedule, which is driven by the sports schedule, because they've got to coordinate all those buses to. To take teams, drop them off, pick them up, and take kids to and from school. And having been the person who had to coordinate all of that and work through all of that, what ends up dominating is the sports. The sports really drive all of those things that are happening in the schedule. And when you really get inside and look at the inner workings, you're like, whoa, wait a minute. How is a team of 30 kids determining what hundreds and thousands of kids are able to do in a school experience? And that's not even to mention now you get into the teachers. And so what people don't often realize is when you're a teacher and a student is absent, and let's be clear, athletes have to miss a lot of school because they have to miss class to get to their game or get to their match.

As a teacher, I had 30 unexcused absences from chemistry because of tennis team my sophomore year.

Exactly, exactly. You know exactly what I'm talking about, teachers. That it is Significantly more work for a teacher when a student is absent. And so, you know, there's only so many hours in a day, Michael. And when teachers are grappling with that and expected to grapple with that, it's got to come from somewhere. And what it does is it comes from everyone else that the teacher could be focusing on or spending time on. And so there's all of these sort of cascading impacts that I don't think that people realize or see see with the centering of a sports program in school experience. And it's not just at high school, it's at middle school, too. We see a pressure to even pull sports down into elementary schools. Now, I will be honest with you, at this point, usually people start looking at me and accusing me of being anti sports, which is not true. Michael, as someone who personally engaged in both the sports, multiple sports and school activities, student body president, you know, all of those things. And as someone who, as you know, had a really challenged experience and those activities are what got me out of bed many mornings and got me to school, I know that argument incredibly well. And this is the argument parents and kids make is like, this is why they go to kids go to school for these activities. So I just want to point us back, though. We're talking 30% at the most. What about the other? Who are we leaving out? And what I would argue is because we can make this argument over here, we actually aren't incentivized to really rethink how we're doing school for 100% of our kids so that it could truly be engaging. It could be the draw for them. It could be meaningful and relevant in a way that school itself would pull kids to be there because they're seen and they're known and they're building their identity and exploring. And as we've talked about, schools like that are totally possible. So maybe sports are actually one of the reasons that we're not that are kind of holding us in the status quo, not. Not encouraging us to change.

Yeah, I just listening to you there, Diane. I just took away a few reflections, one of which is Marguerite Rosa, and if our listeners don't know her work, check it out. She's written some very short, digestible books on school finance. And one of the takeaways is that many schools don't realize the disproportionate amount of money that they're spending on sports and not academics. And so those schools end up serving people with a lot of wealth disproportionately in Sports, as opposed to those students who maybe need the most resources, get short shrift and they don't even realize they're doing this because of resource allocation decisions like the ones you're describing, driven by sports often. And she often cites this example of cheerleading and things like that.

Yeah.

The second reaction I had was we talked in a past episode a lot about the potential of disruptive innovation, of micro schools being disruptive. And I made this point that I think is counterintuitive for many people, that it would serve people who are, quote, unquote, overserved by traditional schools. And on the surface you'd say what school is over serving the American student right now? But what you just laid out is exactly that dynamic. Only 30% of students are benefiting from sports directly. That's 70% who don't. And some of them, maybe they get some sort of school spirit dynamic, arguably, but I'd venture that a significant percentage do not and that in many cases they feel left out and it's a negative impact. And for all those students, they're being overserved on that dimension of schooling where it would be much better if they, if we pulled that out and, and unbundled it or modularized it. Now that's big Silicon Valley idea, but I think it's a really important concept, which is that integration is great when you're sort of underserving, but as you start to overserve, pulling out bundles and letting different aspects be good at really what they're doing. So sports teams, you be really good at sports teams, sports leagues, you really specialize there. Academics and students excelling and preparing for life, you really focus there. And this gets into the second piece, which is, you know, you talked about the potential to develop a lot of the skills, habits of success, character skills that we so often associate in positive ways with sports. But that your point is that we can do this in the context of academic learning, you know, teamwork, projects. Right. But also communication, planning, even strategy and like concepts like that, and even building social capital, which sports are really good at. You can do that if you reframe the learning environment to a project based one where you're working in teams and tackling real meaty projects of consequence. And so, and that actually can make schooling social, by the way, not just for the students who happen to opt in, but for all of the students. And it can delight parents in the process and prepare people for their future. And so I think, I guess my takeaway from that is we can take what sports do so well, build it into the learning environment, make sure it's for all students and, and not be anti sports, but allow those to exist in leagues that are decoupled from the actual school boards themselves running it.

Michael, for me, the big takeaway from this conversation is exactly what you're saying and just points back to the fact that in order for us to get there as a country and as local communities, we desperately need to revisit the purpose of school. That's the beginning point for, for making these decisions and these shifts. What is it we're expecting from and wanting from school itself? And is what we want realistic or even possible? Or do we need to think about getting all those things we want in different ways? And so, yeah, that, that's my takeaway. I really appreciate your insights as always. And now I can't wait to get to what you've brought to us today. So interesting.

I'm incredibly interested in your take on it. And so the quick summary for those that don't know, you know, great schools, as I said, is changing their formula to determine the ratings of schools. And the background is this. There's an incredibly tight correlation between socioeconomic status of students and their test scores, such that raw test results on end of year exams, what educators call summative tests, they're often just reflections of the incomes of the families in that school. And as we know, there is a correlation, now less of one, but still very present, between black families and Latinx families and socioeconomic status. And for sure, that's also true for white communities in certain parts of the country as well. Right. But this disproportionately impacts how we view the schools that serve these students. And as a result, a system of ratings that measures raw test scores basically just reflects who the families are in the school. It doesn't actually tell us that much more information than that, which then causes this vicious circle to result. People with means who exercise school choice already in our country move to places with good ratings, which just means that they move to places with people like them, which further reinforces the ratings. And you get the idea. Now, the big idea behind this new rating system is that looking at what education researchers call value added factors, the growth that students make is a much better way to measure, quote, unquote, the quality of a school. Now this is because it takes into account their starting points and asks theoretically, how much progress did individual students make so we can see how much the school theoretically contributed now.

Yeah, how good the school actually is at teaching kids. Right.

Versus can you imagine?

Yeah.

So great School's new approach puts more weight on growth or how students progress over time. It's also increased the weight of the equity measure, which is specifically looking at low income students and students of color. How did they perform? And I'm sympathetic to this point. Very sympathetic. And John Dean, who used to work for you at Summit Public Schools and now is the CEO of Great Schools. You know, his quote to Chalk Beat that wrote about this was that the new system is better because there's more of a focus on learning and growth and what's actually happening in schools. And we know that's more important. But here's the rub, Diane, from my perspective, which is that I think this is an improvement. I want to say that very clearly. But Great Schools itself says that the average school will see only a modest score change on, on, on average, a school serving high poverty students will see an increase of 2, 10 of a point, and affluent schools, on average will see a decline of 2/10 of a point. That's not a lot. And so before I get into sort of more of what's going on in my head, I'm just curious, what do you make of all this? And, and you know, given your knowledge of probably what went through John's mind as they made this change, I'd love some perspective.

Yeah. Well, as I said, this is much more than a clickbait headline or something real under this. And, you know, maybe where I'm going to enter this, Michael, is to remind folks that it's only been a couple of months, really. But after the murder of George Floyd, many organizations and companies made public statements, as you and I both know. I mean, I stopped counting when I got over 100 of these emails.

Yeah.

And I stopped counting, quite frankly.

Yeah.

And many of them, if not most, were committing to becoming anti racist and anti bias. And we heard like, big claims and big statements. And I also heard a lot from communities of color, some serious skepticism and doubt about like, oh, yeah, here's another moment in time, but what is really going to come of it? And you know, what does this actually mean? Your statement are these just words. And so you know what I see see in what John and Great Schools are trying to do is an organization that's actually trying to do that work. And so I just want to, you know, we're in a moment in time where society does not give a lot of grace to anyone right now. There is not a lot of space for, you know, saying that you were wrong and trying to change and doing something better. And so for Me, when I look at this and I look at the work they're trying to do, I just want to acknowledge they've acknowledged that it's a problem, that something they've been doing had an, you know, it's an unintended consequence. Great schools didn't intend to cause this, but now that they know that it is, they're trying to fix it. And if we don't just allow a little bit of space for organizations to do that, I don't know how we're ever going to get better. And so. So that's my first take.

Yeah, just to pause you there, I'm deeply appreciative of that point. I think it's a really important perspective to give people grace and evaluate great schools with a growth mindset, frankly, on that as well. But so just thank you for that.

Yeah, yeah. No, you know, my second take is, look, they, they have done an initial. They tried something initially. It looks like it's only going to move the needle a little. Is that work perfect? No. Is that work done? No. But what I know about the sort of the science of improvement, if you will, and you know, I spend a lot of time in this space with a lot of people. You know, this science that has come out of healthcare and we're really trying to bring into education is it's all about these small and steady incremental improvements. There aren't silver bullets. And so, you know, what we should be asking ourselves is, all right, if we got 2/10 of a point this time, like, what's the next iteration that's going to get us more? And what's the next iteration that's going to get us more? And can we give this organization some space to continue to improve and move in the right direction? And so that's what I'm looking for for them. And there's urgency. It has to move fast, you know, and so I get the balance there, but that's really what I'm looking for.

You know, just hearing you say that, Diane, it makes me reflect that not all this is on them. They're using states measures on this. And so, you know, a big thing that when I read this is that there's a big challenge, which is that great schools can only do so much with the data that's out there. And a big challenge is that states, in many cases, they're not actually measuring what I would consider real growth because the assessments, they often only have grade level items on them. So if I'm a quote unquote, fifth grade Student by age. I came in into second grade math level. I got to fourth grade math. We should be singing from freaking rooftops. But the test at the end of the year is only going to check on fifth grade concepts. So I'm not going to get any credit for that as a teacher, as a school, as a student. That's screwed up.

It is.

The second thing is, and this gets a little wonky, but there's sort of criterion reference test and norm reference tests. And the basic idea is that criterion reference are sort of on an absolute scale, are you making progress? Norm reference are compared to other people like you, which can be determined in a range of ways. And in many ways, a lot of states are using norm reference measures, which sort of bake lowered expectations into them. Because if I'm at the bottom 5%, say the question is just, do I make more growth than the bottom 5%? I'm not sure that's the measure that I really want to know about in growth. And again, great schools, they can only do so much. And so the third thing is, you know, and some states don't measure growth at all. Like, I think California might be one of them. I'm not. I'm not sure it is.

It is one of them. Yep. And so we have these proxy measures which the first measure wasn't strong to begin with. The proxy is even worse. Yeah.

So. So, you know, maybe great schools can start to catalyze a movement toward, you know, being more real about the measures that we deserve, because the ratings can only be as good as what's measured. And that's not on them. That's on the states themselves. And. And so I guess. And then the last reaction I have is, I think it goes to where you were going a little bit on. Is test scores sort of the only measure? Because there is an unhealthy part about this, particularly for certain slices of America that are already obsessed with tests as the measure of achievement. And I'll just describe, you know, in Lexington, for example, there's an active debate where we perform above grade level for the most, you know, the most part. And I. I heard a former superintendent once say she was having a conversation with parents and she was like, don't you think we could, like, focus a little more on the social, emotional health of our students instead of going from like 3.7 grade levels to 4 grade levels above? And they were sort of like, no. And you realize that embedding progress in a measure for someone like Lexington Public Schools actually could be deeply counterproductive. And at a certain point, I think there's good enough on academics and then all the other stuff that we like to talk about, skill, you know, the skills, habits of success, social capital, et cetera, all of those things, they actually matter as much, if not more than your academics. Like academics, a baseline is important, but then it's all the other stuff that's going to result in success.

Frankly, Michael, my big takeaway from this, from both of these topics actually, is we keep coming back to this idea that our educational system is rooted in competition, competition. And so we've seen it in both of these topics today where a small number of kids are winning and a big bunch of them are losing. And what is true about that is that's actually not in anyone's best interest. Even the supposed winners do not benefit by living in a society that is systematically turning our children, the majority of them, into losers in getting ready for life. And so this over reliance on, coupled with the competition is this over reliance on the high stakes testing and this narrow set of academic skills that some systems, some organizations and some parents are valuing to the detriment of the majority of society that honestly have figured this out. And that's why we're seeing the pushback against the scores and whatnot. And so I'll just leave us with this idea that this might be the gift of the pandemic, which is it's preventing us from giving these tests. And while a lot of people are wringing their hands around that, I personally am ecstatic, quite frankly, because I hope it really is the pause button. We need for, to really reconsider where we are and where we need to go going forward.

That'll be a good topic, I think, for us to get into also in a future episode.

But yeah, I think so too. But before that, there's a piano recital that's. That's coming. Tell me about that. I know you're focused there today.

Yeah, you're reminding me as we think about what else are we doing in our lives. Right. So I'm focused as soon as this ends with, with you on my girl's piano recital, as I think you know, but, but probably listeners don't. I always said I would teach them tennis, but I would not teach them piano. And then the pandemic happened and I'm teaching them piano. So I've been their piano teacher for six months or whatever it is now. And. But on this recital, it's actually kind of cool. The girls said, dad, why don't you learn a new piece too. And so how often do you get to be a student and show that vulnerability to your kids? So I have slacked a little bit recently, I'll admit, but I practiced my tail off initially and I learned a new piece. And so they're going to be performing a couple pieces. I'm excited for them. And then I will be doing a piece at the very end, which on the one hand, I'm like, oh, they didn't come. You know, all these people on Zoom aren't coming to listen to me. But on the other hand, I think it's a cool chance to model that vulnerability and that spirit of learning that you keep learning. Right. And so I'm excited about it.

I love it. I love it. And I can see you, but our listeners can't. And you even put on a collared shirt for this today, so it's of kind gonna be amazing. What a. What a great model. True.

I'm excited. So what, what, what, what, what have you been paying attention to or reading or watching?

You know, you know, I live in Silicon Valley. I've been pummeled by people telling me I need to watch the Social Dilemma, which is a documentary, a 90 minute documentary on Netflix. I have been really resistant to it. I feel like I'm surrounded by this.

I've been so resistant to this. Diana. I'm just so curious because all these people have been saying, watch it, watch it. And I feel like all these conclusions are coming from it. And so is it any good? Like, should I watch it?

There's a lot to unpack and we might want to do that. So I'm just gonna give you. I'm just gonna leave us with my one sort of one big takeaway, which is, to me, the whole film makes the case for why it's so critical that we prepare our children to develop their sense of self and their sense of identity and to focus on these social emotional skills and habits of success in addition to academic skills and the universal skills they need, like communicating effectively and analyzing and selecting good sources. And really, that is the antidote to the fear that is just radiating from this film about how somehow the technology is going to, like, take us over as human beings. And so, you know, again, lots to dig in there, lots to talk about. But that's my big takeaway.

I love leaving it there. That's such a constructive way to think about it in relation to this podcast. And I think it's the perfect place to leave us. And we'll see you next time on Class Disrupted.