The Case Against High School Sports

After reading " The Case Against High School Sports" by Amanda Ripley started to make me think. There were many strong points about how the priorities of the sports are beginning to be more important to students than their education. Another great point was that the financing and budgeting is unfairly distributed throughout school districts and is spent more on athletics and clubs and not enough on classes. And I Believe that schools should put certain restrictions on the spending and promoting or in school sports and clubs because of the major drop in national and world comparisons.

Almost all student athletes get butterflies before that Friday night football game, before the fans get to watch them compete, or even the to get the ability to practice. Many argue that high school sports are a distraction in the classroom or even cause career ending injuries. There are many different scenarios that prove that high school sports do the exact opposite of those. When it comes to high school sports, it keeps students fit, boosts a student’s academic performance, and enhances a student’s self-esteem. High school sports are very beneficial and for anyone who is looking to take on a new challenge to take on.

In “The Case Against High School Sports,” Amanda Ripley tries to argue her point that sports should not be a part of high school. She claims that sports take away from education, and that they are too expensive (Ripley 1-2). Throughout her article, she often switches her topic. She shifts her focus from all high schools to one specific high school, and then to one specific college. Ripley presents an abundance of points, but lacks evidence to support them. Although Ripley makes relevant claims, she tries to support them with logical fallacies and irrelevant evidence.

Bowen and Hitt’s research shows that schools with strong athletic programs have higher test scores. There is no evidence that school athletics are the reason for America’s lowest test scores

The impact of preserving sports in high schools has been surrounded by much controversy as people suspect that it is the reason behind the poor academic achievement of students. Opponents to high school sports feel that allowing athletics to be a part of schools sidetracks the focus of the student body, which goes completely against the main purpose of schools. Indeed, this assertion is completely true and based upon plentiful evidence. High school sports undoubtedly come at the expense of student academic achievement since they divert the attention of students away from academics and they come with far too many financial costs, both of which incur negative impacts on the academics within a school. The bottomline is that sports are harming the education of students, so a school must make the decision between composing quality sports teams or providing high level academics; both of these choices simply cannot occur simultaneously.

Recently American test scores have been down but the first thing people blame for this epidemic is sports. Instead of looking at the infrastructure of our school system. Sports are ingrade in American culture and how we life so to just take them away would be dractace. Sports should stay in schools because the keep kids out of trouble, help kids get better grades, and it helps them later on in their life.

According to Ripley “80 percent of students passed their classes [after their district canceled sports], compared with 50 percent the previous fall” (11). She goes on to mention that Nathan, a prior quarterback for the same district, said that you couldn’t fall behind on schoolwork because sports weren’t taking up your time (Ripley 11). This information is important because it demonstrates that athletics are causing student failure, which is undoubtedly reprehensible. It is plainly shown that school sports are causing academic failure which will greatly deteriorate student’s futures, and in turn, the world’s

Amanda Ripley, in an article for The Atlantic, “The Case Against High-School Sports” (2013 by The Atlantic Monthly Group), claims that high-school athletics are encroaching upon students’ education, questions the effect that the sports have on academic progress in the United States, and “wonder[s] about the trade-offs we make.” Ripley supports her thesis with multiple points of argument, including international academic ranking statistics that reveal the United States’ inadequacies, relevant stories and history illustrating athletics’ effect on students, and a paragraph in which she implores the reader to “[i]magine, for a moment, if Americans transferred our obsessive intensity about high-school sports...to high school academics.” The author’s

The argument of sports in our high schools will not go away, as kids go to high school and experience the American obsession with high school sports. High schools are supposed to be a place of learning, so we must ask ourselves what are they really? As posed by Ripley, “If sports were not central to the mission of American high schools, then what would be?” (1). I feel that the focus of our high schools should be academics, not how good you are at a sport, because we come to high school for learning and

“Our educational goal [is] the production of caring, competent, loving, lovable people” . The students found in the schools across the United State are the future of America. They are the doctors, teachers, business people, lawyers and many other roles, that will be out in the workforce in the years to come. What they learn in school will impact them immensely; it is the responsibility of a teacher to give students the best education in order to ensure the common good of the future. It is essential for students to not only learn content matter, but also the skills to enable them to participate in a democracy. Due to standardized testing, the emphasis of education has become on score and rankings rather than learning. A standardized test does not look at the whole student, the scores provided are on a very narrow aspect of education. In the classroom, there are countless ways for teachers to assess the student as a whole person not as just a score. Standardized tests scores should not be the sole criteria for determining a student’s academic achievement.

If someone was to ask you “how do you define student achievement?” what would your answer be? Would you say student achievement is measured by state achievement tests? Or would you say that student achievement is too complex a subject to be objectively measured? There are many important skills students must be taught, and we need a way to effectively measure if they are in fact learning those skills. However, standardized tests cannot effectively show the learning of all students, especially those that are not good test takers. And of those skills that are tested, there are an endless number of arguably more important skills that aren’t being valued because they cannot be calculated. Furthermore,

Oh great. Another bad day at school. Good thing we have basketball practice, today, to ease my mind. This is how some people think about sports. However, some do not think the same. Therefore, middle schools are deciding on whether to keep sports the same way they have been or scale back some on sports. Principals and superintendents should not scale students back on sports because it helps them prosper in many ways.

Sports are embedded in many American schools in a way they are not anywhere else. One element of our educational system consistently surprises them, “Sports are a huge deal in American schools,” says Earl Smith of the New York Times. The positives have always outweighed the negatives in the case against high school sports. As Sato Kai state, “The benefits of sports as part of the education process are abundant and sometimes beyond quantifications,” According to many academic specialists, sports offer formative and life long lessons such as: discipline, responsibility, self confidence, and accountability. These skills can furthermore excel your later life and give you a greater chance of being employed in a high level job. Participation in high school sports helps your later development as an adult and teaches you life long skills that can't be taught elsewhere.

For a long time, many people have been debating whether school sports should be eliminated. Athletic programs can be an excessive distraction for important things in a student’s academic career. Therefore, school sports should be cancelled to cut costs, help students focus on their education, and save time for schools.

One of the biggest complaints about interscholastic sports is the belief that sports take focus away from academics. Amanda Ripley, journalist and author, elaborates on this very issue. She provides many examples of the ways that sports play a negative role in American schools, and how she believes that they are the reason to blame for the shortcomings of American students: “Sports are embedded in American schools in a way