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Legislator Wants To Stop School Choice From Creating Pseudo All-Star Teams

This article is more than 9 years old.

New Jersey's Interdistrict Public School Choice program allows students to transfer to other, state-approved districts to get themselves, presumably, a better education, as well as take advantage of "specialized and innovative programs and courses that focus on areas such as art, music, foreign languages, and technology."

However, at least one state legislator is upset that students are also transferring to other districts for athletic purposes. So he's planning to introduce a bill that would require any students leaving for another district under the choice program to play sports at the schools they left behind.

Exhibit A for Assemblyman John Burzichelli, a Democrat from southern New Jersey, is the Bound Brook High wrestling team in the central part of the state, which has become a state power thanks to wrestlers who have transferred in from seven other districts. (Some online wags have noted Burzichelli started talking about his bill after Bound Brook won a state title over a team from his district.) From MyCentralJersey.com:

Current [New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association] rules stipulate a student who enrolls in a choice school must sit 30 days before becoming eligible to participate, a restriction Burzichelli’s legislation states “does little to address the issue of student-athletes transferring to choice districts for athletic advantage.”

According to state Department of Education statistics, the number of students in New Jersey's 136 school choice districts has nearly doubled to 6,100 in 2013-14 from the previous academic year. The NJSIAA, according to published reports, has determined that just two student-athletes statewide ... transferred to choice schools this academic year for athletic advantage.

Burzichelli said he believed the number of sports teams benefiting from school choice is significantly greater, even though athletics directors have provided choice schools with transfer waiver forms stating athletes from the sending schools left "without inducement or recruitment or to seek an athletic advantage."

Recently retired Perth Amboy Athletics Director Gregg Ficarra said even though he had “suspicions” of impropriety, he essentially “waved a white flag” by signing transfer waivers for his school’s student-athletes to attend a choice district, noting he lacked the resources to prove a rules violation and that he felt uncomfortable “putting the kid or his family on any kind of trial.”

The article further notes that a state Department of Education investigation in July 2013 found that Bound Brook recruited none of its wrestlers, and Burzichelli told MyCentralJersey.com he believed "Bound Brook's reputation for fielding a nationally ranked wrestling team is attracting quality grapplers as choice school students."

I don't know what kind of chance this bill has of passing, but I'm not sure it's going to do much good. The problem is, once you've created an environment conducive to school choice, how do you tell families it's OK to change districts for academics, arts and other activities -- but not sports? State high school athletic associations are struggling with how to handle the environment, and many have essentially waved the white flag, as Perth Amboy's athletic director put it, on any transfer in or out for athletic purposes.

In part that pressure has come from state legislators whose constituents are ticked because their school got in trouble for playing a transfer, or because those legislators are whole hog into everything school choice, or at least giving parents what they want. For example, Florida's House recently passed a bill that extends its Tim Tebow law -- which allows home-schoolers to play sports at their home public school -- to allow anyone, home-schooled, private or public, to participate in any activity in any public school in their district as long as their school doesn't offer it. (It's also an extension of the co-op concept, in which multiple schools pool to form one team, such as the three high schools in my district creating my son's single water polo team.)

The argument for bills such as Florida's are like any school choice argument -- give families the opportunity to seek out the best educational experience for their children, rather than be a prisoner of the district in which they live. For state high school associations, this has created or cemented perennial powers, resulting in growing fan disinterest in watching the same teams compete for titles year after year, which is costing those associations money. It's also costing some coaches and programs a motivating factor for their players -- that if you work hard enough, you have a chance. Not if a high school is essentially an all-star team, you don't.

I have a hard time believing Burzichelli's bill is going anywhere, not only because of the momentum toward school choice, but also because parents don't want to transport their kids back from one school to another for after-school practice, and the districts aren't going to want to pay for that transportation. Perhaps his bill will open up a wider, and necessary, discussion of whether school choice is working as intended. The only hope this bill might have to be workable is if New Jersey's legislators -- and Gov. Chris Christie, a big school-choice advocate -- believe keeping kids close to home is the best way to educate them.