Maybe that's why it got brought up on here...because of that game...first win since Lincoln beat Urbandale. Thank you!
IHSAA Considering adding a Socioeconomic Factor to Determine Football Classifications
- Thread starter gohawks50
- Start date
just look at volleyball. Most of the small schools around waterloo beat and have close matches with the 5a schools. Why? money and proximity to club teams that poor kids don't get.
Good start. Now add in a multiplier for being a private school. Assumption can start playing in the class they deserve.
Can't really compare CR to DPort. They are still a part of the old MVC which includes Dubuque, IC, and Wloo school districts and only Xavier exists as the Catholic school and bounces around the 4A, nearly 5A level. Maybe compare Dport to Wloo/CF or Dubuque. CF has been good for a long time while WW and WE basically suck. Dubuque has seen a bunch of growth in Epworth or west of town and Wahlert is now a 2A or 3A school(?).
Edit: meant west, not east.
I also like multiplying private schools 1.5 times their enrollment number for the purposes of classification. They have so many advantages, starting with the fact that they can recruit freely and aren't bound by the living location of the student. It's ridiculous that a school like Davenport Assumption is in the same division as schools like OBXYZ-Bumblefuk HS.
Yes, although we're really only talking about 3A and 4A schools in Iowa (3A/4A/5A for football). For the most part it's the urban/suburban schools.
I spent some of my prep time this afternoon creating a spreadsheet of 2021-22 data. The first tab is district FRL numbers and the 2nd tab is HS specific FRL numbers (which breaks bigger school districts up by their HS).
Link to BEDS/FRL Spreadsheet
Link to BEDS/FRL Spreadsheet
Not a troll/flame, but what is the fix to the problem, other than not having poverty in Iowa? It isn't just funding the program for uniforms and facilities, it is that lots of kids wash out with crime, or they simply need to work to survive or help the family, rather than play sports. So if your enrollment of say, 600 boys combined for ages 9-12 means that actually 300 are potentially in the pool, of them most would rather run cross country, play golf (given, not likely at an underprivileged school), do band, work (not out of "need" but "want"), or simply just work out or do something else or nothing, and you end up with 60 kids total going out grades 9-12, how do you "fix" that if football is not a priority?
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I thought there was a proposal a few years back to make divisions based on how many kids actually went out for the team, and not the enrollment but another DM school threatened a lawsuit so the pulled it. Did I make this up?
No idea, but I don't like the idea of classes being determined on a such a real-time ad hoc basis. If the data indicates a tight correlation as indicated above, then that is what should be in place.
Correct kinda. Not all free lunch kids stay
home, but they proportionally do not go out for sports, and do not start to go out when they are younger. I coach youth sports in a “poorer district” in Sioux City, one of the biggest obstacles is getting “poorer” parents to actually drive kids to games and practices, they don’t have the means, and usually home life structure, to participate. The kids sometimes go out later in school, but are usually developmentally behind, unless a rare talent.
The gap widens when weight trainingg, off-season workouts, nutrition, private lessons are factored in.
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- Sep 13, 2002
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My ideas would all be considered "socialist" probably.
I would start by mandating that public school funding be equalized and run by the state. That is, you could still use property tax to fund it, but those taxes would be collected and put into a statewide pool that would then be distributed evenly to every public school district in the state.
Currently, rich school districts keep getting richer and poor ones get poorer. Combine that with open enrollment, and you have a death spiral whereby the best students and athletes choose to go to the rich districts, while large urban districts are hollowed out.
So I'd end open enrollment as well. You go to the public school in the district where you live or you pay for private school.
It's not just that. It's the better off kids that have access to training and coaching almost their entire lives.
My kids attend the smallest HS in our Maryland county here in the DC burbs. We have far more club soccer players and swimmers than schools 2 and 3x the size. It's usually not a fair contest when we go against those bigger schools in lower income areas or similar size schools in more rural areas.
e.g we pay for our kids to be good at sports.
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But school funding does not address what happens in the out-of-school-life of the potential school athlete, which is what is driving participation. It also does not address access to youth sports programs at an early age, and quality coaching/development.
- Sep 13, 2002
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- 189,950
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Sure it does, over time.
Wealthier districts can afford better and more coaches, more youth programs, etc. If the inner city urban schools improve and open enrollment is abolished, more talented kids will stay in those districts. More up-and-coming coaches will want to coach there.
I say even the playing field.
Schools don't fund youth sports programs, parents do. And, parents typically coach those teams and ferry their kids to practices games. If the parents can't or don't want to do that, the kid doesn't play. Also, school ball does not start until 8th grade, when the die is cast for many kids and sports.
Linn-Mar should feel even worse for the football team they trot out there.
Especially in a post Sandusky world, it is very frowned upon to be giving kids that are not your own rides to practice. We had to ask another coach to quit coaching little league because he gave 6/7 low income kids rides. It was too much of a liability if he was doing something harmful (no one thought he actually was).
While I am for supporting underprivileged schools, your plan sounds unconstitutional. You are going to reallocate property taxes that have already been earmarked to pay off bonds and such used to new fund schools?
you have to define your terms, hoosier.....what constitutes "rich" and "poor"? I look at where I grew up in the old South Central Conference (50 years ago)......many schools have "shrunk" a class......Albia, Clark, Chariton and Knoxville have decreased at least one class.....Valley has grown a lot, Pella and Indianola have grown a bit and Winterset has remained a constant.....generally, you can rate schools as "rich" or "poor" by their relative size....but the real losers here are public schools in small rural areas and public schools in the larger metro areas of the state.
It’s also because it’s the only sport where the IAHSAA schedules every team and not all teams make the postseason. It will probably, eventually, make its way to other sports, but football is the priority.
Having Dowling and Valley travel with their 100 kids and multiple brand new charter buses and state of the art equipment, is always a shock for the system when they play SC West/North with 30 kids, 25 year old yellow buses, hand me down equipment. It’s like they came from a different planet.
We did beat Dowling in ‘97 that one time tho.
We did beat Dowling in ‘97 that one time tho.
This was definitely needed. As someone that’s coached at a few different programs in the state I’m on board. Wealthy programs have far more advantages than just numbers out for sports…More position coaches and kids out for sports all season and working at getting better year round instead of working at Hyvee for example. Could go on and on.
It’s a ton of numbers crunching, and fortunately, somebody else crunched them for us.
The Gazette received a spreadsheet, created by the Iowa High School Athletic Association, on how free and reduced lunch would have impacted football classification on the most recent cycle (the 2021 and 2022 seasons).
The IHSAA recently announced that it has approved a recommendation from the IHSAA classification committee to adopt a model similar to one currently used by the Minnesota State High School League.
The Minnesota system calls for the reduction of a school’s free and reduced lunch count from the annual enrollment to determine a final classification model.
In essence, a district’s BEDS enrollment (grades 9-11 from the previous school year) will be lowered by 40 percent for each student receiving aid for school meals.
Member schools are in the process of voting on the measure, and if it passes that step, the next is a ruling by the Iowa Department of Education.
If the Department of Education rules in favor, the socioeconomic component could come into play in time for the 2023 football season.
This spreadsheet does not include FRL for private schools, which do have the opportunity to submit those numbers to the Iowa Department of Education.
Adjustments were as follows:
Private schools Carroll Kuemper, Western Christian, Waterloo Columbus would have moved up to 2A, along with Treynor. Camanche, Osage, Clarion CGD, Shenandoah and Pocahontas Area would have moved down to 1A.
www.thegazette.com
The Gazette received a spreadsheet, created by the Iowa High School Athletic Association, on how free and reduced lunch would have impacted football classification on the most recent cycle (the 2021 and 2022 seasons).
The IHSAA recently announced that it has approved a recommendation from the IHSAA classification committee to adopt a model similar to one currently used by the Minnesota State High School League.
The Minnesota system calls for the reduction of a school’s free and reduced lunch count from the annual enrollment to determine a final classification model.
In essence, a district’s BEDS enrollment (grades 9-11 from the previous school year) will be lowered by 40 percent for each student receiving aid for school meals.
Member schools are in the process of voting on the measure, and if it passes that step, the next is a ruling by the Iowa Department of Education.
If the Department of Education rules in favor, the socioeconomic component could come into play in time for the 2023 football season.
This spreadsheet does not include FRL for private schools, which do have the opportunity to submit those numbers to the Iowa Department of Education.
Adjustments were as follows:
The 4A/5A line
Iowa City Liberty and Indianola would have moved up to 5A; Des Moines North and Sioux City West would have moved down to 4A.The 3A/4A line
North Polk, Adel ADM, Gilbert and Carroll would have moved up to 4A; Glenwood, Webster City, Winterset and Perry would have moved down to 3A.The 2A/3A line
Dubuque Wahlert, Clear Lake and Iowa Falls-Alden would have moved up to 3A; Atlantic, Hampton-Dumont/CAL and Saydel would have moved down to 2A.The 1A/2A line
Here’s where the lack of private schools’ noted FRL really takes hold, so this should be taken with a grain of salt.Private schools Carroll Kuemper, Western Christian, Waterloo Columbus would have moved up to 2A, along with Treynor. Camanche, Osage, Clarion CGD, Shenandoah and Pocahontas Area would have moved down to 1A.
The A/1A line
Class A state champion Grundy Center would have moved up to 1A along with Hinton, Missouri Valley and Alburnett; Van Buren County, South Hardin, West Monona and Central Decatur would have been in Class A.The 8-Player/Class A line
The enrollment of 20 schools would have been low enough for eligibility to move from Class A to 8-Player, though that boundary number may have adjusted with it.How FRL would have altered football classification in 2021, 2022
Prep football: How free and reduced lunch would have altered classification in 2021 and 2022.
www.thegazette.com
Have you checked out Linn-Mar's fine arts programs though? The Collins engineers' kids are playing violin, not football.
I don't know about WDM, but in CR the schools use charter buses because they can't find drivers for the school bus. We had schools show up with charters for middle school tennis matches.
If you look at the national rankings you notice quickly they are dominated by expensive private schools.
These are both very true. That’s become the case with football at Washington and Jefferson in CR too. The joke on the west side is that Friday night is a band performance featuring a pre and post football show. Jefferson was a powerhouse in the 70s when the upper middle class trendy spots were Stoney Point and Cherry Hill. Then Wash peaked in the 80s and ‘90s when the preferred area became the Indian Creek Hills area. Now both areas are dominated by retirees and the majority of kids are from those schools are working class or bohemian types in MOCO/NewBo at Wash and Czech Village/Highland Park for Jeff. There are still pockets of those kids (see Wash in golf and Jeff in tennis), but the jock parents have now mostly flocked to Prairie or Liberty (and a few to Xavier).
