The Sports Analogy.

While the equality argument seems a fundamental stance in American ethical debate, I can’t help but wonder on what level our public school system provides any cornerstone of equity or equilateral distribution of opportunity.

My concerns aren’t novel or rare by any means, so I won’t delve into the dramatic unpacking of the systematic failures in attempt to persuade. Instead, I think I’ll imagine what life would be like if a school worked like the National Basketball Association.

Stay with me. Or give me a chance at least.

I feel compelled to first examine the notion that the NBA is based on competition. I believe it’s certainly a component—it’s at the very core of sport, right? But the idea that professional sports represent regional competition—that it’s not an undeniable profit machine—is absurd. Salary caps, sports and media markets, labor union and players associations? A battle of strength and strategy they are not. So if we can at least agree that on some level this is about a model of performance, we might start building the comparison.

Put my administrator in the commissioner’s seat. She gets to negotiate when necessary, address the needs of a given classroom much like the NBA boss Mr. Stern addresses the needs of a given franchise. When someone struggles to perform, she enters the equation and works the numbers as needed.

As the comparison continues, teachers seem the most logical candidates for coaches. They’re drawing on whiteboards, designing templates to promote the success of students, or their players, if you will.  Someone’s struggling? Call a timeout and isolate the issue. Is it a coaching moment she needs? Does he need to sit the next one out? Who needs to see the trainer, head to the bench, or get in the game? Raise a classroom situation, be it a lesson plan or test or project, and the parallels seem plausible.

That said, I suppose one of the most implausible stretches in this comparison might be the parents-as-fans notion. But if you give it time, it’s not really all too illogical. Parents certainly fill the roll of invested audience members; they remain on the sidelines cheering and jeering. Their off court behavior focuses on the team and the way its run. Their interest peaks when their investments flourish, and fade when the grind wares on. Furthermore, on need look no further than the ubiquity of Twitter among athletes, and the proximity between fans and players effectively mirrors the current state of many a relationship between parent and child.

Unfortunately, the picture falls apart when performance starts to suffer. Rather than fire a coach, a decision the organization makes in the best interest of the team, the public school system keeps the bumbling fool in place because it is contractually obligated to do so. Can you imagine the caliber of coaches that would still exist in the league if the NBA didn’t allow turnover? It’d be a graveyard of franchises, festering corpses boating on false hope.

The parallel is again strained when you consider the element of trades and player development. Rather than press for the acquisition of the best talent for a given team or environment, teachers must continually work with the students counselors and computer queries give them. There is no opportunity to draft a prospect or nurture talent you’ve been scouting for years. Sure, students, like certain players, muster the gall to demand a trade, but not to the extent that one imagines. The bottom line seems to be that if teachers want to pick and choose it’s unfair or unethical. If students or parents want to opt for something different, it’s right and just.

And while this half-baked idea of teachers trading for talent served as the impetus for this written consideration, I’m finding myself unable to carry on with the exploration because of the exhausting realization that the system is, in so many ways, a failure. And even if I’m not ultimately advocating for a model of educating base on the something even slightly resembling a professional sports paradigm, I am certainly overwhelmed by the glairing need to change the rules of the game.