Success Goes Sour : Coach of Academic Decathlon Champions Quits

The teacher who led a John Marshall High School team to a national Academic Decathlon championship last spring has quit as coach amid disagreements about movie rights, pay and a team visit to the White House that never happened.

David Tokofsky said he will not coach the next decathlon team mainly because he is exhausted and wants to concentrate on teaching social studies at the Los Angeles school. But he also said he is now cynical about the hoopla surrounding the intellectual competition for young scholars and angry about what he considers to be broken promises.

‘Lost My Innocence’

“I was innocent. Now I have lost my innocence about that process and the only way I could do the decathlon is if I shut my eyes,” Tokofsky said. “But I still feel very optimistic and excited about teaching. I want to take what I learned from the kids in the decathlon process and apply it to other kids to see how it works.”

Tokofsky, 27, garnered national attention in April when his team from the Los Feliz-Silver Lake area school, with a student body drawn heavily from low-income, immigrant families, beat wealthy, suburban schools from around the country. He became a symbol of young, dedicated teachers with a special knack for motivating students. Scholarships, honorary plaques and invitations to address politicians and educators poured in for the students and their coach, as did offers to base movies on the team’s success.

The decathlon is an intellectually rigorous program that last year required cramming on topics ranging from Renaissance art to biochemistry. Students from 52 Los Angeles schools participated last year, taking multiple choice tests, writing essays, giving speeches and competing in a public “Super Quiz” on constitutional law. Marshall, which had won the city championship for two years in a row, captured the state title for the first time last March and in April became the first school outside of Texas to win the 6-year-old national competition since 1983, when Beverly Hills High School won.

But one prize Tokofsky said the team was promised--a trip to Washington and a meeting with President Reagan--never materialized. “Of course, we did it all for the fun of learning and learning for its own sake. But why work for an organization that does not give the champions the prize that was advertised? That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Tokofsky, who became decathlon coach last year.

Teacher Called Stubborn

Officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District and the U.S. Academic Decathlon said they were saddened by Tokofsky’s decision but they strongly contested his version of events. They said that such a trip was never promised in advance, although they nevertheless tried very hard to arrange for one, even obtaining donations of plane tickets from an airline. Reagan’s tight schedule and Tokofsky’s stubbornness and failure to help with arrangements made the trip impossible, the officials contended.

“We had opportunities to set up appointments with senators and congressmen in Washington. But David really wanted to see the President or not go,” said Marilyn Bush, a Los Angeles school district administrator who is also on the national board of the decathlon organization. By the end of the summer, with most of the team members leaving for college, it no longer made any sense to keep trying, Bush said.

Tokofsky claimed that officials spent too much time pursuing a movie deal and said he was angered that the district and decathlon organization both wanted a share of any Hollywood money, which he thought belonged mainly to him and the team.

Bush disputed that. “We made it very clear that our No. 1 interest had nothing to do with monies but only that the finished product would be wholesome and positive,” she said.

No movie deal was ever made although Tokofsky, whose father is a movie producer and his mother is a teacher, said he is still thinking about helping to write a movie or television script about the team.

Another factor in his decision, the former coach said, was a recent change in the formula for figuring how much the decathlon coaches are paid. In the past, they were given 50 hours of extra pay to supplement their teaching salary. This year, the title of decathlon coach is formally recognized in the budget for the first time and, instead of the hourly rate, each coach will be given a $1,500 bonus; that could be tripled if a coach leads a team through the state and national competition. But Tokofsky said that such a formula could actually cut the bonus of more experienced teachers, whose hourly pay multiplied by 50 could be higher than $1,500. Shortly after Marshall won the state decathlon, Tokofsky said he might be forced to quit teaching in the future if pay for that profession does not increase.

Marshall’s principal, Don Hahn, said he had felt certain that a Marshall team would win the national title again this year and that he tried, unsuccessfully, to get Tokofsky to return. “Of course, I don’t like it. I don’t want to lose the best man in the business,” Hahn said. He added that because Tokofsky waited until this month to give notice, the new coach and his assistant--social studies teachers Ron Wenderoff and Marc Lorenzen--have little time to prepare for the citywide competition scheduled for Nov. 14. Tokofsky’s assistant last year, Ann Choi-Rho, could not take over because she is pregnant.

To make matters worse, Hahn said, some bright students who had been expected to join the team have also opted out. Christopher Nichelson and Gideon Javier, who were the only juniors on last year’s team, have said they would return to the team only if Tokofsky remained as coach.

Bush said she thinks that Tokofsky’s resignation does not take away any excitement from the decathlon. “I think L.A. Unified will have a fine competition and will certainly be a formidable factor to deal with at the state competition,” she said.

Tokofsky said he realizes that some people may consider him a quitter, afraid to compete again. He said he thought he could have repeated last year’s national victory but that it was more important to put into wider practice at Marshall what he learned about motivating students, rather than aim it just at whiz kids. “If you have a small class and a dedicated teacher,” he said, “real learning will happen anywhere.”