Schools’ ‘Pass to Play’ Law Has Mostly Positive Impact

A statewide report on California’s “Pass to Play” law concludes that it has had “a mostly positive impact” on high schools and junior highs, but that about 35% of the state’s school districts are not sufficiently helping students who fall below a “C” average.

The report, written by the state Department of Education, analyzes the impact of the law that requires all students in grades 7 through 12 to have a minimum 2.0 grade-point average in order to participate in sports or other extracurricular activities.

The state Board of Education, meeting in Costa Mesa on Thursday, accepted and briefly discussed the report, which was written by state Department of Education staff.

Board member Armen Sarafian said he is concerned about the lack of academic help given to students who fall below a 2.0 grade-point average. However, no specific recommendations were made by the board during Thursday’s meeting.

Under study in the report was Assembly Bill 2613, a measure authored by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and which became state law on Jan. 1, 1987. The Legislature, in a budget bill in 1986, ordered the state Department of Education to study the impact of the new law, often called the “Pass to Play” law.

The Legislature specifically directed that “the study shall also report on the activities districts undertook to improve the academic performance of students ineligible to participate in extracurricular activities as a result of AB 2613.”

The report surveyed a sample of the state’s junior highs and high schools and found that students barred from sports and other activities because of their grade averages often find no academic help to become eligible again.

“Ineligible students were not targeted for special support services by 35% of the (surveyed school) districts,” the report said.

School districts not giving extra help to below-C-average students cited lack of money for counselors. One school district official, not cited by name in the report, said: “It is nice to have rules and regulations, but when you do not have the money for staff to support the regulations, what good are the rules? We can easily identify the problem, but we can only bandage the wound.”

The report did not identify the 127 school districts in the state that were selected as the “stratified sample.” Likewise, the report did not list by name the school districts reporting no extra help to students ruled out of sports and other activities because of grade averages.

In saying that the new law has “a mostly positive impact” on the schools, the report said: “AB 2613 appears to be working as intended. . . . Recommendations regarding changes in these policies and their implementations would be premature at this time.”

The report also found that school district superintendents generally believed that the law has had an impact on individual student motivation but not on overall academic performance in the schools.

The report also found that:

- Most district superintendents did not think the new law had improved overall grade-point averages.

- Some school districts had large numbers of students affected by the law. One district reported up to 40% of its students as becoming ineligible.

- About 69% of the surveyed school districts reported having policies that are stricter than the “Pass to Play” law.

In Orange County, Garden Grove Unified was one of the school districts that adopted stricter requirements than required in the basic “pass to play” law. Garden Grove Unified specified that students, in addition to maintaining a 2.0 average, must attain certain numbers of credits each year to keep their proper class standing. Lack of those credits made a student ineligible for sports and other outside activities.

Garden Grove Unified’s policy caused one of its schools, Bolsa Grande High, to forfeit five football victories last fall and thus give up its league championship. The forfeitures came after the winning season and after discovery that one of the football team’s non-starting players did not have enough credits for his supposed senior standing.

Parents of football players and other football-team boosters angrily protested that policy at the Garden Grove Unified school board’s meeting on Feb. 2. The board, in response, asked that the policy be reviewed by the lawyer for the school district and by district Supt. Ed Dundon.

A report is expected by the end of this month, board president Lynn Hamtil said Thursday.