School Board May Abolish No-Fail Rule for Sports

For months after the Los Angeles Unified School District launched its trail-blazing policy requiring students participating in sports and other extracurricular activities to meet strict academic standards, administrator Barry Mostovoy got calls and letters from school officials in nearly every state.

“We even got calls from military bases in the Pacific,” recalled Mostovoy, who was in charge of implementing the policy. “We were the first large district to do anything like this, and everybody else was interested.”

The policy, begun early in 1983, required any student in grades 4 through 12 to maintain at least a C average with no failing marks. Other districts quickly adopted similar rules and, in 1987, a state law extended the C-average rule to schoolchildren throughout California.

Although opposition to the C-average provision of Los Angeles’ policy has diminished over the years, the no-fail portion has continued to generate controversy. On Monday, in what is expected to be a heated discussion, the Board of Education will consider dropping it.

“It’s just too harsh and, frankly, it isn’t doing what it was supposed to do--help kids do better in school,” said Julie Korenstein, a board member who has proposed scrapping the no-fail rule.

“I feel strongly that any child who gets involved in extracurricular activities should maintain a C average,” said Korenstein, “but over and over we keep hearing about cases of students who have done very well and then get one failing grade and that has ruined their chance to be the lead in the school play or perform with the orchestra.

“If we are too rigid, we actually make things worse . . . we hurt kids’ self-esteem, we keep them from participating in activities that could help keep them in school or out of gangs,” she said.

But board member Rita Walters, who pushed for the C-average/no-fail policy as a way to encourage youngsters to improve academic achievement and get them to realize they can’t count on basketball or acting to make them successful adults, said dropping the no-fail rule would “seriously dilute the intent of the policy.”

“It would be a real tragedy for our kids at a time when the President, the education secretary, business leaders and everybody else is talking about how poorly American children are doing academically,” Walters said.

“As a school district, we have got to say that our business is about achievement. Yes, music, drama, athletics, all those things are important. But we need to take care of the academics first,” she said.

In the first year the policy was in effect, Mostovoy said, 13% of students who had gone out for activities lost their eligibility. (Among high school students, the number was 18%.) Since then, the range has been between 11% and 15%, with between 3% and 4% losing eligibility because of a failing grade. Because the numbers did not vary much from year to year, the district stopped compiling statistics last year, he said.

For teachers who sponsor the activities--the most vocal group in favor of dropping the no-fail rule--the numbers do not begin to tell the real story.

Charles K. Abe, a music teacher at Bancroft Junior High School, partly blames the no-fail policy for keeping large numbers of students out of performing arts programs.

“I’ve had so many talented students, good students who run into trouble with algebra and if they fail it, they can’t play in our (annual) concert. They are devastated, and sometimes they just don’t try as hard in class anymore because they know they can’t play in the concert,” Abe said.

Also to blame, Abe believes, is the district’s definition of an extracurricular activity as anything that takes place outside normal school hours. For more than two years, Abe has been urging the district to change its definition to conform to the state’s. Under California guidelines, any activity that “has as its primary goal the improvement of academic or educational achievement of pupils” is not considered extracurricular.

(Korenstein’s motion also proposes asking the district staff to provide a list of which activities are considered extracurricular and co-curricular.)

The district’s policy “punishes students in classes like music because it deprives them of what they should be getting in music class because of a problem they had in another subject,” Abe said. “Things like performing in a concert are very much part of learning music.”

Additionally, Abe said, when one student is prevented from performing in a concert or a play, “it punishes the rest of the students . . . for the problems of another.”

Some district administrators say teachers are increasingly complaining that the policy is discouraging kids from taking challenging electives for fear of failing.

“School is supposed to be about stretching and trying new things and perhaps, as a part of that, sometimes failing,” said Don Dustin, the district’s director of performing arts.

“If you’re going to make academic requirements tougher, as the state has done, and you’re requiring a C average and then you’re not going to allow even a single fail, then you’re asking an awful lot of kids,” said Hal Harkness, the district’s director of interscholastic activities.

Opinions vary widely on the no-fail rule. A study more than a year ago by the district’s Program Evaluation and Assessment Branch showed 100% of the principals surveyed disliked it, as did 62% of the extracurricular activity sponsors.

In contrast, the provision was supported by 70% of teachers, 55% of students, 70% of parents and 57% of counselors.

The same survey showed there are mixed perceptions about the effects of the whole C-average/no-fail policy. A majority of all groups surveyed agreed it has led to a decrease in the numbers of students participating in extracurricular activities and believed the decrease had affected such activities as drama productions and musical performances, athletics and cheerleading and drill teams. Most reported that the policy had especially limited the eligibility of blacks, Latinos and boys of Pacific Islander background.

More than half the activity sponsors believed fewer students were taking academic electives out of fear of losing their eligibility, but only a minority of principals, counselors and teachers agreed.

Assessments of the policy’s effects on academic performance also were mixed. Forty-five percent of the students said their personal efforts were strongly influenced by the policy. Five percent of the teachers said they had been pressured to change grades because of the policy. Thirty percent of the principals surveyed believed the policy had caused some students to drop out of school.

Walters said nothing in the statistics, or in the complaints she has heard from students, has caused her to change her mind about the importance of the no-fail policy.

“I believe it goes to expectations,” Walters said of her opposition to lowering the academic requirements to participate in extracurricular activities. “If you don’t expect much, you don’t get much.”