A Bake Sale for the Decathlon?

After two straight years of winning the national Academic Decathlon, California schools almost didn’t even get a chance to enter next year. Private donations are down, prompting the organization that runs the state competition to consider calling it off. Board members voted unanimously to go ahead on Thursday -- even if they have to stage a bare-bones event.

The decathlon, the best-known high school academic competition in the nation, was born in California, which has supplied nearly half the winning teams since the contest went nationwide 22 years ago. It forces high achievers to stretch their brains to the utmost and teaches even low achievers strong study skills, while giving all participants close, supportive contact with a teacher -- all things that public officials keep saying they want out of the schools.

Yet a state that spends about $700 a year per high school football player somehow can’t come up with the $25 or so per decathlon participant that it would take to keep the state organization going. Its $250,000 budget comes mostly from private donors.

The event’s founder wanted to give serious students the kind of team experience and recognition that high school culture generally reserves for athletic stars. But he also wanted to keep it from becoming elitist. Not only do all kinds of schools field teams, each team must include students with B and C averages. This has galvanized many underachieving students to hit the books. Two years ago, a C student was the top scorer in the national decathlon.

Relative to most education programs, $250,000 is chump change. So why is it so hard to raise the money, when corporations routinely complain about the public schools failing to produce critical thinkers?

What the decathlon really needs is a stable form of long-term funding. The Legislature should simply write the piddling sum into the budget -- maybe taking it out of state Education Secretary Richard Riordan’s allocation. The decathlon is doing more for schools than his office.