transfers again.....

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SoCalHoops High School News

Making The Right Moves: 96% Of
Student-Athletes Don't Transfer--(Feb. 24, 2002)

We can't speak for anyone else, but we've had it up to here with this nonsense and junk science about whether transfers are "good" or "bad."

According to LA Times' sportswriter Eric Sondheimer, the "system" of high school sports is "broken." And the problem, according to Mr. Sondheimer, is that sports is being "ruined" by "rampant" transfers. It's "out of control" There's a "crisis." And the only way to stop it is to preclude students who exercise their right under California's Open Enrollment law from being eligible at their new school. Because "athletic transfers" are bad.

Mr. Sondheimer's solution: Make everyone ineligible for one year for athletics unless the transfer is the result of a physical change of residence.

And it's not just Mr. Sondheimer who is sounding this theme. The CIF-SS says that they've consulted with the State CIF's general counsel, and their "membership" will propose a Southern Section bylaw change this spring, which, if approved, will require a player to sit out a year unless the transfer also involves a "bona-fide change of residence."

But is there really a crisis? Is the "system" really "broken?"

We don't think so.

Let's look at the numbers which Mr. Sondheimer and others have used to bolster the argument which has now reached such a feverish pitch that the LA Times devotes an entire half-page of its prep column each week to the issue, mostly in the form of Mr. Sondheimer's Sunday opinion pieces.

Mr. Sondheimer notes in his column in the LA Times today that "according to Southern Section records, there were nearly 3,800 athletic transfers from the fall of 1999 through December of 2001."

Mr. Sondheimer claims that these 3,800 transfers during a two-year period were "athletic transfers." He more than implies that the transfers were accomplished for reasons related to athletics. To which we say: Utter, sheer nonsense. The statement, and the implications being drawn by Mr. Sondheimer are simply an outrageous untruth.

Any student who transfers for any reason, who wants to continue playing sports at his or her new school, is required to fill out a "214 Eligibility Form" in both the LA City Section and the CIF-SS (click the links to veiw the actual forms). The forms are slightly diffrerent in format in each CIF section, but each provides the same information and data and serves an identical purpose.

And other than Mr. Sondheimer's anecdotal commentary, we defy anyone who actually knows what a 214 Eligibility Form really is to use it to prove the outrageous claim that a transfer has been made for athletic reasons. Because you can't. It's a fiction, and Mr. Sondheimer knows it, or he ought to know it.

In fact, based on the contents of the 214 Form, the only conclusion one could possibly reach is eactly the opposite of that urged by Mr. Sondheimer, i.e, that if the CIF approves a transfer, it's because they've determined the transfer was not made for athletic reasons.

The 214 Eligibility Forms require the transferring student's parent, and both the incoming and outgoing principals of the two high schools involved in any transfer are to certify under penalty of perjury that there has been no undue influence or any other violation of CIF rules. If the information is later determined to be false, the student can lose his eligibility. Period.

Are there instances when people lie? Sure. But just because there are bank robbers, we don't close down all the banks. They serve a valuable social purpose, and so do transfers.

Mr. Sondheimer is simply using the total number of athletic transfer eligibility forms submitted to the CIF for a purpose for which the data on those forms was never intended.

Mr. Sondheimer wants us to believe that transfers, per se, are a bad thing. And if an athlete transfers, well, it's just that much worse.

The CIF Southern Section doesn't keep records of students who transfer for reasons related to athletics. No one does. That's because there's no way to do that, and in fact athletes are required to certify that the transfer is not for athletic reasons. And yet "3,800 athletic transfers" is what Mr. Sondheimer claims took place over a two year period. Rubbish. Nonsense. False statistics. Lies, lies, and more damned lies.

In our humble opinion, there's no way either Mr. Sondheimer, nor anyone else using the CIF data, can make that kind of a claim. Transfers happen for all kinds of reasons, and there's no crisis in the "system," at least not on that level or for that reason. There are plenty of other crises in high school education, but athletic transfers, as a subset of the problems faced by educators, ranks well below school overcrowding, inadequate or insufficient textbooks, or inadequate nutrition, homeless students, and dropouts. The issue of student athletes transferring is so miniscule in the grand scheme of things as to be a non-issue.

And that's what the statistics say.

In the broader context of education at the secondary school level, in the wider scheme of things, what is the significance of 3,800 students over a two-year period transferring from one school to another?

Is it really a "trend," and is it really as "bad" as Mr. Sondheimer suggests?

We don't think so. And we'll tell you why

First, the statistics cited by Mr. Sondheimer are simply meaningless, as noted above. Mr. Sondheimer states that the CIF has received 3,800 eligibility transfer forms over a two year period. So what? Surely, Mr. Sondheimer doesn't mean to suggest that these 3,800 transfers weren't properly approved? He can't be arguing that the CIF-SS is not doing it's job, or that the principals and the parents who have certified, under penalty of perjury that the transfers were not based on undue influence, were lying? He surely can't be making that claim without any evidence.

Mr. Sondheimer has also used a "two year" period to make it seem like the number annually is larger than it really is, to make it seem like a greater percentage of students transfer each year than really do.

Let's break the transfer figure down into an annual figure, the kind that the State Department of Education deals with, and the number drops to half, or 1,900.

How big a problem really is 1,900 transfers out of all those who play sports, within the context of all students in high school in Southern California? What percentage of actual high school student enrollment does it represent?

Let's do a little fact-checking:

The California State Department of Education maintains a lot of numbers and statistics about the public high schools in California. Basically, you can get just about any kind of information you want about high schools over the internet from DataQuest, the Dept. of Education's online public database. And it's reliable information, because it's required to be for purposes of state and federal funding.

According to the California Department of Education, in the 7-county region governed by the CIF-SS and LA CIF there were more than 3,000,000 students enrolled in high schools (grades 9-12) last year. Three Million.

To be more precise about it, in Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Riverside and San Bernardino counties (the largest counties making up both the CIF-SS and LA City CIF), the actual number of students enrolled in all grades 9-12 in public high schools during the same period Mr. Sondheimer wants to look at for transfers, was 3,124,434.

Add in the Private School California high school enrollment figures in the same 7-county area, and you've got another 75,571 students, bringing the total number of high school students enrolled to 3,200,005 last year.

Of that 3,200,000, what percentage of the student population do those 1,900 transfers represent?

How about less than .006% of all students enrolled in high school in Southern California. Some crisis.

Let's refine things further: Let's just talk about athletes, because that's who Mr. Sondheimer is most concerned with. He is, after all, a sportswriter for the largest metropolitan daily in the western U.S., a paper that boasts an average daily circulation of more than 1,000,000 readers per day.

According to the State CIF, the total number of all student athletes participating in all sports, boys and girls, is 657,462. That's in the entire State of California . Of that 657,462, those 1,900 annual transfers who also happen to play sports and who requested eligibility at their new schools (who were also not coincidentally approved and found not to have violated any of the CIF Bylaws), represent less than 2% of the total number athletes playing CIF sports.

Less than 2%. Some crisis.

Not satisfied? Let's focus the numbers down even further: While the CIF-SS hasn't released it's participation numbers as precisely as has the State CIF, they do state on the CIF-SS website that there are "an estimated 300,000 students participating in its interscholastic athletic programs annually." (See, "About Us--Membership").

The question thus is whether 1,900 students who transfer for all reasons (family, better school, better education, to move away from disruptive elements or to achieve a better learning environment, etc.) out of 300,000 students who participate in athletics, is a "crisis" of such proportion that it threatens the very fabric of athletic competition.

To which we say, the question really provides its own answer.

Look at it slightly differently: Is it a crisis that 95% of all student-athletes do not transfer at some point during their high school careers?

Really, that's the issue.

Setting aside all the rhetoric, all the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands, all the visceral reactions from those who want to bring back the 1970's high school experience, pre-busing, pre-integration and pre-Open Enrollment, setting aside all the nonsense about what's "good" and what's "bad" and the moralizing, what we are left with is the numbers. Forget the weekly Sunday sermons in the high school sports sections, and it comes down to the simple and ineluctable truth that not one of these highly-experienced sportswriters knows the first thing about why students and their parents choose to allow them to transfer.

Not a one of them.

Sportswriters know sports. It's their job to write about what happens in a game, and after years on the job some of them can even discern talented players from the merely average. They can watch a baseball, football or basketball game and tell you how many strikes were thrown, assists dished out, tackles made or yards run for first downs. That's their business. That's what they get paid to tell us, and that's why we read their stories.

But not a single one of the concerned sportswriters making the charge up the hill to stop open-enrollment transfer eligibility in athletics comes to the task with the perspective of a parent, at least not one we've met. Not a single one of those calling for an end to what they think is the "status quo" has had any real contact with the educational system in more than a decade other than talking to high school coaches or CIF officials. Not a single one of them is an educator by profession or training.

Not a single one of the sportswriters leading the hue and cry to end transfer eligibility has had to deal with a student coming home from his or her "home district school" complaining of gang violence which threatens his or her safety. Not one of them has had to concern themselves with rampant drug use or teen alcoholism among their own child's peer group.

Not one of these writers calling for an end to transfers has had to wonder about the level and quality of education or whether their child will remain academically eligible at the "home district school," let alone get into a good college. Forget about whether the kid will get home alive, will be subjected to random violence or shaken down for his lunch money or his new shoes. None of that is what sportswriters are concerned with, because they're sportswriters.

And while sportswriters will pay homage to the ideals of sports in education, not one of them calling for an end to open-enrollment transfers seems to view the choice of high school as most parents do: Whether the educational opportunities, both academically and athletically, at one school are enough to outweigh whether Johnny or Susie continues to attend the "neighborhood" school with his or her friends.

Friends, this isn't about "victory with honor" for some sportswriters. It isn't about the facts. It's about making the facts fit their perspective, getting a result and leading a campaign. To which we say: Write about sports. Stick to what you know. Leave educating to the educators, and leave legislating to the legislature. And if you don't like the way things are, lobby the legislature to change it, or pick another profession. But don't use the bully-pulpit of a major metropolitan daily to claim that there's a "crisis" when there really isn't one.

Honestly, this isn't about personalities. We really like Eric Sondheimer and he's a terrific sports writer and journalist. But for some reason, he's just lost us when it comes to this issue of transfers. And besides, the issue is not about Mr. Sondheimer. It's about what he's written and whether it's well-taken, or without merit. And we believe that it's the latter.

Sportswriters, notably Mr. Sondheimer, will tell us that high school coaches don't like it when their best players leave for another school, and they will be tell us that transfers are "bad" because when a talented player transfers into a new school, some other student's chances of making the varsity are thereby diminished. Indeed, Mr. Sondheimer today points to the rule in the Oxnard district requiring players to sit out a year, and claims that:

"Coaches in the Oxnard district are pleased that they know which eighth graders will end up coming to their school. They can evaluate them and plan for the future...."

To which we say, what about the rules against recruiting? They won't really know until the players actually enroll, and that's the way its supposed to be. No high school coach should be "evaluating" 8th graders and planning for the future based on where a non-enrolled student might eventually enroll.

But we learn that even the coaches in the Oxnard school district don't like the rule, because it still doesn't keep players from transferring to private schools. So what else is new? Freedom of choice in education? That's life.

And it says more about who we are as a people and a country that we don't like it when talent leaves and when "newcomers" displace older, more established groups, than it does about transfers being "good" or "bad."

Talented people come and go in all facets and walks of life, and less talented, but devoted and loyal people sometimes get displaced by these more talented "newcomers." Welcome to America. So, high school coaches are like the rest of us. They want to win. Telling them not to play the most talented players who happen to legally enroll isn't something they're capable of doing, nor should they be required to play less talented, but "loyal" players, at least not as a matter of legislating policy. As long as the "victory is with honor," and a player is legally enrolled and the CIF rules are adhered to, excellence is the goal, not mediocrity, and coaches ought to be allowed to play their best players.

Statistics. Statistics. Statistics.

What do the numers about transfers really tell us?

They tell us that a remarkable 96% of all students DO NOT TRANSFER. They tell us that of 3,000,000 students, in the region, more than 2,998,100 stayed put.

They tell us that of 300,000 athletes, 298,100 are continuing to stay with their friends, with their teams, and are remaining eligible at their original schools regardless of whether a small number transfer for reasons that we'll never be able to discern.

They tell us that athletes strive to win, and do so within the framework of the CIF Bylaws. They tell us that 300,000 students in SoCal are representing their schools, their communities and themselves in good stead.

And they tell us that Mr. Sondheimer doesn't know his elbow from his eyebrow when it comes to why students transfer from one school to another.

The school district which Mr. Sondheimer singled out in his column today, Oxnard Union, also reveled some interesting statistics in their district report to the California State Department of Education last year: What that report tells us is that Hueneme HS and Rio Mesa HS have the highest four year dropout rates in grades 9-12 of any schools in the district over a four year period (5.5% at both schools) of any schools in the district other than the two continuation high schools (one of which has a dropout rate of 50% over four years).

In contrast to Rio Mesa HS, Camarillo HS (the school that Doug McGee and Matt Floyran chose to attend to "be with friends" as Mr. Sondheimer suggests) has a remarkable zero% dropout rate. Zero. In four years, not one student out of the 2,575 average enrolled has ever dropped out of school.

Yet Mr. Sondheimer is openly critical of the decision of the parents of those two players he mentioned, claiming they should have attended Rio Mesa, but instead chose Camarillo HS "to be with their friends."

Perhaps the parents of these two athletes (as well as their friends' parents) know something about the education at the two schools mentioned. Maybe they know something Mr. Sondheimer doesn't want to talk about, having nothing to do with athletics, but about socio-economic factors, or gang-violence, or the educational opportunities at one school over another.

So where's the crisis?

If you want to talk about a crisis in education, the dropout rate California public schools ought to send Mr. Sondheimer and the rest of us screaming from the room in fear. That's the real crisis, not whether a student is playing for school x or school y, but whether he or she stays in school at all.

In the one year period in which there were 1,900 transfer eligibility forms submitted to the CIF-SS office, 25,007 students dropped out of school altogether according to the California Department of Education. That's more than 7.8 % of all students enrolled in the SoCal region, an astoundingly high number of students who don't graduate.

Statewide, the dropout rate is 11.1%....Now that's a number that ought to send shivers down any taxpayer's spine, for a lot of reasons. Crime, gangs, unemployment, a less stable world, illiterate students who can't or won't even be able to read Mr. Sondheimer's column.

Want to really get scared? Of the number of students enrolled in high school in Orange County last year, there were 7,651 students enrolled in Juvenile Hall facilities. Of those students enrolled in such facilities, a mind-boggling 60.3% of them have dropped of school over a 4 year period. Now that's scary.

Does anyone seriously believe that an athlete, who is required to maintain a 2.0 GPA to keep his eligibility is part of that problem, regardless of what uniform he happens to wear in competition?

So what's the crisis?

To the players who compete and work on their academics to stay eligible, there's no "crisis" at least not in athletics. Maybe they're concerned about the next math or physics test. Maybe they're concerned about winning the next game to stay alive in the playoffs. For them, the "crisis" is whether the team is successful, whether they're having fun, and whether they're winning or losing. Because in sports there are winners, and there are losers, and it's more fun to win than it is to lose, as long as it's "victory with honor." No one wants to cheat, and no one wants to win unfairly. And that's a fact. Ask any high school coach. Ask any player. And ask any player's parent.

They'll tell you that all they want is the best. And they want it honestly and within the rules. And they'll tell you that right now, there are plenty of rules which prevent cheats from suceeding. And they'll tell you that a player who changes schools within the law and the rules of the CIF, isn't cheating anyone.

And frankly, we're willing to bet that if you asked any of those 300,000 athletes in the Southern Section, they'd also tell you they don't give a damn about what a few sportswriters think.

Period.