Reasons to Abandon Sponsoring Sports in American High Schools

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Recommended: Importance of sports on students academic performance

The concern that average American students perform worse than most students from other developed countries has trigged debate that whether U. S should still support school sponsored sports program. Although research shows potential positive relationship between sports and academics, U. S high school should stop sponsoring sports program because of huge price both students and school paid in order to participate in physical activities, including money and time.
It is undeniable that expense on sports are incredibly large. When offer sports programs, schools have to maintain fields, purchase equipment and accessories. When it comes to tournaments, schools have to cover transportation fees as well as the price to find substitute teachers for coaches’ missing. Football, for example, is considered as the most popular sport in America. According to Ripley (2013), schools devote more than $20,000 each year for only preserve a grass ground, not to mention additional expense such as helmets or uniforms. Nevertheless, despite the huge amount of money required to finance athletics, the fee for operating sports programs continues to increase. Along with the growing concern to sports activity, high schools are keeping expanding their sports program in chasing of glory and ranking. (Conn 2012). Even in the depressed economic period while schools must to curtail education budgets, still, sports programs generally reach sufficient financial support (Ripley, 2013). One example here is Premont, in which sports are still available for high school students while middle-school was combined with high school, elementary school cannot afford a music or art teacher in years, and science lab was closed due to lack of funds. (Ripley, 2013)
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...hool athletics. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Greene, J.P. (2013, February 6). Does athletic success come at the expense of academic success? Education Next. Retrieved from http://educationnext.org/
Rees, D. I. & Sabia, J.J. (2010). Sports participation and academic performance: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Economics of Education Review, 29 (2010), 751-759. doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2010.04.008.
Ripley, A. (2013, October) The case against high-school sports. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://theatlantic.com/
Singh, A., Uijtdewilligen, L., Twisk, J.W.R., van Mechelen, W., & Chinapaw, M.J.M. (2012). Physical activity and performance at school: A systematic review of the literature including a methodological quality assessment. Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, 166 (1), 49-55. doi:10.1001/archpediatrics.2011.716

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