North Carolina Senate Bill 377 Would End High School Athletics for Poor Academics

I doubt this bill actually gets passed because it’s pretty outrageous. Nonetheless, it’s worth pointing out what’s floating around out there. There’s a proposed bill in North Carolina that would end athletics in high schools that score below the 50th percentile for end of year tests two years in a row. I guess the idea is canceling sports would help the academic performance at the school:

Sen. Charlie Albertson, D-Duplin, the sponsor of the bill, said the proposal isn’t intended to punish students who are doing well. He said he only wants to encourage students who aren’t performing well in the classroom to do better.

“We certainly want our kids to keep playing sports because we know how important that is, but we need to remember the first thing about a school is to be able to learn to read and write and do math,” Albertson said.

This is about the damn dumbest thing of which I’ve heard. How can you categorically blame poor academic performance on sports and athletic performance? Why wouldn’t you start with the kids or the parents for poor academics? What about the school teaching better? What about the parents making the kids do their homework? There’s a pretty darn high percentage of high school students that participate in athletics so stripping them of that right would be insane. I’m willing to guess that academic performance for high schoolers on sports teams is highly competitive with that of the regular student body. How could it possibly be worth ending the fun for all the other students doing well in school that enjoy their sports?