COLUMN: Is it time for private schools to compete in their own classes?
Of the eight teams in the recent Iowa high school baseball state championships, six were private schools. Three of the four state champions were private schools.
Nine Catholic schools qualified for the state tournament. All of them won their opening quarterfinal game. Catholic schools were 13-2 against public schools in the tournament.
It’s not just baseball. In the boys’ basketball state tournament last year, three of the four champions were also private schools. And that’s just to name a couple of the sports significantly affected.
Private schools have dominated high school sports in many states for a very long time thanks to fact that they can recruit players, unlike public schools. Although they aren’t technically supposed to, they still bend the rules allowing them to bring in the best players in their area to their private school instead of a public school. This creates a talent disparity between public and private schools.
For example, in Alabama, private schools — which make up only 11 percent of the state athletic association’s membership — have won nearly a third of the total team state championships since 2011.
So how do states like Iowa even the playing field? Right now, they don’t.
One way some states try to fix the issue is by using a multiplier to decide what class private schools should play in. A multiplier means that when a state is deciding what class each school should play in, a private school’s enrollment number would be multiplied which would likely put them in a higher class than their real enrollment number would. The multiplier varies in some states from anywhere from 1.35 to 2.
An interesting solution by some states, including Indiana, is implementing a point system that moves teams up or down a class depending on recent success. A system like that would be very difficult to sell to a private school because they would be moving up and down between classes and they would have to play against better competition if they were successful.
Ask any private school if they would like to stop winning championships and play against tougher competition. My guess is that every single one of them would say no to that.
Another way to try and solve the problem would be to sort private schools into their own class. In Iowa, for example, there are over 400 public schools sorted into four different classes (1A, 2A, 3A, 4A). There are also over 60 private schools in the state.
I believe there would be no problem sorting all of the private schools into their own class where they would compete with each other for state titles rather than have an unfair advantage against public schools.
In some sports it doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem. In football last season, five of the 12 teams in the Iowa championship games were private schools. Three of the six champions were private schools. That isn’t too bad.
It’s already difficult to gauge what class each private school should play in since they usually smaller enrollments than their public school peers.
There are many problems that could arise if you kick private schools into their own class. There have already been cases where the private schools have sued the state association because of any changes. There would be a good chance that could happen if Iowa made any changes.
Private schools love their advantage over public schools, they are not going to like that they can’t have easy wins anymore and that they have to play against other schools that recruit.
It would also take away some rivalry games becomes schools would be in a different class. That might upset more than just the private school fans.
The debate will continue for many more years to come as states try to figure out a solution to even the playing field. But for the time being, private schools will more than likely continue to dominate in the state of Iowa.
Peters writes for the Centerville, Iowa Daily Iowegian.