Published: April 16, 2014
Enrollment multiplier debated across the country
WIAA members to vote today
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
Since it was put on the WIAA’s annual meeting agenda last
month, the debate over a proposed 1.65 enrollment multiplier for nonpublic
schools in Wisconsin has been passionate.
The WIAA will host its annual meeting today in Stevens Point
with school administrators, who will then decide if an enrollment multiplier is
necessary.
“I understand the arguments both sides make for and against
it,” Kewaskum Athletic Director Jason Piittmann said. “But I also don’t know
that maintaining the status quo is the right answer either. I don’t know if
1.65 is the right answer.”
The proposal was introduced through a petition submitted to
the WIAA. The petition was started by members of the Six Rivers Conference in
southwest Wisconsin. The WIAA’s Constitution allows its membership to bring
forth a proposal if at least 10 percent of the membership signs the petition.
More than 70 have signed it, according to WIAA Executive Director Dave
Anderson.
“A multiplier is not new,” Anderson said. “It’s been studied
and examined in other states and our state. It has been debated and discussed
by the membership. A lot of data was examined.”
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HISTORY OF THE MULTIPLIER
Alabama was the first state to adopt a multiplier in 1999,
according to an Institute of Education Sciences study.
The Alabama Athletic Association had two proposals from the
membership that sought to eliminate private schools from the association or to
create a separate association.
After considering the matter, the AAA developed a 1.35
multiplier, which learned through its research that the athletic participation
rate among private schools was 35 percent higher than that in public schools.
The proposed 1.65 number came from Illinois’ high school
association.
Missouri has a 1.35 multiplier. Arkansas had a 1.35 multiplier
as well, but was raised to 1.75 in 2005, five years after its inception.
Tennessee has the highest multiplier in the country at 1.8.
Georgia initially proposed a 2.0 multiplier in 1999.
Georgia’s multiplier was proposed when a state legislator was upset his
daughter-in-law’s debate team at a small public school kept losing to a
nationally ranked team from a private school.
It had a 1.5 multiplier until 2008 when the state’s athletic
association decided to go away from the multiplier. In the first year without
the multiplier, nonpublic schools won 45 percent of the state championships.
Arizona, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and South Carolina
have explored a multiplier, but found limited support for it. Indiana and
Nebraska have rejected a multiplier.
In 2002, Missouri passed its multiplier despite 113 schools
refusing to vote. After it passed, parents from five Catholic high school
students sued the MSHSAA, Missouri’s high school governing body, claiming the
multiplier was without a reasonable basis.
The lawyers for the MSHSAA included in its defense a study
done by a University of Missouri professor that found “no statistically
significant correlation between the rate of participation in a school and its
success on the field.”
The parents lost the suit.
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WISCONSIN’S HISTORY WITH MULTIPLIER
In 2005, former WIAA Executive Director Doug Chickering
called for a statewide survey for the number of student athletes coming into a
school (public or private) from outside the local public school district.
Since Wisconsin is an open enrollment state, Chickering said
“That’s why I keep telling members we can’t look at it as a public versus
nonpublic school issue. We have to look at open enrollment too.”
In 2006, the WIAA’s members begged for Chickering to make
the private-public school multiplier issue the top priority, according to an
Institute of Education Sciences study in 2007.
“They told us that the time for talk is over, that the
public versus private schools issue has to be resolved,” he said.
Among the ideas he proposed were: apply an enrollment
multiplier for the open enrollment student counts for both public and private
schools; require all private schools within a Division 1 school district to
play up one division; let schools play up a division in any sport they choose;
do not allow a school that has won a state tournament to move down a division
even if its enrollment declines; apply a multiplier to the number of students
that receive tuition assistance (private schools); establish a higher initial
placement for new member schools.
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WHAT HAPPENS IF IT PASSES?
The arguments surrounding the multiplier are recruiting and
competitive balance.
Living Word Lutheran Principal Dave Miskimen said schools
that recruit will continue to do so.
“They’ll continue to operate unethically,” he said. “If
recruiting is a problem, multipliers aren’t the solution. Unethical recruitment
is not a private school issue.”
As for competitive balance, Miskimen just doesn’t believe a
multiplier will change anything.
“I do also believe that there’s a component to it that
thinks private schools have it easy and they don’t have to work that hard,” he
said. “I think it’s based on trying to change the bar.
“It raises the bar for schools like us.”
He added if that happens, the nonpublic schools, he
believed, will just be more motivated.
“I think each state association really has to do some
soul-searching,” B. Elliot Hopkins, director of sports and educational services
for the National Federation of State High School Associations, told
athleticbusiness.com in 2012. “What administrators do in one state may have no
place in another state. There’s no right or wrong; it’s just what works best in
that state at a particular time.”
