【分析解答题】

High School SportsAren’t KillingAcademicsA、In this month’sAtlantic cover article, “TheCaseAgainst High-School Sports,”Amanda Ripley argues that school-sponsored sports programs should be seriously cut. She writes that, unlike most countries that outperform the United States on international assessments,American schools put too much of an emphasis on athletics, “ Sports are embedded inAmerican schools in a way they are not almost anywhere else,” she writes, “Yet this difference hardly ever comes up in domestic debates aboutAmerica’s international mediocrity(平庸)in education.”B、American student-athletes reap many benefits from participating in sports, but the costs to the schools could outweigh their benefits, she argues, In particular, Ripley contends that sports crowd out the academic missions of schools:America should learn from South Korea and Finland and every other country at the top level of international test scores, all of whom emphasize athletics far less in school. ”Even in eighth grade,American kids spend more than twice the time Korean kids spend playing sports,” she writes, citing a 2010 study published in the Journal ofAdvancedAcademics.C、It might well be true that sports are far more rooted inAmerican high schools than in other countries.But our reading of international test scores finds no support for the argument against school athletics. Indeed, our own research and that of others lead us to make the opposite case. School-sponsored sports appear to provide benefits that seem to increase, not detract(减少)from, academic success.D、Ripley indulges a popular obsession(痴迷)with international test score comparisons, which show wide and frightening gaps between the United States and other countries. She ignores, however, the fact that states vary at least as much in test scores as do developed countries.

A、2011 report from Harvard University shows that Massachusetts produces math scores comparable to South Korea and Finland, while Mississippi scores are closer to Trinidad and Tobago. Ripley’s thesis about sports falls apart in light of this fact. Schools in Massachusetts provide sports programs while schools in Finland do not. Schools in Mississippi may love football while in Tobago interscholastic sports are nowhere near as prominent. Sports cannot explain these similarities in performance. They can’t explain international differences either.E、If it is true that sports undermine the academic mission ofAmerican schools, we would expect to see a negative relationship between the commitment to athletics and academic achievement. However, the University ofArkansas’sDanielBowen and Jay Greene actually find the opposite. They examine this relationship by analyzing schools’ sports winning percentages as well as student-athletic participation rates compared to graduation rates and standardized test score achievement over a five-year period for all public high schools in Ohio.Controlling for student poverty levels, demographics(人口统计状况), and district financial resources, both measures of a school’s commitment to athletics are significantly and positively related to lower dropout rates as well as higher test scores.　　F)On-the-field success and high participation in sports is not random-it requires focus and dedication to athletics. One might think this would lead schools obsessed with winning to deemphasize academics.Bowen and Greene’s results contradict that argument.
A、likely explanation for this seemingly counterintuitive(与直觉相反的)result is that success in sports programs actually facilitates or reflects greater social capital within a school’s community.　　G)Ripley cites the writings of renowned sociologist JamesColeman, whose research in education was groundbreaking.Coleman in his early work held athletics in contempt, arguing that they crowded out schools’ academic missions. Ripley quotes his 1961 study, TheAdolescent Society, whereColeman writes, “Altogether, the trophy(奖品)case