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COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Too many Ohio schools are failing when it comes to academic standards for student-athletes, so the state needs to require a minimum 2.0 grade-point average, state Sen. Gene Watts, R-Dublin, said Thursday.
Mr. Watts wrote what is commonly known as Ohio's "No Pass-No Play" law that required school districts to set a minimum grade-point average for participation in sports and other extracurricular activities. The law, which gave the districts until July to come up with standards, did not go far enough, Mr. Watts said.
A recent Ohio Department of Education survey found that 93 percent of schools that responded do not require a minimum 2.0 average and that 48 percent require a 1.0, Mr. Watts said. Some schools, he added, require only a 0.67 average, which is four D's and two F's.
"We gave local school districts the opportunity to implement their own standards," Mr. Watts said. "They failed and they failed for the most part pretty miserably."
Mr. Watts' effort for a 2.0 standard dates to 1985. Concerns that it takes away local school board control, is punitive and will lessen a student's motivation for attending school have prevented passage into law.
His latest proposal would apply to students participating in sports and extracurricular activities in grades seven through 12. Learning disabled students would not be affected. Mr. Watts does not expect the legislature to take up the idea until its next session.
Blair Irvin, an assistant commissioner with the Ohio High School Athletic Association, questioned the higher standard.
"Why are we are coming from the point that if we do something to make it tougher for kids to participate in athletics that it's going to improve education?" Mr. Irvin asked.
Jeff Gafford, the football coach at Worthington Kilbourne High School in suburban Columbus, said he opposes a 2.0, which he described as a standard for getting into college.
"If somebody is under a 2.0 and you are going to take away one of the most valuable or important activities they are going to have, that doesn't make any sense to me," he said. "If a kid is making progress toward graduation from high school, all the rights and privileges associated with that should stay intact."
