At the coaches clinic in July, the NCHSTCA revealed the results of its May survey on level-based play, and its study of playoff results between traditional and charter schools in the previous realignment cycle (2021-25).
Survey Results
In January, the NCHSTCA conducted a survey on a wide variety of topics related to the new realignment. In the open "comments" question at the end of the survey, we were surprised by the number of unsolicited responses having to do with the impact of charter schools on equity in the playoffs.
As a consequence, the NCHSTCA authorized a separate survey to explicitly address opinions about the factors that impact "level-based play". We defined "level-based play" as competition in which both teams can win if they play well, and both teams can lose if they play poorly; that is, matches which are interesting and exciting precisely because no one knows who is going to win.
Out of deference to the NCHSAA and the realignment process, we waited until May to conduct our survey. As soon as the survey was emailed to coaches, we were swamped with responses ... over 75 in the first 36 hours alone. Clearly, there's significant interest in the issue.
Responses came from coaches across the state, in all classifications, and from traditional and non-traditional schools alike.
The key question posed by the survey was this: What factors have the most impact on a school's enduring athletic success?
We posed six different factors, and asked the coaches to rate them on a 7-point scale, with 1 meaning "no impact at at all and 7 meaning "extreme impact".
The chart below shows the responses to this key question.
We also asked coaches which sports were most affected by a school's "type", and, not surprisingly, given that the survey was taken only by tennis coaches, tennis was the sport most often cited. Other sports rated as highly affected by school type were golf, swimming, and soccer.
Coaches at traditional public high schools with defined geographic attendance zones felt strongly that it was unfair for their schools to be forced to compete in the playoffs against non-traditional schools, but coaches from non-traditional schools disputed this.
Finally, when asked whether the coaching community wanted the NCHSTCA to continue working on this issue, an overwhelming majority of coaches indicated they wanted us to continue exploring options to make playoff competition more even and fair.
As always, we included an open-ended question for comments and questions, and, as you might imagine, those comments ran the gamut of opinion and experience. We're not publishing those comments, as we do not have permission from the survey responders to do so, but we assure you, they were read by our board and discussed thoroughly.
Click here for a complete copy of the survey results
2021-25 Playoff Study
Last spring, members of our Board of Directors also conducted a study of the 2021-25 playoffs, exploring the question: Do charter schools have a significant advantage over traditional schools?
To evaluate this question, we looked at every playoff contest, in every sport, over the previous realignment cycle, and focused our attention exclusively on those playoff contests which involved a charter school playing a traditional school. If charter schools have a significant advantage over traditional schools, then we would expect that charter schools would win a majority of these contests, and to a statistically significant degree.
But, if school type didn't matter, we'd expect that charter schools and traditional schools would win contests against each other around 50% of the time.
Here's what we found:
Percentages shown in red indicate the statistically significant occasions where charter schools outperformed traditional schools, and the percentages in green show the reverse. The darker the color, the stronger the significance.
We drew the following observations from our study.
1. The experience (and complaints) of 2A tennis coaches, and especially 2A men's tennis coaches, are based on reality. There's a powerful advantage at work for charter schools in 2A tennis.
2. Surprisingly, that advantage is not shown in 1A tennis, either at the individual or team level. This would indicate that other factors, apart from school type, are at work in the 2A experience, because, after all, 1A charter schools are just as "charter" as 2A charter schools.
3. The only other sport which shows a consistent and significant advantage for charter schools is soccer.
4. In all other sports, there seems to be no advantage for charter schools, and in a couple of sports, the charters are actually at a disadvantage.
Click here for the complete report on the 2021-25 playoff results between charter and traditional schools.
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