Published: August 24, 2009 05:12 pm      

STUMPTALK: The best public schools, college football, and recruiting

Two news items piqued my interest recently. First, Lane Kiffin, former assistant coach to Pete Carroll at the University of Southern California and recently head coach for the NFL Oakland Raiders, will replace Phillip Fulmer as head coach at the University of Tennessee. Second, U.S. News & World Report listed the 100 best public high schools in the U.S. according to Advanced Placement (AP) test and International Baccalaureate (IB) test scores.

It appears that UT hired Lane Kiffin because as an assistant at USC he enjoyed considerable success persuading outstanding high school football prospects to attend USC. As college football fans know, USC under Pete Carroll has been one of the best football teams in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Good high school football players want to go there, not only because of the team’s success but also because of USC’s Southern California location and amenities: lots of pretty girls and warm weather.

As local fans know UT football has fallen on hard times in recent years and many blame recruiting. Tennessee also has lots of pretty girls but cannot compete with California and Florida for weather. As a football program, however, Tennessee continues to send players to the National Football League, and that is a strong attraction for outstanding high school prospects with professional ambitions. UT fans hope that Lane Kiffin will be successful in the very tough South Eastern Conference where he must compete with such outstanding recruiters as Florida’s championship head coach Urban Meyer and Alabama’s Nick Saban.

This brings us back to the U.S. News best public high schools. How did they get that way? Just as football teams win when they get outstanding players, high schools excel academically when they get outstanding students, and it’s not about money. Intellectually gifted and academically motivated students earn high AP and IB test scores and it is those students who put their schools on the U.S. News 100 best list. This is a no-brainer but political correctness keeps people from stating the obvious. As Murray and Herrnstein wrote, it’s the bell curve, folks.

Of course, unlike successful college football programs outstanding public schools don’t recruit students directly; they have a gene pool of high numbers of college educated professional parents in affluent neighborhoods to recruit for them. The number one school on the list, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, is in the very affluent Washington, D.C. suburbs, an area with disproportionate numbers of college educated professionals.

Because of its small rural population, a county like ours does not have those advantages, but we do have good schools. I know because I worked for a year (1999-2000) as a substitute teacher at Cumberland County High School. CCHS students will succeed in higher education and at work despite budget shortfalls if they behave themselves and study.

Those who prophesy doom for Cumberland County schools because of budget problems are mostly rent seeking special pleaders or those who have been frightened by them. They should quit the hyperbole. It doesn’t help. The schools will be all right, and ambitious and hard working students will continue to succeed.