Competitive Equity Ad Hoc Committee Proposal Report

2014

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Mission

The Mission of the Committee is to ……

• to study competitive balance/equity.

• to evaluate the current procedure of using enrollment for division placement in post-season tournament plus offer a solution.

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Competitive Equity was defined as “more schools have an opportunity to

compete on a more level playing field in post-

season play.”

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The Committee met:July 7-8, August 3-4, October 1& 28,

Nov. 18The following viable solutions were developed and investigated by the

Committee: • 1.65 Multiplier

• Status Quo

• Add a division in sports that would contain no private schools. ( Exception: Not in Football)

• Long Term Success Factors: point system for regional,sectionals,and state that would accumulate and move a team up a division over an established period of time.

• Reducer: Subtract students on free and reduced lunch,or a percentage of those students from total enrollment.

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Solutions continued

• Equal distribution of private schools throughout division.

• Sport specific private/public separate state tournaments or path to the state tournament in tennis, golf, volleyball, and soccer.

• Geographical population multiplier ( public and private)

• Out of feeder school/open enrolled student multiplier.

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Criteria Used for Assessing Potential Solutions

• Sport Specific• Addresses schools in

rural/urban areas.• Universal application to all

WIAA member schools.• Clear, concise and supported

by data.• Can be reviewed and will be

evaluated.6

Why not the Multiplier?

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• The Multiplier is not universally applied to all members.

•The Multiplier does not take into account Open Enrollment

/ non boundary schools in Wisconsin and is a target for

lawsuits.

•While it might move some private schools, it does not

solve the problem. Over time,other schools would emerge.

Empirical evidence from Missouri has indicated that the

multiplier formula did not decrease the amount of state

championships won by private schools.Two states (Georgia

and Arkansas) have abandoned the multiplier format.

Multiplier con’t•Not all private schools are the same and yet,

the multiplier treats them the same.

•The goal of the committee is not to target

just private schools, but to analyze all

schools success factors.

•The Committee did not believe the multiplier

would address the concerns of the rural

schools.

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Adding a Division at lowest level without Private Schools.

• This does not address Division 2 and 3 issues and is not applied universally.

• To add a division to satisfy a small portion of the membership and still not address the other divisions would be considered financially irresponsible

• No data available to support proposal.

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Equal Distribution of Private School throughout the

Divisions.• It is not applied to the membership

equally.

• Liability in sports such as football and wrestling.

• Imbalance in enrollments.

• Would not necessarily move the right schools in question, hence failing to address the rural concerns.

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Sport Specific Public and Private Separate State Tournaments

• Evaluated tennis, volleyball, soccer and golf.

• Some sports would have to add a division and in some cases move privates out of Division 1 becoming a costly change.

• Encourages a separation of privates and public as a long term solution.

• Divisions for public and private would face competitive inequity and small publics could face opponents 3xs their size.

• Arbitrary and cannot not be used for all sports. 11

Out -of -Feeder School/Open Enrolled Student Multiplier

• Reviewed Ohio Model that tracked a student through a system- if they did not come through a schools system there was a multiplier

• Coaches may cut and manipulate rosters.

• Cannot not audit rosters

• Not easy to administer or track

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“Criteria” applied to nine proposals! This resulted in 3

proposals that met the “Criteria” for further study.

• Reducer

• Success Factor

• Geographical,Boundary Specific Multiplier

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Reducer• Follows the Minnesota plan using free and

reduced lunch numbers where 40% of the current free and reduced count. After 7 years, Minnesota continues to apply reducer to their schools.

• Can be applied to both private and public, rural and urban, and all sports.

• Data exists and can be audited.

• Research what % of students on free and reduced lunch actually participate in athletics for their schools.

• Options that need to be explored include: How do you count students? Do schools get bumped up? Do “large urban school”move down? Does it address the concerns of “rural schools”?

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Why Reducer Rejected• No defensible /logical basis on coming up

with 40%.

• Access to data constantly changing.

• Federal policy has changed.

• Minnesota HS Ex. Director has indicated that the reducer has made no tangible difference.

• Private and public school data incomplete.

• Large Public Schools would be moved down.

• Data difficult to track and is often inaccurate. 15

Geographical, Boundary Specific, Multiplier

• Establish a radius for attendance regardless of open enrollment.

• Take all schools in Wisconsin and assign them a home attendance boundary.

• Add a multiplier to each student beyond boundary.

• Need to review how many students actually participate in athletics.

• Need to review feeder schools for private schools.

• Set up a model to see how this affects all schools and will this address rural/urban issues.

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Why Geographical Boundary Rejected?Radius of 10 miles then take 2% of

population and that would be added to your student population.

• No consistency in boundaries(10-40 mile boundaries throughout state)

• Hurts rural schools.

• Cannot be applied equally to everyone.

• Could not develop a model to evaluate.

• Cannot address feeder schools and distance in private schools.

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Success Factor• Measurable and easy to track

• Evaluates and impacts the least number of schools.

• Can be applied to all sports and public/private schools.

• Reviews 3-5 year records to improve speed of resolution.

• Establish a level point system for state tournament movement: Regionals, Sectionals, State, Championships.

• Sport Specific and can track promotion of teams.

• Implement in Team Sports only.

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Success Factor Proposal

The WIAA Ad Hoc Competitive Equity Committee is recommending the following plan for divisional assignment in the WIAA tournament series in selected sports. The proposed plan adjusts tournament assignment for teams that experience significant multi-year success. This would provide those teams with more competitive tournament play in successive years, as well as open up opportunities for state-level tournament competition to other teams. Below are the components of the system: 19

1. For competition purposes, a Success Factor will be implemented in the season regulations in: Boys’ Soccer, Girls’ Volleyball, Boys’ Basketball, Girls’ Basketball, Softball, Girls’ Soccer, and Baseball.

1.1. Rational - These seven sports represent all WIAA-sponsored team sports with a multi-divisional playoff format in which all schools qualify for post-season play which also do not crown individual champions.

2. This plan shall be implemented in the seven sports beginning with the fall season of the 2016-17 school year.

3. Divisional assignment will begin with the previous year’s divisional assignment.

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4. All teams with a qualifying point total (see Footnote #1) will be promoted to the next upper division.

4.1.Promotion will only occur in the sport where a school has achieved the required points.

5. All teams promoted using success factor will be locked into the promoted division.

6. Following promotion and locking, all non-promoted teams will be placed in divisions based on enrollment, consistent with the WIAA season regulations currently in place.

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7. Following application of season regulations, no team can be moved down a division due to another team’s promotion if they have earned any success factor points in that division in the last three years.

7.1.Should this situation arise, that school or schools will be locked in the previous years division, and the next smallest enrollment school or schools with no success factor points in the last three years will be moved down.

7.2.Any tie will be addressed consistent with current season regulations after the application of this clause.

8. The 3-year cumulative period used in determining placement for the first year of implementation will be the 2013-14, 2014-15, and 2015-16 school years.

9. No team will move more than one division from the previous year’s divisional assignment to the current year’s divisional assignment.

10. Once promoted, points from a lower division will not be considered in a subsequent promotion.

11.Once promoted, teams will leave the promoted division if they have less than 6 points earned in all divisions in the last 3 years.

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Footnotes1.Points will be assigned in the following way:

1.1.Points will only be awarded once per postseason. A maximum of 4 points may be earned by a team in a post-season tournament. Teams will be assigned points from only one of the following categories per year per sport: The most points a team can earn is 4 points a year.

4 points for winning a state championship game

3 points for advancing to the state championship game

2 points for advancing to a state semifinal (final 4)

1 point for advancing to a state quarterfinal (final 8)

1.2. Points will be cumulative for a period of 3 years.

1.3.If at the close of any season, a team has earned a 3-year cumulative total greater than 6 points or higher or when a school reaches 6 points, it will be promoted to the next higher division in the next season for that sport.

When a co-op forms, the co-op has a point total equal to combined total of the joining entities.

When a co-op dissolves, each team has the point total of the dissolving entity.

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Footnotes

2. Addressing Co-ops:

2.1.When a co-op forms, the co-op has a point total equal to combined total of the

joining entities.

2.2. When a co-op dissolves, each team has the point total of the dissolving entity.

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