Marin Voice: Baseball provides good tools for educators ‘scouting’ good students
What do baseball scouting and evaluating high school students have in common? It sounds like a trick question, but as an ardent baseball fan and educator, I discovered that there is an interesting parallel.
In his book “Moneyball” author Michael Lewis brought the concept of sabermetrics to the attention of many people and especially baseball fans. Sabermetrics uses complex baseball statistics to empirically analyze the value of each player.
More and more teams had already begun to use this as the primary way of scouting young talent, making assessments of veteran players for trading purposes and signing free agent players.
It is interesting that, in the last few years, more teams have realized that it’s more effective to put equal weight on the observation of the qualities of the best players that cannot be reduced to mathematics. How good a teammate will the player be? How much resilience does he have? How does he perform under pressure? These are a few examples.
The New York Yankees, for instance, recently hired Brian Sabean, the former general manager of the San Francisco Giants, with excellent experience observing and evaluating young talent. This increasingly dominant approach integrates mathematical analysis with the judgments of expert observers of player performance and character.
It occurred to me that this had relevance for educators in identifying the best students. Importantly, while many universities still rely solely on grades and test scores, others increasingly rely far less on SAT scores and grades as the primary or sole means of assessing applicants.
A number have eliminated standardized test scores altogether as a means of assessing candidates. They carefully assess the written essays of applicants for indicators of a sense of direction, maturity, talents not revealed in a transcript, resilience and breadth of interests, as well as talents. They look carefully at recommendations from teachers who, like excellent scouts, identify student behaviors that are good predictors of future performance.
More high schools are helping students develop portfolios that reflect all their work, not just test scores and essay grades. More universities are interested in these portfolios as part of their admissions considerations.
A report shared by the Learning Policy Institute provides very good examples of what secondary school educators should be aware of. Read it online at bit.ly/3T2dtr4.
This is important for both guidance counselors and parents as they guide students in applying to colleges. Based on years of experience, good scouts and good teachers both have the ability to recognize attributes that suggest the likelihood of successful future performance.
This is not just about college admission. It is equally important that the evaluation of student performance by high school teachers also demonstrates this integration of mathematical measurement with observation of student performance. Are they only using the teaching equivalent of sabermetrics, or are they integrating it with the wisdom of good scouts?
Rather than relying solely on test scores or writing quality, the best teachers use other measures that are less easily quantified. They make note of excellent oral performance since they are aware that some students who don’t perform well in written work express themselves very effectively orally. These teachers also note student engagement in group activities, leadership abilities, teamwork, sense of initiative and their sense of self and self-direction. These are all good predictors of future college success.
Since most schools consider college admissions to be a successful outcome for high school students, they should focus on assessing these qualities that are now being recognized by universities as important. Evaluations of students should routinely demonstrate this integration of statistics and observation.
It’s rare that, as educators, we can learn much from baseball. But this is one case in which we can.