The recent studies about black males falling behind in school have one thing in common: they ignore the role sports play in the issue. When parents, coaches and principals allow students to pursue sports absent academic requirements they encourage young men to ignore academics and invest all their ambitions in sports dreams -- dreams that come true for very few athletes.
Here’s a letter to the editor I wrote, published in today’s Washington Post.
For background, here’s one of the stories published in the Post.