Travel Sports Are Pulling Massachusetts Kids Out of Class: 26 Percent of Superintendents Say It Is Worsening Absences, Boston Globe Finds

Travel Sports Are Pulling Massachusetts Kids Out of Class: 26 Percent of Superintendents Say It Is Worsening Absences, Boston Globe Finds

A Boston Globe survey of nearly 300 Massachusetts superintendents found 26 percent say travel sports are worsening attendance, and nearly one in five parents polled had a child miss school for a trip.

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Massachusetts school leaders now have numbers for something they have been talking about for years. In a Boston Globe survey of nearly 300 superintendents, 26 percent said travel sports are making attendance problems worse, and a Suffolk University/Boston Globe poll this spring found nearly one in five responding parents had a child miss school to travel for sports. The Globe's report, by Christopher Huffaker and Marcela Rodrigues, is part of a series on students missing school.

The backdrop is a state where more than 17 percent of students were chronically absent last year, about five years after schools closed for the pandemic, per the Globe.

Volleyball Weekends, Truancy Notices and a Six-Class Rule

The families in the story are not hiding the trade-off. A Canton High School volleyball player missed two to four days per tournament trip during her junior year and later earned a Division I scholarship to Bryant University, the Globe reports. A Wellesley soccer family received truancy notices. Arlington High School fails students who skip more than six classes in a quarter, and Superintendent Liz Homan has defended that limit against pushback from some club-athlete parents.

School Sports Still Help Attendance

The report also points the other way. An American Enterprise Institute analysis of more than 250,000 Indiana high schoolers, published in April, found varsity athletes had better attendance even after accounting for poverty and grades. At Salem High School, the Globe found students whose attendance improved so they could stay on school teams, and some Boston schools run morning intramural games to get kids in the building on time.

Cost is part of the picture. The Globe cites Project Play data showing families spend more than $1,000 a year per sport on average, close to $2,000 for high school athletes, and an AP-Ipsos poll from July that found about a quarter of U.S. students have played on a travel or club team. Nine in 10 parents in that poll said the benefits outweigh the costs.

Buying Sandlot, which covers the business of youth sports, flagged the report on Monday as another argument for sports academies, where school is built around training. More youth coverage is on BallerTube's youth sports page.