The Washington Post, September 8, 2008, Monday

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The Washington Post

September 8, 2008, Monday

Regional Edition

SECTION: METRO; Pg. B02

DISTRIBUTION: Maryland

HEADLINE: Fees Shouldn't Keep Kids From Sports, Activities

BYLINE: Jay Mathews

BODY:

I began paying annual Little League fees for my son Joe when he was 7. After that, the requests for checks from schools and organizations multiplied -- soccer league fees, tennis camp fees, field trip fees, lab equipment fees. Too many for me to remember. Joe is 35 now, no longer a burden on my bank account, but to my surprise he has shed light recently on the fee issue that has upset so many Washington area parents.

Their concerns were described in startling detail by my colleague Daniel de Vise on the Aug. 31 Metro page. He exposed a bewildering world of lab fees, band fees, art fees, activity fees, anything-you-can-think-of fees. We tend to accept fees demanded by private organizations, like Little League. But the fees in de Vise's piece were often charged willy-nilly by public schools with little supervision from above and not much understanding of how they irk families who already pay hefty taxes to support those schools.

Joe, now himself a journalist (don't blame me -- it's his USA Today mother's fault), revealed in an Aug. 16 newspaper article how much this is a national problem, particularly with Little League. I did not know until I read his op-ed that the rule has always been: "At no time should payment of any fee be a prerequisite for participation in any level of the Little League program." Joe checked registration forms for more than 400 local Little Leagues across the country and found that only a handful did not charge a fee. Worse, he could not find a single registration form telling parents that the fee was optional. Several suggested that it was mandatory. (For the sake of family harmony, I will overlook the fact that my son, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, wrote this for the New York Times, the enemy.)

This two-faced Little League practice is directly relevant to the school fees issue because many Washington area school systems are following a similar policy. They let individual schools decide what fees to charge. They say no school may deny services to a child whose family can't pay. But they do very little to tell the parents that. The policy is on their Web sites or in parent guides. We all know people, including me, who rarely read those carefully.

Many parents, particularly in Montgomery County where the issue is now hot, want to get rid of fees attached to school courses. I don't think that is a good idea. In many cases, I suspect, without that extra support from parents who can afford it, the enriching activity might be cut. But I also worry that parents with children who could benefit from sports or music or drama or other activities would be scared off by what they see as a mandatory expense.

There is not much data on the effect of extracurricular activities on future success, but what there is shows a positive correlation. John H. Bishop, associate professor of human resource studies at Cornell University, said his study of children belonging to weekend sports travel teams indicated they had significantly larger incomes as adults than children who did not have that opportunity, with other social factors accounted for. We all have friends who were not good in the classroom but were terrific at something else, and it was the something else that helped bring them personal satisfaction and financial security for the rest of their lives.

Success in adolescence, even the perception of success, has long-lasting effects. The bottom line, experts say: If you feel good about yourself in high school, that tends to stick with you.

Here is my model for what schools and youth organizations should be doing: the spring 2008 registration form of the Northwest Washington Little League, apparently one of the few organizations that has thought about this. "FEE WAIVER," it says in capital letters. "NWLL offers fee waivers to any child who would otherwise be unable to participate." All the parent has to do is check a box, and the kid plays for free.

I remember what Little League meant to Joe. At 13, too old to play, he talked the league into letting him and his friend Brendan McArthur coach a team. Until they reached driving age, Brendan's dad and I would attend practices, remaining absolutely silent while they ran the show. Joe has been coaching ever since, a good thing for him and for those kids.

Bob Cumby, a Georgetown University economist and parent volunteer for the Northwest Washington Little League, has similar memories of what that activity did for the work ethic and self-confidence of his son Robbie, now 16. He agreed with me that it would be terrible if a misunderstanding about fees ever got in the way of that for any child. "Little League was one of the greatest things that happened to my kid," he said.

Have an opinion on high school grade inflation? E-mail me at mathewsj@washpost.com

LOAD-DATE: September 8, 2008