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What would you do as a parent here? Both sides of the coin (1 Viewer)

If you are the parent of one of the other four students, what do you tell your child?

  • Suggest offering to compete as one and give the other 4 a chance

    Votes: 6 10.0%

  • Suggest not offering to compete as one and try to remain on the team of 4 but without singling anyon

    Votes: 5 8.3%

  • Suggest not offering to compete as one and figure out how to put the top 4 members together

    Votes: 6 10.0%

  • Don't suggest anything and let your child make the decision

    Votes: 43 71.7%
  • Total voters
    60
gianmarco

gianmarco

Footballguy
Background:  8 students from my son's school made it to a regional math competition (including him).  There are both individual as well as team competitions.  Teams are groups of 4 and most of the team score is made up of the individual scores with an added component where they work together.  If a team qualifies for state, then all members get to go even if their individual score wouldn't otherwise be high enough.  Same thing goes for each level of the competition.  There were 2 teams of four students that competed from his school.

Situation:  At the regional competition, one team qualified to move on (4 students) and one individual from the other team qualified.  Thus, 5 students are going to be competing at state.  Two of the students qualified as individuals (or would have qualified as one was on the qualifying team).  Two other students just missed the individual cutoff but were on the team that scored well enough.  The last student was significantly lower than all the other four students but was on the team that qualified so that student qualifies as well.  To put in context, the top 10 individuals move on.  The individual finishes for the five students were:  4th, 5th (other team), 12th, 14th, 29th.

At the state competition, they can either split it up as a team of 3 and a team of 2 or they can split it up as a team of 4 and a team of 1.  However, as a team of 3 or 2, neither team will have a chance to move on as a team.  All 5 of the students decide to do 4 and 1 because they realize that that gives most of them the best chance to move on.  The team of 1 can only move on as an individual.  They now have to decide who is going to compete alone.  If an objective person is choosing to maximize the team, the choice is obvious as one student was a clear outlier (and had been in previous competitions).  But, the math teacher said they needed to decide amongst themselves how to handle it.  These are 6th graders to put in perspective the social situation of this and their ability to decide.

1)  If you are the parent of the student that is the outlier, what do you advise your child?

2)  If you are the parent of one of the top four students, what do you advise your child?

 
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Angry Beavers said:
The teacher should be the decider when and if the kids can't work this out. 
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The teacher will ultimately decide but gave the decision to the kids to work out first.  She is an extraordinary teacher and I understand why she went this route instead of choosing on her own to start.

The kids came to a decision already in less than a week even though they were deadlocked at the first discussion.

 
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As a parent, I'd advise my kid to what he/she thought was the best thing to do for everyone involved. If that means missing out on advancing, so be it. I have a 7th and 5th grader so I know 6th graders are more than capable of working this out themselves. 

 
Layout the options with the most logical conclusions.  Provide as many answers as you can without making the decision for the child.  Let the child work through it.  If they can't decide, the teacher has to step in.  No need for the parent to be any more involved than that :shrug:  

 
Who's paying for expenses for the competition and travel?

Why/how were the teams originally set up the way the were? (Without the strongest four on one team)

 
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I assumed that the kid was coming to me asking for advice when choosing an option.  I wouldn't proactively pick a direction for them, but if my kid asked for advice, I would give it. :pointsfingertoheavenforMikeBrady:

 
The outlier still gets to compete as an individual even if he gets booted from the team?  That seems like a strange rule.  The only reason he made it to the next level was because he was on the team.

:nerd: :nerd: :nerd: :nerd:   :cry:

 
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I don't think being the outlier should play a role in it. The team of 4 who qualified, I'd keep them together. The individual who qualified as an individual should roll alone. JMHO.

 
Lehigh98 said:
Who's paying for expenses for the competition and travel?

Why/how were the teams originally set up the way the were? (Without the strongest four on one team)
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The state competition is only an hour away.  Those driving up the night before stay in a hotel if they want.  There is no cost for the competition except for that.

The teams were done at the local level with a mix.  All 8 advanced because both teams did well enough.  The 2nd team that didn't make it to state had the top scoring kid and a couple kids that also finished in the teens and just missed moving on.  By mixing it up, they gave a chance to have more kids move on instead of stacking one team and making it very unlikely that the four other kids move on.

No problem with how the teams were set up to this point.

 
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Lehigh98 said:
Who's paying for expenses for the competition and travel?

Why/how were the teams originally set up the way the were? (Without the strongest four on one team)
Click to expand...
These are exceptional questions.  Particularly the second question.  

Everything hangs on the answer to the second question.  And any discussion without the answer the second question is doing everyone a disservice.  

For example, if the *teacher* was the person who originally made the teams, than this is the teacher's responsibility to address (although she should take student input.  If it was the students who originally came up with the teams, then the students have more say in how to address.

 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
The outlier still gets to compete as an individual even if he gets booted from the team?  That seems like a strange rule.  The only reason he made it to the next level was because he was on the team.
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Think of it this way:  It's pretty much an individual competition.  4 of the 5 sections of the competition are individual tests.  The last section is when the teams work together on a set of problems.  The team score is made up of a formula that adds up the four individual scores from the other 4 individual testing sections along with the 5th team section.  A team isn't going to finish 1st or 2nd without good individuals on it because it's heavily made up of all 4 individual scores.  But it's a way for a kid that just misses out on the individual placing to move on to the next level. 

 
gianmarco said:
The state competition is only an hour away.  Those driving up the night before stay in a hotel if they want.  There is no cost for the competition except for that.

The teams were done at the local level with a mix.  All 8 advanced because both teams did well enough.  The 2nd team that didn't make it to state had the top scoring kid and a couple kids that also finished in the teams and just missed moving on.  By mixing it up, they gave a chance to have more kids move on instead of stacking one team and making it very unlikely that the four other kids move on.

No problem with how the teams were set up to this point.
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Wrong answer.  There is very much a problem with how the teams were set up.  Namely, none of the geniuses who set up the teams could have POSSIBLY anticipated that the strongest member would qualify on his own, but not do well enough to carry the rest of his team?  Jesus, what a cluster.

This is the teacher's fault, and she should own it.  She set up this stupid situation, rather than a situation where she put the 4 best students on one team, and now is putting her students in a situation where they either have to vote off one of their own, or the worst player has to take one for the team and step down, or (even worse) the worst player advocates to stay on, but drags down the team and feels bad about themself.  Good golly.  

The teacher needs to make a decision and stick to it, not make a decision and now that there is a hard consequence (and a resulting decision to make), ask the kids to come up with a solution. 

 
Looking at the options:

1)  If the outlier competes alone, the top 4 kids have a decent shot to move onto nationals as a team.  All 4 kids would get to go.

2)  If one of the top two kids competes alone, then the team has no chance to advance.  Thus, one or two kids might go to nationals as an individual

3)  If one of the middle two kids competes alone, then the team has a minimal chance to move on but pretty unlikely.  Thus, one or two kids might go to nationals as an individual.

They all understand this too.

 
Black Box said:
I don't think being the outlier should play a role in it. The team of 4 who qualified, I'd keep them together. The individual who qualified as an individual should roll alone. JMHO.
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This makes sense to me. To me, if the members of the team can change, then it's not the same team that earned the right to move on. Might as well just have everyone qualify as individuals.

 
Have one student board a train leaving Los Angeles, traveling eastbound at 75 mph. Have another student board a bus leaving Peoria, traveling southbound at 62 kph.  Have a third and fourth student board a plane heading westward out of Buffalo traveling 322 mph but are held up at TSA for having a water bottle their mom packed. Have the fifth student take an Uber northbound from Austin traveling 72 mph. Each child has eleven oranges.  Whoever can get to Dallas and slice their oranges into 49 evenly sliced wedges competes alone. 

 
I'd leave it completely up to the kids to decide with no input from me.

It seems like the experience is pretty similar for most of the kids.  All are doing the same 4/5 parts but then the team does one additional part.  If I was the low performer on the team, I think I would volunteer to be the individual competitor to give the team a better chance.  If I was one of the other kids, I don't think I would force or ask anyone to do that but I would accept if they volunteered.

But if the competition is to the death I change my tune.

 
Sweet J said:
Wrong answer.  There is very much a problem with how the teams were set up.  Namely, none of the geniuses who set up the teams could have POSSIBLY anticipated that the strongest member would qualify on his own, but not do well enough to carry the rest of his team?  Jesus, what a cluster.

This is the teacher's fault, and she should own it.  She set up this stupid situation, rather than a situation where she put the 4 best students on one team, and now is putting her students in a situation where they either have to vote off one of their own, or the worst player has to take one for the team and step down, or (even worse) the worst player advocates to stay on, but drags down the team and feels bad about themself.  Good golly.  

The teacher needs to make a decision and stick to it, not make a decision and now that there is a hard consequence (and a resulting decision to make), ask the kids to come up with a solution. 
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That second team just missed qualifying where all 8 students would have gone to state.  It was set up to give as many students a chance to move on.  Also, when teams were first set up was at the local level and before seeing how each student actually performed at both the local and regional.

If the team had been stacked at the local level, it's likely that only 4 kids would have made it to regional, not 8.  So I disagree completely that it should have been done differently from the beginning. 

 
Black Box said:
I don't think being the outlier should play a role in it. The team of 4 who qualified, I'd keep them together. The individual who qualified as an individual should roll alone. JMHO.
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I get the reasoning behind the reshuffling.  Makes logical sense.  And this could have EASILY been addressed beforehand, with a stipulation that regardless of the current team makeup, the top for scorers would advance (of course, this treats this math team more like a relay team than, say, a basketball team.  But leave that aside).

But if no stipulation was made, it is crappy of the teacher to throw this to the students to decide. Remember, I'd want to treat anything you did with 6th graders with the idea that life lessons are more important than qualifying for the next stage of whatever competition you are dealing with. 

 
gianmarco said:
That second team just missed qualifying where all 8 students would have gone to state.  It was set up to give as many students a chance to move on.  Also, when teams were first set up was at the local level and before seeing how each student actually performed at both the local and regional.

If the team had been stacked at the local level, it's likely that only 4 kids would have made it to regional, not 8.  So I disagree completely that it should have been done differently from the beginning. 
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Even if the teams had been set up just as they are, the teacher could have anticipated the possibility of this situation and said "these are the teams for the regional competition but if only one team makes it to state, the top 4 individual scorers will compete together."  The problem is that the decision is being made after the kids already know which one is the "outlier."

 
gianmarco said:
That second team just missed qualifying where all 8 students would have gone to state.  It was set up to give as many students a chance to move on.  Also, when teams were first set up was at the local level and before seeing how each student actually performed at both the local and regional.

If the team had been stacked at the local level, it's likely that only 4 kids would have made it to regional, not 8.  So I disagree completely that it should have been done differently from the beginning. 
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Adults should have recognized that this situation was a possibility and discussed this with the kids, and asked for their input.  Asking for their input now, AFTER the adults put them in this situation, is crappy.

That being said, if this whole doing was 100% on the kids so far (i.e., setting up the teams), I may modify my feelings about the matter. 

 
Beef Ravioli said:
Are you going to tell us what they chose so we can pick that apart? :P
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Heh, yes.

My son is neither the top student nor the outlier.  When we had the discussion where I asked what he thought and what should happen, he said that if he were the outlier he would volunteer to compete alone so that the other 4 had a better chance to make it.  I was proud.  And, if he were, as a parent, I would step in and recommend that to him because I think it's the right thing to do.  But, as the "other" parent, I wanted him to make his own decision.

The top student opted to compete alone.  His chances to move on don't change so it doesn't matter for him.  But, for the team, they now have virtually no chance to move on.  I'm a little disappointed that the other student didn't "do the right thing", but I also understand that it's not easy to do that as a twelve year old so it is what it is.

 
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And this whole discussion is negating the fact that the "poor" scorer may have just had a bad day that day.  It presumes that the "single" performer would always do better than the low scorer.  Again, just a crappy way to go about doing business here.  There are no winners in this fiasco.

When in doubt, do the decent thing. 

 
Sweet J said:
Adults should have recognized that this situation was a possibility and discussed this with the kids, and asked for their input.  Asking for their input now, AFTER the adults put them in this situation, is crappy.

That being said, if this whole doing was 100% on the kids so far (i.e., setting up the teams), I may modify my feelings about the matter. 
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Honestly, I'm not sure who set up the teams to start.  Really wasn't a big deal and it's very possible the 8 that qualified for the local selected the teams themselves or they drew names from a hat.  I can ask him later today.  That part was irrelevant to me but I see why you're asking and I'll find out.

 
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gianmarco said:
Heh, yes.

My son is neither the top student nor the outlier.  When we had the discussion where I asked what he thought and what should happen, he said that if he were the outlier he would volunteer to compete alone so that the other 4 had a better chance to make it.  I was proud.  And, if he were, as a parent, I would step in and recommend that to him because I think it's the right thing to do.  But, as the "other" parent, I wanted him to make his own decision.

The top student opted to compete alone.  His chances to move on don't change so it doesn't matter.  But, for the team, they now have virtually no chance to move on.  I'm a little disappointed that the other student didn't "do the right thing", but I also understand that it's not easy to do that as a twelve year old so it is what it is.
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This is a good way to handle it.  In a perfect world, the "low" scorer volunteers to sit out (like your son would), and the top scorer declines and competes alone.  Everybody wins.  You don't say if the low scorer does volunteer, but it sounds like a decent result. 

 
gianmarco said:
The top student opted to compete alone.  His chances to move on don't change so it doesn't matter.  But, for the team, they now have virtually no chance to move on. 
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Well, the team should decide NOW what will happen in the unlikely event that all five manage to move on to nationals.  Don't wait until it happens and then say "oh crap, this again."

 
gianmarco said:
Honestly, I'm not sure who set up the teams to start.  Really wasn't a big deal and it's very possible the 8 that qualified for the local selected the teams themselves or they drew names from a hat.  I can ask him later today.  That part was irrelevant to me but I see why you're asking and I'll find out.
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I do think it's important.  Because whoever made the decision should be the person who shepherds thought the resulting consequences. 

I think @fatguyinalittlecoat has the right answer, though.  For next year, the teacher could set up a rule that the top 4 performers move on, regardless of the team setup.

 
Why is this any different than any other team situation?  The coach (teacher) puts the lineup together for the game and they play accordingly.  The coach never asks the team their input on who should start or sub in or sub out.  The coach should know if the outlier just had a bad day and is actually better than their low score on that one day of competition.   The coach (teacher) should put the lineup together based on the practices and maximize their chances to make it to the next round. 

I just don't see why this is different than any other team competition with a coach and players.   

 
What did the kids decide to do?  This is kind of like the prisoner's dilemma of problem solving, and will be a great teaching tool if handled the right way. 

 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
If my soccer team makes the playoffs, I don't normally have the option to add a good player from another team that didn't make the playoffs.
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Maybe I misunderstood the format but aren't all these kids from the same school and they had two teams (kind of like JV and Varsity)?  Coaches pull up from JV all the time during the playoffs.

 
Gally said:
Maybe I misunderstood the format but aren't all these kids from the same school and they had two teams (kind of like JV and Varsity)?  Coaches pull up from JV all the time during the playoffs.
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That does seem like an analogous situation.  I don't remember JV kids ever joining the varsity during the playoffs when I went to school but maybe you're right.

 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
That does seem like an analogous situation.  I don't remember JV kids ever joining the varsity during the playoffs when I went to school but maybe you're right.
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I may have not really conveyed as well as I should have that this is primarily an individual competition.  The "team" portion is an adjunct that may help an additional kid or two make it to the next level.  The only way there's a "team" is if there are 4 kids from the same school.  If there are fewer kids, they still do the team portion (even if only one kid), but the score will never be high enough to advance because of the addition of all the individual performances into the "team score". 

For the regional, the top 10 individuals move on and the top team moves on.  The top team had all 4 individuals place in the top 10 so they were all moving on anyway.  The only other way a team advances is if they finish in the top 5 in the state (total of 6 regions).  My son's team had a top 10 individual, the 12th, 14th, and 27th but they actually did well enough to top every other top region team except the one they competed in (the purpose of the rule).  Those 3 outside of the individual top 10 (including my son) are the only additional people to move on that didn't finish top 10.  If not for finishing top 5 among teams in the entire state, it would have only been the top 10 individuals moving on since the top team already had four of those top people.

From an individual standpoint, it's likely that only one or two of the students from my son's school can make it to nationals.  It doesn't really change much for them whether they compete on a team or not.  Where it matters is potentially getting the other three kids to move on if they can collectively do well enough.  Putting the top 4 together MIGHT get 2 more people to move on.  Not putting them together in any form (especially taking out the top kid) means the only likely chance anyone advances is on individual merit. 

Hopefully that makes more sense.

 
This is an interesting situation, that I do think is analogous to a number of other situations.  Basically, the "coach" is faced with putting together two teams from a school/area, and must decide to either have and "A" team and a "B" team, or to put together two equal-ish teams by dividing the strong/weak players across the two teams.  Probably happens with sports, with debate teams, band competitions, etc.

My kids' soccer club deals with this by putting together the strongest group of kids for one team, then the second strongest for another, and so on. So it kind of avoids the problems you are facing (although we have late bloomers or kids that come on strong later, so there has actually been a lot of reshuffling personnel over the years).

It's a tough situation.  I can understand the desire to put up the strongest four players and see how they compete against the strongest from other schools.

 
Sweet J said:
This is an interesting situation, that I do think is analogous to a number of other situations.  Basically, the "coach" is faced with putting together two teams from a school/area, and must decide to either have and "A" team and a "B" team, or to put together two equal-ish teams by dividing the strong/weak players across the two teams.  Probably happens with sports, with debate teams, band competitions, etc.

My kids' soccer club deals with this by putting together the strongest group of kids for one team, then the second strongest for another, and so on. So it kind of avoids the problems you are facing (although we have late bloomers or kids that come on strong later, so there has actually been a lot of reshuffling personnel over the years).

It's a tough situation.  I can understand the desire to put up the strongest four players and see how they compete against the strongest from other schools.
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Exactly.  Our state has 6 regions I believe.  My son's team finished 2nd in the state behind a team from the same region.  In other words, they have a good shot to move onto nationals since they take the top 2 scoring teams.  Here are some relevant excerpts from the site:

In order to qualify for our national elementary championship, a student must attend the state championship and do any one of the following:

  • Place among the top 10 overall individuals in the student's grade level at state.
  • Be a member of the first or second place overall team in the team's division at state, based upon the "sweepstakes" score, or among the top 5 teams in the team's division across all states.
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  • Additional Policies:

    [*]Any student who is invited to attend the national championship will be eligible to compete in all events.

    [*]Only students who have qualified for the national championship as an individual or part of a team may compete at that meet.

    [*]Teams at the national championship do not need to consist of the same individuals who competed together when qualifying for the national championship; if more than four students from a school qualify for the next level of competition, the school's coach may choose how to arrange those students into teams.
    Click to expand...
 
fatguyinalittlecoat said:
That does seem like an analogous situation.  I don't remember JV kids ever joining the varsity during the playoffs when I went to school but maybe you're right.
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When I coached high school baseball we pulled up players from the JV every time we made it to the state playoffs.  Usually it was just for the experience of seeing the speed and pace of play as well as continuing the season so they got extra practice at the varsity level.  Typically not many got significant playing time however there were times when we would pinch hit, run, or as a defensive replacement. 

 
gianmarco said:
Background:  8 students from my son's school made it to a regional math competition (including him).  There are both individual as well as team competitions.  Teams are groups of 4 and most of the team score is made up of the individual scores with an added component where they work together.  If a team qualifies for state, then all members get to go even if their individual score wouldn't otherwise be high enough.  Same thing goes for each level of the competition.  There were 2 teams of four students that competed from his school.

Situation:  At the regional competition, one team qualified to move on (4 students) and one individual from the other team qualified.  Thus, 5 students are going to be competing at state.  Two of the students qualified as individuals (or would have qualified as one was on the qualifying team).  Two other students just missed the individual cutoff but were on the team that scored well enough.  The last student was significantly lower than all the other four students but was on the team that qualified so that student qualifies as well.  To put in context, the top 10 individuals move on.  The individual finishes for the five students were:  4th, 5th (other team), 12th, 14th, 29th.

At the state competition, they can either split it up as a team of 3 and a team of 2 or they can split it up as a team of 4 and a team of 1.  However, as a team of 3 or 2, neither team will have a chance to move on as a team.  All 5 of the students decide to do 4 and 1 because they realize that that gives most of them the best chance to move on.  The team of 1 can only move on as an individual.  They now have to decide who is going to compete alone.  If an objective person is choosing to maximize the team, the choice is obvious as one student was a clear outlier (and had been in previous competitions).  But, the math teacher said they needed to decide amongst themselves how to handle it.  These are 6th graders to put in perspective the social situation of this and their ability to decide.

1)  If you are the parent of the student that is the outlier, what do you advise your child?

2)  If you are the parent of one of the top four students, what do you advise your child?
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I'm putting the Asian kid by himself as he's no doubt the smartest one in math. 

 
Gianmarco,

Can we surmise that you are upset that the top finisher from your son's team is now going it alone... thus making it almost impossible for your son to move on to Nationals??

 
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