Athletic Coaches and Student Achievement

• In Event: Innovation in K-12 Sport Through Classrooms and Communities

Abstract

Teachers, who also serve as athletic coaches, are challenged to balance the responsibilities that come with serving multiple roles in schools. They may find that their coaching duties impede on their teaching responsibilities or their dual role could produce positive spillover effects in the classroom. In this study, we test these competing hypotheses by examining how students perform on standardized math and reading tests when their teacher is also an athletic coach. We find that assignment to a teacher-coach has mostly null effects across reading and math outcomes with the exception of math outcomes in the elementary grades, where math achievement declines by -.07 SD.

Authors

• Daniel Henry Bowen, Rice University

• Anna J. Egalite, Harvard University

• Julie R Trivitt, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville