February 23, 2000, Mill Valley, CA - In a project report published by the Mid-continent Regional Educational Laboratory (McREL), one of 10 research labs administered by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), Promoting Achievement in School through Sport (PASS), a sport-based, interdisciplinary, educational-reform program developed by the nonprofit American Sports Institute (ASI), is hailed as a program that "can become a model for defining those qualities of total school reform that are needed to both engage students and help them achieve high academic standards."

The research project indicates that PASS meets the criteria for a learner-centered program as defined in the learner-centered psychological principles disseminated by the American Psychological Association through its Center for Psychology in Schools and Education.

According to the report, "PASS addresses the needs of the whole learner-intellectual needs, motivational needs, and other needs such as students' physical and social needs . . .The sound, research-based practices that are incorporated in the PASS program . . . (make) it a model for total school reform."

PASS, one of several educational-reform programs developed by ASI, brings the positive aspects of sport culture into the classroom. In the yearlong, academic, interdisciplinary PASS course, middle and high school students study the fundamentals that make athletes-as well as corporate leaders, artists, writers, musicians, etc.-successful. Students learn how to apply these concepts to an individualized plan for improving their grades and physical performance.

Joel Kirsch, Ph.D., ASI president, is extremely pleased with the report conclusions. "What this means," says Kirsch, "is that, for the first time, sport and educational reform are mentioned in the same breath. Until this report, nowhere was sport mentioned as a player in the educational- reform movement, not in Washington, D.C., not in state legislatures, not in the educational-reform literature.

"In America, there is an unspoken yet readily apparent cultural bias in that if the physical domain is involved, whatever it is related to cannot be taken seriously from an academic perspective. In reality, sport is not an extracurricular activity. Sport is an academic discipline if approached in the right way. The findings prove that sport can not only play a significant role in the educational-reform movement, but it can do it well."

PASS and PASS-based programs currently serve 600 students in 25 schools in the San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, and Raleigh, N.C. areas.

Educators who would like more information on the PASS program can call Katherine Bent at the American Sports Institute, 415-383-5750, or visit the PASS website at www.amersports.org.

Note: A complete copy of the McREL report is included.

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