Competitive Academic Activities and School Rankings

Competitive academic activities are often seen as a way for schools to demonstrate that their student body is academically proficient. Competitive academic activities might seem like good indicators for a school’s academic proficiency. However, it remains to be seen whether high performance in competitive intellectual activities actually correlates with a better quality school. While “smart” schools do sometimes have good quiz bowl teams, some other good schools do not. We analyzed quiz bowl datasets and high school ratings to determine if a correlation was present. We wanted to determine if schools should be making pushes to increase funding and participation for competitive academic activities like quiz bowl in all schools if it can improve school quality. Quiz bowl might be able to incentivize learning through its competitive nature. This could be used as evidence for a push at school administrations everywhere. For our project we interviewed Dennis Loo, one of the top quiz bowl coaches in the nation.