Athletics, Athletic Leadership, and Academic Achievement

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between athletics, athletic leadership, and academic achievement. This is likely to be a tricky issue as athletes and athletic leaders are not likely to be a random group of students. To address this issue I control for school fixed effects and instrument the endogenous variables with height. I find that athletes perform better than nonathletes in every subject area tested by the High School and Beyond survey and that this effect appear to differ by sex and race. Based on the literature, these results are likely to be especially true for urban youths. In addition, there are large benefits from leadership on these athletic teams.