Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

As FRC grows and potentially becomes more and more like other major school activities like sports, it makes me wonder whether FRC should account for school size. College and high school sports have divisions so schools compete with other schools with similar resources. Big schools compete with big schools and small schools against small schools.

Some teams in our area pull from 2 or more large high schools and some large schools have high tech facilities covering thousands of square feet with state-of-the-art equipment. Other schools have high school populations less than 500 (or even home school teams and 4-H clubs) and very limited resources. I’ve always been impressed with the ability of the small schools to remain competitive with larger schools with more resources, but as challenges become more difficult and the number of teams competing grows, it seems that the “resource gap” may become harder and harder to bridge.

For the record, I think that there are good arguments on both sides of the issue, but it just makes for interesting discussion.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

In a word, no.

Budget, technical support, and resource availability are far more important as differentiators than school size.

If I have a Vocational high school with 250 students verses a large inner city high school with 2500 students who would you expect to better succeed?

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

There are two schools in the district I mentor, one team (3081) has an absolutely huge engineering/technology program with 3 teachers. The other team (2470) has one teacher for auto, engineering, metals and woods classes. Not to mention the shop size for 2470 is much smaller. Even though both schools have the same number of students attending, one FRC team has a much higher chance of succeeding due to the school's resources.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

This is dealt with in game design, as much as possible.

It's been a long time since the FRC Game Design forum was openly used by the GDC members to collect game ideas, but http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...59&postcount=1 gives a pretty standard opener for the overall design (specific elements got their own threads). Particularly note the first two ground rules, quoted here:
Another of the ground rules indicated that ingenuity of design was preferred over advanced fabrication methods.

That said, you aren't going to be able to account for team resources (school size, shops, funding) in any way, shape or form that satisfies everybody. Whether it's limited parts sets, multiple leagues/divisions, or no second robot, someone's going to be unhappy. This may be part of why VRC and FTC are gaining popularity, as you can be competitive in those without a large group, or a large budget, or a large shop. OTOH, if you're a "low-resource" team in FRC, you can still be very competitive, especially if you're smart about it.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

No. Size isn't a sufficient factor. Then once you consider all the factors, it gets too complicated.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I don't think school size is a big deal. My team comprises 3 different schools averaging 2000 students each, and I would consider us moderately successful. However, our team still only has 45 members on the official roster, with no more than 30 fully active members.

Meanwhile, other teams such as 254 and 1717 come from single, much smaller schools on the order of a few hundred students each. Currently, they have much larger programs than we do with a fraction of the students.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I definitely agree with most of the responses above that size is not the factor. But sooner or later, divisioning may become more necessary as the size of FRC grows. I know more regions are planning on switching to district formats, which just seems to complement that. Not sure how it would serve for logistics or publicity purposes, but the teams and participants may get more out of it in terms of competitiveness and reward.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

So how would this work? Divide the field into classes? Separate events? Have something like FTC? Require each alliance have one robot from each class?

Would you limit limit budgets in the lower classes? What the sponsors can provide? Handicap in some way the higher performing teams?

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I too must chime in with yet another "Nah...". I don't think its in FIRST's nature to discriminate how you compete against, particularly when resources are a larger determining factor than school size. Plus, what about the teams that aren't associated with a school? (Space Cookies 1868 are always the ones that come to mind)

Aside from all that, I think the organization of it would be a nightmare. Our home regional is the Bayou, which is fairly small and local. If we broke up by team size then there wouldn't be enough teams of the same size to support a regional and many would have to end up traveling (when they normally wouldn't).

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

The experiment with tier-based qualifying schedules in 2007, now infamously recalled as the "algorithm of death", clearly showed how NOT to accomplish this.

I am not convinced that FRC will ever really need to divide teams into tiers. As EricH pointed out above, one of the game design objectives is to allow participation by teams with widely-varying levels of resources.

My experience has been that the resources (money, space, mentors, ...) a given team can muster sometimes vary widely from year to year. There can be many reasons for this. As others have said, school size is not among the more significant reasons.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

In short, no. When you rank a team in a lower division than a different team; your basically telling the lower division team they don't have just a good a chance as the higher ranking team. This doesn't fit within the mission of FIRST at all.

Team's can be just as successful as any other team regardless of their resources. It's all about how you design your robot, not how you make it. 4334, regardless of their school size and resources, built an incredible robot out of almost nothing.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

If FRC got so huge that you could afford to divide the individual regions into divisions and still have enough teams to fill up the local events at each level, then I suppose you could have a tiered system that simply didn't have any specific criteria for dividing the teams. You'd just put the teams with the best historical track records into the top division, and the other teams would need to prove themselves over time to be selected to move into the top division. The top division could initially be populated with teams according to some algorithm taking into account past competition performances and awards, leaving some space for adding new teams in the future.

But that would have some disadvantages, such as not allowing newer teams to bump elbows with the really awesome veteran teams.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Everything else made me say "No." This idea made me think. The way I see it, it seems analogous to a Promotion and Relegation system used prominently in European football (soccer) leagues. I still don't like it much, because I would rather see a large team population dealt with the district way, to keep everything reasonably organized.

Also, who's to say big schools do better? There's all these other awkward stepping stones like multi-school and non-school teams, team age, and team success. My team has been around for 15 years, but only the last three have we been a school-associated team. The school we work in has about 1200 students, but we also recruit from another school (in a different district). Our history has also been incredibly varied. If you base the split on this year's performance, we were mediocre (missed MSC) and also good (Division Finalists). If you look at the last three years, we didn't go to Championships one year, and our robot didn't move the other. The year before that we were on Einstein. In short: Few teams are consistent enough performers to eve make a tiered system effective, let alone ethical.

And one more thing: Remember the I in FIRST.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I can safely say that size isn't the best factor you could use to determine competitiveness.

For example, Corona del Sol (my school) has a population of about 3400 and growing. We have been a team since '07, but we aren't what this thread would consider successful. We have to pull students from another school just to have enough kids to build the robot!

If you want another factor, in addition to ones suggested within this thread (mentors, budget, resources, experience), consider team spacing/influence. There are 2 other schools within several miles of Corona that have FRC teams. We compete for sponsors, funds, and students. Compared to a team (maybe 20mi away) that draws students from 5 schools, the reason for our lower scores becomes apparent.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

No. This is a game of the mind. Size does not matter. If anything is a factor, it's experience.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

A low resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy will beat a high resource team any day.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I think the OP was actually referring to the resource gap, rather than just school size.

With regards to the resource gap, I think that's a major aspect of FRC. It's meant to be like real world, where there are no divisions. Life isn't always fair. But like others have said, you have the ability to be innovative and compete with others who have a bigger budget and better resources.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Dealing with many teams each year, it doesn't seem to matter (in the big scheme of things) how big the school is, how big the district is or how big the team is. I have seen big schools struggle to turn out a 10 person team and I have seen small rural schools involve the entire school. There is at least one team that had so few students that they joined forces with the next closest district, across the state line and still had less than twenty team members as I remember.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

A high resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy would have a distinct advantage over the low resource team, while having the less problems to overcome. I don't think a tier system would work due to the complexity of making one, but I do recognize the gap between high and low resource teams' ability to compete competitively

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

A high-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy competing against a low-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy would make a very even, yet entertaining match. Especially if the low resource team wins. ;)

Although I do see what you mean by this.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Assuming most rookie teams start out as roughly equal in terms of size and resources (a few dedicated students and mentors in a small, poorly supplied shop), soon both the intellectual and physical resources will become concentrated in upper level teams. To use SuperNerd's terminology, " a low-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy" will soon become a "high-resource team with a well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy." Teams tend to attract physical resources (money, tools, sponsors) after winning with intellectual resources (namely, a "well-thought-out robot and a smart strategy"). Soon, the both types or resources become concentrated.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

It seems clear that school size alone is not the best factor to consider when trying to account for the resource gap in FRC, but that doesn't change the fact that some teams have far more resources than others. It also seems clear that a team with high tech manufacturing capabilities, full size practice fields, and practice bots has a distinct advantage over an equally brilliant and dedicated team that lacks the space and/or money for those things.

So to re-frame the OP...
What, if anything, should FRC do to minimize the gap between the high resource teams and those that struggle to afford a single entry fee as we move into the future? How do you think that decision could impact the sustainability of FRC in coming years?

Clearly this could be an extremely complex issue. But I also know the CD community doesn't shy away from an issue just because it is difficult and complex.

Thank you all for your insights.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Size should not matter, small private schools are producing fantastic results in FRC.

What should matter is % of school under free or reduced lunch. The free-lunch % statisitic is a metric used to gauge poverty levels at schools.
After years of watching teams succeed and fail in inner city schools, I believe the free lunch statistic is a major contributor between a sustaining team and unsustainable team.

Now if FRC really wants to meet their growth numbers for the future.
FRC should consider reducing registration fees to teams with a >40% free-lunch .

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

As a huge Star Wars fan I've been waiting to use Yoda for something on CD...



All joking side, this is supposed to emulate real world engineering. We don't have enough time, money, resources, or information about the problem but we need to solve it. There will always be people who have more time/money/resources/knowledge but we have to do our best with what we have. Hand holding and handicapping won't help with that. Let us low resource teams compete with the best so we can know what it takes to beat them in the future.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

While this probably would be tricky to integrate (for example, would everyone else's registration go up a little bit to make up this difference?) I do like the sentiment. I agree that percent on free or reduced lunch is an effective way to measure poverty (and therefore lack of availability to resources).

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Team 1662 is from a school of 200. The team has won 3 regional and other awards. Team 330 way to wins to count, less than 200 students. Sometimes smaller can be better. Small no excuse. It only takes 6 dedicated students to build a winner. I know I have done it,

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Unless u did it like how they do it in high school football, like here in Texas, the size of the school(# of students in the school) would determine what class district the school would be in, for example South San High School(Team 457) would be in district 28-5A, Brandeis High School (Team 3481) would be in 25-5A. Now from their if both teams made it to the State Championship, depending on the enrollment in this two school would determine what division the school would be place, for example Team 457 would be District 5A Divison 2, and Team 3481 would be District 5A Division 1, now the other teams that are not part of any school district, Could be place in 6M1 or 6M2(6 Man Division 1/6 Man Division 2, since those school can only field 6 players on thier team) due to the size of thier Team, it can be done, but the state would have to be in a district format, and FIRST would have to know how many students are in each school and in non school affliated team, other than that u couldnt place team in divisions by the size of the school if you were doing this nation wide, maybe if you were doing it in a state that has district format

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

The free lunch statistic isn't a contributor,... It is a correlation.

A key to effectiveness is organization and planning, commitment, hard work, and other elements.

Team 842, Carl Hayden HS, is in a 91 % free/reduced lunch school.

Having a ton of material resources doesn't automatically convey advantage over the human spirit.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

We just got done saying that size of school has nothing to do with the size of the team, and the size of the team has little or nothing to do with how competitive they are. A team of 15 can compete with the big boys, or a team of 40 or more can be the last seed. A team of 15 could also be at the bottom of the standings, while the team of 40 could be first at every event. I think you get the picture.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

We have a very high percentage of free/reduced lunch. I don't think anyone would call us a low resource team.

See how difficult this is?

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Google "Indiana class basketball" - this is a raging debate that's been around since David plinked Goliath.
We all have an impossible task, and a ridiculously short amount of time to complete it. Part of the challenge is to recognize our resources and use them effectively.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

This part of the discussion has been discussed over the years here in Chief Delphi and elsewhere. One example I can give is during NEMO meetings that I've facilitated over the last few years. When this topic has come up, the answers aren't always the ones that people want to hear. Can it be frustrating that a team in a region can only afford to attend one FRC competition and another team in the same region can afford to attend 2+? Yes, it can be frustrating for both teams, if you think about it. It's frustrating for the team who can only commit to one competition because they know that is it for their season. Within that knowledge is the weight of not being able to go forward with working out the bugs, giving the drive team more experience, having the opportunity to compete in the season again, and bringing everything learned from the first competition to the next one. For the team that can compete in 2+ competitions, it can provide frustration in that the team has learned from its first competition and is bringing that experience and hopefully, improvements, to the next competition. The team that can compete in 2+ competitions continues to build on their strengths by identifying their weaknesses throughout the season. They may possibly be frustrated by having to compete against teams at each event they have entered - who only have the single event to compete in.

How does this impact the sustainability of FRC? I don't think it does. Teams compete as best as they can, using the resources that they have. Does this create opportunities to think about creating tiers rather than trying to keep the playing field level? Absolutely. Does it create opportunities for teams to look at weak regions vs. strong regions built on team reputations? Yes.

To me, the district plan has been more of a threat to the teams/regions than the amount of competitions the teams can travel to. I say this because there are regions who are not ready for districts and will not be for a while. Those regions will have to work very hard to be able to do that. Because I'm in Texas, I'm very aware of the opportunities and the frustrations that are built into this part of the discussion. Texas is one of the regions that I feel needs to get more ducks lined in a row before it can consider a district model. It is also a region where there are teams who compete in one competition and teams who compete in 2+ competitions per season. It is also a region where some newer teams are still learning the basics such as - it is ok for teams to travel to more than one competition. In the long run, a district model will help a region like Texas but not without lining up some ducks first. I'm not worried about FRC sustainability. I was 3 years ago but I'm not anymore. To me, it is becoming a survival of the fittest. That doesn't have as much to do with the amount of resources a team has as much as it does organization and management, the tenacity of spirit and attitude of the team, and community support.

Another topic of discussion that I like to bring up in NEMO meetings (and with anyone I talk to about the FRC program) is the bigger picture. That picture includes the dreams and aspirations of the students who are involved in the teams and in the program and what they do with those dreams and aspirations. The gap between the high resource teams and those that struggle, doesn't really come up in that topic other than to showcase that students in both types of teams have dreams, aspirations, and the potential to be inspired.

Jane

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I look at this sort of thing from a different angle than most.

I hate complexity, for any reason. Spare parts complexity, management complexity, any additional complexity. Complexity is inefficiency. It's distraction.

I would much rather FIRST increase it's focus on overall cost-savings. Increasing partnerships that result in decreased team cost. Lower fees and lower entry costs through initiatives like 4H and JC Penny.

I believe that maintains a lower level of complexity that starting to initiate a number of 'social' programs that try to help lower-funded teams compete. Keeping a single-minded focus on lowering overall costs and increasing the quality of the experience is a very simple non-comlex message. Starting to create tiered systems of payment that require documentation, verification, management, and people is not something I want my FIRST money working towards.

Simply. Minimize. Reduce. It's a good engineering rule, and an even better management one.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I don't think it should be. Our team, 1058, is at a school 1400 kids strong. However, our team only consists of 7 returning members. However, there are teams in schools of a similar size, team 20, the Rocketeers, for example. They seem to bring 80 or more kids to each regional. Not that it's a bad thing- there is just too much variability between team and school size.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Personally, I would hate to have a division structure in FIRST. When you look at a sport like football, there isn't much there that's "new". A team that is bigger, stronger, and faster will generally win. As a team standing on the sidelines, you don't really learn anything by watching two other team's play (ignoring what you might learn about the team itself) - watching them play doesn't make your team any better against a fourth team.

In FIRST, that's different. Going to a regional and seeing other teams does make your team better. I've learned a lot from seeing other teams at regionals, including techniques, designs, and processes that we brought back in order to better our team.

Further, sports is really all about winning. People don't join the football team because they're interested in the aerodynamics of a football while its in flight. They join because they want to get out on the field and win. FIRST, on the other hand, is not all about winning. This past year, you had students who were actually interested in the aerodynamics of a basketball in flight. As a community, FIRST defines success differently than sports, and it's that definition that really lets us pit rookie members against 20+ year veteran teams on the same field.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I agree with your wording, correlation is a more suitable term than contributor.

Using the free lunch statistic is by no means a full-proof way to separate teams. However using a mix of free lunch statistic, # of FRC awards won, and # of regionals attended. I can give you a rough prediction on whether a team will sustain over the next 5 years.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

Putting teams into divisions by school size or level of poverty at the school would broadcast a bad message. That what maters the most, what makes the most difference, isn't how hard or how smart you work, but factors beyond your control. It would imply that the rich and successful will always stay that way, and that everyone else is a member second class, too dumb to be "competitive" and to poor to ever get there. I couldn't think of a less American statement.

I don't participate in FIRST because I think I can win. Anyone else who believes that this is the sole purpose for anyone to participate should be prepared to readjust their beliefs. And even if it is, competing with the best should inspire them to think and to work harder, not to concentrate on how "unfair" material differences are.

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

I think that FTC adequately solves this problem. FTC is very fair in terms of external resources

Re: Should FRC Account for School Size?
 

FTC now allows unlimited machining. FTC used to be fair in this regard (especially back in the Vex days), but now there's little in the rules stopping the high resource team from beating the low resource team.