<article_title>United_States_Academic_Decathlon</article_title>
<edit_user>NuclearWarfare</edit_user>
<edit_time>Saturday, April 11, 2009 5:12:54 PM CEST</edit_time>
<edit_comment>expand</edit_comment>
<edit_text>In 2000, several coaches who had led their teams to Nationals during the 1990s, resigned in protest to Academic Decathlon's decision to sell nearly $1,000 of study material rather than simply providing topics for students to independently research. Teams felt felt obligated to buy the guides if they wished to do well because USAD based the official tests off of them. They also denounced the hundreds of errors they found in the official guides, and coaches sometimes had to instruct their students to deliberately give the wrong answer in the official competition.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt; Richard Golenko, coach of the 1996 J. Frank Dobie High School team that won the National title, said that this shifted Academic Decathlon's emphasis to memorization over critical thinking. Coach Jim Hatem of Los Angeles and Coach Mark Johnson, coach of El Camino's 1998 winning team, fumed over esoteric &quot;trick&quot; questions that USAD had shifted to asking. James Alvino, USAD's executive director of the time, argued that the expensive study materials were necessary to continue to fund nearly 75% of the program's $1,750,000 operating budget and to provide a fairer playing fields for less wealthy schools, though he did acknowledge that USAD would attempt to reduce prices and remove the more trivial questions<strong>, and base the tests less from the official ''Resource Guide''</strong>.&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;&lt;ref&gt;&lt;/ref&gt;</edit_text>
<turn_user>TechVars<turn_user>
<turn_time>Saturday, April 11, 2009 4:08:38 AM CEST</turn_time>
<turn_topicname>Small/Medium School E-Nationals</turn_topicname>
<turn_topictext>Well, I know USAD no longer has anything about this at usad.org, but for the first two years that they offered Small-School E-Nationals, the guidelines were fewer than 950 students, not &lt; 650. I guess to allow for a broader net? It wasn't until they added the Medium School category that the current school size guidelines were established. I'll look into digging up a source on that one, but if I can't find one, shall I just add it anyway? TechVars (talk) 04:08, 11 April 2009 (UTC) I think it would be best if you found a source for it first. I'll take a look into some of the archives we have used (just take a look at the citations) and hope that some of them mention that. navyNuclearWarfare (greenTalk) 15:01, 11 April 2009 (UTC)</turn_topictext>
<turn_text>Well, I know USAD no longer has anything about this at usad.org, but for the first two years that they offered Small-School E-Nationals, the guidelines were fewer than 950 students, not &lt; 650. I guess to allow for a broader net? It wasn't until they added the Medium School category that the current school size guidelines were established. I'll look into digging up a source on that one, but if I can't find one, shall I just add it anyway? </turn_text>