Middle School Question Providers?

[Joshua Rutsky]

Alabama recently voted to use NAQT as this year's question provider for our state tournament at all levels. While this transition is a little one for most of our high school teams, it has opened up a problem for middle schools here. Specifically, we have a number of MS teams that have always run "league play" during the year to get their teams ready for state. NAQT, however, only has a small number of MS sets available at this time, and all are being used for tournaments or have been used in previous years.

Our coaches want their students to practice with material that is close in feel to what they will see at state, which is very reasonable. I have referred them to the MS Collaborative Tourney and other sets that can be found at the HS Quiz Bowl Packet Archive, but am wondering if anyone knows of a company that will contract to write some MS-level sets that are similar in quality and style to NAQTs MS sets? After our disastrous experience with Olympia last year, we are particularly interested in companies or groups that have a proven track record and come with strong community recommendations.

Any thoughts?

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

After our disastrous experience with Olympia last year

Do tell.

[merv1618]

After our disastrous experience with Olympia last year

Do tell.

We had notable problems with one of their MS sets last year too.

[Joshua Rutsky]

This is a good place to state for the record that Olympia is a completely untrustworthy and unreliable provider, in my experience, and that anyone who needs further reasons for my opinion on this is welcome to contact me.

[David Riley]

Adam: Will you guys be writing your own middle school set this year? If so, perhaps Alabama could mirror it? Just a thought.

[merv1618]

Adam: Will you guys be writing your own middle school set this year? If so, perhaps Alabama could mirror it? Just a thought.

I'd very much like to but you'd have to ask Dan Don about that.

[Dan-Don]

Adam: Will you guys be writing your own middle school set this year? If so, perhaps Alabama could mirror it? Just a thought.

I'd very much like to but you'd have to ask Dan Don about that.

I just requested an MS set from NAQT for either March 2 or March 9.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

To answer the original question: At this point it seems that NAQT is (unfortunately?) the only organization capable of consistently writing middle school sets that experienced editors and TDs respect as good. Jeff Hoppes and Bill Tressler have done their homework in figuring out what's known and difficulty-appropriate at this age group, getting a good spread of conversion stats among a largely new set of teams - mad respect to both of them. I have no idea if any incarnation of the Collaborative Middle School Tournament has ever actually been good by that same standard (experienced editors and TDs, please weigh in), though at minimum it's better than the speed-checks it replaced. It's unfortunate that there are only really 3 to 4 usable middle school sets and MSNCT a year, but at this point I'm not sure how that number would expand much further without biting into the ability of qualified writers to make the necessary high school and college sets happen.

[Important Bird Area]

I have no idea if any incarnation of the Collaborative Middle School Tournament has ever actually been good by that same standard (experienced editors and TDs, please weigh in)

Having read NAQT MS #2 and the 2012 CMST to the same set of teams, I feel confident that both are on the same level for conversion stats. (1, 2)

It's unfortunate that there are only really 3 to 4 usable middle school sets and MSNCT a year, but at this point I'm not sure how that number would expand much further without biting into the ability of qualified writers to make the necessary high school and college sets happen.

I think the issue at stake here is less "time commitment from the writers" and more "there are only so many answers that can hit appropriate conversion targets for middle schoolers." I very much doubt that anyone could write six or seven middle school sets in a year without either making the sets more difficult or having lots of repeats.

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

At the same time though, how much realistic expansion could there be at the middle school level on this front? Obviously I don't mean in terms of getting more teams to exist, but rather, when you're dealing with 6th-8th graders, how many tournaments could you possibly take them to? Other middle school activities are often shells of their high school equivalents, because it's completely unrealistic to ask the kind of commitment of middle schoolers to get them to all show up to 10+ events in the school year without some kind of massive burnout or parents getting mad or whatever. I think in a realistic world, the middle school circuit we should look to be building is one where we get as many teams as we possibly can to all go to mirrors of the same 4 or 5 good sets per year, and the teams that do really well at those should go on to nationals, instead of the high school model of having it be possible to play a tournament almost every weekend if you want to.

[the return of AHAN]

With my Barrington team, I all but surrender my hopes of playing CMST4 this year, as the 3rd one only happened by sheer force of will from David Reinstein when numerous writers flaked, never mind the relatively low number of sites that mirrored the set. So that leaves me with 3 sets of good questions to possibly have my team play this year, prior to MSNCT. With my incredibly skilled, deep team, I don't know if I can take them to play tourneys on bad questions. For crying out loud, some want to go play New Trier Solo... follow that with an event written by (shudders at the thought)?
Sets 04 and 06 have been claimed by St. Mary's, while 05 has been assigned to Junior Wildcat. This means, if I use MS-06 for my own Barrington tourney, I'll have to opt out of AND blacklist anyone who attends Michael Falk's spring tourney, which would be criminal because Falk is a big supporter of the Barrington Tournament. Moreover, I'd also love to take my team to a different tournament this year, but most drivable tourneys (Carbondale, St. Joseph's, DCC) are also using MS-06. And before anyone says, "Use an A set at Barrington," know that the difficulty would kill off interest from many of the weaker teams that show up. As for playing the A set to be heard at Wake-Up Call? The kids are stoked.

[Adventure Temple Trail]

I think in a realistic world, the middle school circuit we should look to be building is one where we get as many teams as we possibly can to all go to mirrors of the same 4 or 5 good sets per year, and the teams that do really well at those should go on to nationals, instead of the high school model of having it be possible to play a tournament almost every weekend if you want to.

Yeah, Charlie; I thought about adding a sentence to that effect to the end of my post, but didn't for some reason. So I'll agree and add the following: Right now, there are very few regions actually even using all the good middle school sets available to them (Texas will this year, Alabama probably will from ASCA, Illinois, Minnesota due to R - am I missing any?). That's a very small section of the country, and in most areas an increase from 0 to 2 events per year to 4 would be a massive, massive expansion in its own right. The focus should probably be on getting those four sets up and running everywhere so there's actually enough demand to merit writing a fifth set that turns a profit outside those small areas.

EDIT: Maybe that should read "writing a fourth set" if CMST isn't to happen again.

[AKKOLADE]

At the same time though, how much realistic expansion could there be at the middle school level on this front? Obviously I don't mean in terms of getting more teams to exist, but rather, when you're dealing with 6th-8th graders, how many tournaments could you possibly take them to? Other middle school activities are often shells of their high school equivalents, because it's completely unrealistic to ask the kind of commitment of middle schoolers to get them to all show up to 10+ events in the school year without some kind of massive burnout or parents getting mad or whatever. I think in a realistic world, the middle school circuit we should look to be building is one where we get as many teams as we possibly can to all go to mirrors of the same 4 or 5 good sets per year, and the teams that do really well at those should go on to nationals, instead of the high school model of having it be possible to play a tournament almost every weekend if you want to.

Back in JUNIOR HIGH (so, about 15 years ago), West Virginia had a pretty active junior high/middle school circuit with about 10 tournaments a year. It was totally a thing.

[Stained Diviner]

The decision as to whether or not CMST 4 should be produced is difficult. I think it is a given that it is better to have four good middle school sets than three good middle school sets produced during the year--if it benefits four circuits, then that's significant.

The downside is that it takes a lot of work. In a perfect world, there would be 20 people who want to contribute 10/10 in a timely manner. Also, this would be taken advantage of as an outlet for people who want to get some experience writing questions without having to produce an entire tournament (as in people would make significant contributions to this set instead of producing another mediocre high school set). To a limited extent, some of this happens. However, a lot of the work ends up getting done by people who write for NAQT anyways, and at that point they might as well get paid for their time and submit questions to a vendor who can put some of the harder questions in MSNCT or an A Set, and writing for NAQT generally helps NAQT produce better sets because it lessens the amount of last second scrambling they do.

When CMST first started, it was obviously a significant asset. The idea for it started before NAQT started writing MS sets, so this was THE opportunity to expose middle school coaches and students to good questions. The marginal benefit of going from 3 to 4 good tournaments is less than the marginal benefit of going from 0 to 1, even though it is still a real benefit. However, I think the only way that benefit outweighs the amount of work is if it causes several people to write questions who otherwise would not write questions, or if it causes people to contribute to a good set who would otherwise contribute to a bad set (or maybe if there are people who contribute to one housewrite a year and then decide they want to do slightly more). The decision to continue CMST is difficult because those things happen, but they don't happen as much as we would like.

On a personal note, I contributed a lot more to CMST 2 than CMST 3, and if my contributions to the latter seemed heroic, it was only because they came at the end, though in fact this project benefits more from questions submitted early. I wasn't keeping track of who was doing what, but I'm pretty sure some people did more than me.

[tuscumbiaqb]

Missouri is another circuit that could certainly use four good middle school sets.