Sport education has been used by many teachers to bring vitality to their programs whether as the focal point, or as a supplement to the traditional teaching unit. Others remain skeptical about the value of sport education. Such individuals may ask the questions: Does sport education result in the disintegration of game play quality?; Will activity levels be negatively affected when students are required to fulfill lesser-active roles?; Will students' knowledge levels be compromised when students take the lead in instruction? This study compared and contrasted the traditional unit and sport education approaches, addressing these questions and providing valuable empirical data. A male high school teacher with 25 years of teaching experience volunteered to participate. Two classes of 36-40 students at a rural high school were selected. One class of 40, 10th graders (17 girls, 23 boys), was assigned the traditional unit approach. The second of 36 ninth and 10th graders (25 girls, 11 boys) was assigned to sport education. Both classes participated in a three-week basketball unit/season with 12 sessions used for comparison. Prior to data collection, the primary investigator and teacher met three times to orient him to sport education and discuss logistics of the study. On two occasions the primary investigator made presentations to the sport education class. On the same days, the investigator visited the traditional class but did not make a presentation. Furthermore, investigators met on four occasions to develop competence with the SOFIT instrument resulting in interoberver agreements of 87-95%. Comparisons of collected data found: 1. Numbers of students' attempting shots was greater in sport education indicating students distributed the ball amongst teammates more than their traditional counterparts. Game play in the traditional setting was more like "street ball" than the orderly play in sport education; 2. When combining walking and very active SOFIT data, sport education produced higher percentages in eight of 12 sessions than the traditional unit group. Furthermore, when lying and sitting data were combined, lower percentages were found with sport education in eight of 12 sessions; and 3. Though both classes' mean scores increased from pre-to-post basketball knowledge tests, sport education increase was greater (1.57; 0.4 points). These data suggested that sport education can enhance not impede students’ knowledge levels, activity levels, and quality of game play. However, future comparative research must go beyond team sports and look across grade levels before making substantial generalizations.Keyword(s): curriculum development, high school issues, physical activity