Monday, December 26, 2005

 

Complaints Shut Down Accelerated Education

Notwithstanding an outstanding record in improving high school athletes' grade point average, University High is closing at year end. A number of Miami area students had significantly improved their grades in the accelerated learning system, some graduating in as little as three weeks. The athletes were transferring from underperforming high schools in order to get the grades necessary for college eligibility. Moreover, the coaches of outstanding colleges, Tennessee, Auburn, and Florida to name a few, were finding the athletes well prepared to play ball.

The University High system uses a "packet" approach and gets its results without books or classes. The lack of educational accreditation has not been a problem for either the students or the coaches, or, for that matter for the NCAA and the college admission offices. Its founder, Stanley J. Simmons, was previously associated with a college level degree program that attained similar results in helping poor students. In that program an undisclosed misstep landed him in a federal prison camp for 10 months after pleading guilty to mail fraud. The use of the mails is of course an essential element in correspondence courses, placing this type of institution at what some consider an unfair disadvantage.

Two days after a NYT story on the University High "method", NCAA president Myles Brand denounced "diploma mill high schools". In a telephone interview with The Miami Herald, he noted that it was the colleges' responsibility to check out the students the NCAA had cleared. "You can't rely entirely on an outside agency to do that, whether it's the NCAA or otherwise." The NCAA establishes academic guidelines for athletes' eligibility through its clearinghouse, and it has allowed students to use correspondence school courses since 2000. The NCAA also shifted the power to determine which classes count as core courses to high school administrators, leaving the schools to determine their own legitimacy. "We're not the educational accreditation police," Diane Dickman, the NCAA's managing director for membership services, said in September. A committee has been formed.

The school accomplished a lot for the $399 tuition, packets included, and many a good ballplayer has been grateful. In a follow up article the NYT interviewed the present owner, a Mr. Kinney. In October 2002 a temp agency placed him at the school, and, exhibiting the kind of talent the school specializes in, was named its director within a week. He reported that all 28 high school football players he graduated were accepted by colleges, most on athletic scholarships. When Kinney, 27, learned of the NCAA clearing house, he applied and was approved within days. After that, he said, coaches and colleges inundated him with phone calls.

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