Philadelphia School Questioned

Darryl Schofield, right, is the coach of the basketball team at the Lutheran Christian Academy prep school in Philadelphia. (By Mark L. Baer For The Washington Post)

Guard David Tairu, a Post honorable mention All-Met selection as a senior at Crossland High School, is enrolled at Lutheran Christian as a junior this year. Tairu said he had a 2.189 GPA in high school and scored 720 on the SAT. By dropping back to his junior year at the academy, Tairu can retake some of his core courses and submit the new grades to the NCAA Clearinghouse.

"It's a legitimate school," Tairu said. "It's a second chance for me. It's a blessing to be here."

James Woodson, who has worked the front desk at HERO for five years, said he used to hold a 30-minute session each morning about how to dress and act. "Nobody would ever listen or pay attention," Woodson said. "I gave up a year or two ago. Now [Schofield] is the only one who works with them."

Schofield said Lutheran Christian teaches each of its 35 courses, including English, psychology, sociology, geometry, trigonometry, chemistry and Spanish and French, in what he calls "12 paces." Each student must pass an exam at the end of each pace, scoring 80 percent or better, before moving on to the next level, Schofield said.

Schofield said tuition is $5,000 but he normally receives only $2,000, which includes room and board for nonlocal students. Schofield said he earns about $7,000 working as the school's basketball coach and also works as a cook at a restaurant during the week. Schofield said the school has "tons and tons" of crates of books used for instruction, and said the school recently upgraded its computer lab to include 12 flat-screen computers and new educational software.

Phillips said the new computers were obtained by the center, not the school, with the help of a Pennsylvania congressman. And the former player, who attended the school for three months, said the school didn't have computers and didn't use textbooks in its instruction.

The former player and his mother both agreed to be interviewed for this story but later asked not to be identified for fear that Lutheran Christian players would retaliate.

"Schofield was my teacher," the former player said. "You would walk in this room about the size of a Foot Locker store and he'd hand you a gray booklet about the size of composition book. He'd say, 'Read it or you're not playing.' I never saw any computers. I saw some books laying around there, but we never used them. Schofield was there sometimes."

The former player's mother said she worried her son wasn't doing much at the school other than playing basketball.

"I was trying to figure out if the kids were going to school," the former player's mother said. "When I'd ask [her son] how school was going, he'd say he only had one teacher. I asked him who the teacher was and he said, 'Schofield.' "

The former player said he enrolled at Lutheran Christian after Schofield promised a disciplined, rigorous academic program that enabled his players to improve their academics and basketball skills. The program was so successful, Schofield told the former player, that each of the players who had graduated from the school played basketball in college.

Instead, the former player and his mother said, they found an unstructured academic environment. The former player and his mother said nearly a dozen of the school's basketball players lived in a cramped apartment owned by Schofield. She said the apartment lacked sufficient heat and the players had to turn on the oven and open the door to heat the room.