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School Administrators Say NCAA Crackdown on 'Diploma Mills' Is Flawed
Lutheran Christian basketball coach Darryl Schofield was discovered to be the only teacher at the school in an investigation last year.
(2006 Photo By Mark L. Baer For The Washington Post)
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George Washington has redrawn some of its recruiting policies and now requires coaches returning from recruiting trips to fill out forms that detail what they observed at potential players' schools, athletic officials said.
"That's yesterday's news," GW Coach Karl Hobbs said yesterday, declining to comment further.
The backbone of the NCAA's investigation is a generic questionnaire it sent to suspicious prep schools starting last summer -- a tactic that perplexed some administrators given that the prep school scandal is rooted in the submission of questionable academic information to the NCAA Clearinghouse, which operated on an honor system.
Lennon defended the use of questionnaires, saying it was the best way to solicit information from a large number of schools.
"Nobody's ever come to the school," Marcel Webster, the basketball coach at Stevens Prep Academy in Raleigh, N.C., said this summer after the NCAA announced that Stevens was "subject to review."
"Nobody's ever seen [our school]. They're just putting the word out and that's it. The NCAA is like God. They say you're banned, and you're banned."
When they did visit schools, NCAA investigators observed classes and conducted interviews with administrators and teachers, Lennon said. For the most part, Lennon said NCAA staff conducted the investigation. But Michael Buckner, a private investigator under contract with the NCAA, visited Alif Muhammad's Nia School in Newark on June 5, school founder and principal Alif Muhammad said. For four hours, Buckner spoke with teachers and observed classes, Muhammad said.
Buckner, who works for a company called Collegiate Proactive Solutions, also is an attorney with an extensive background in NCAA compliance matters. Buckner declined to comment, citing his contract with the NCAA.
On Sept. 13, two NCAA officials -- Jennifer Strawley and Carol Reep -- visited Bridgton Academy in Maine and spent five or six hours at the school, which was on the NCAA's "subject to review" list. David Hursty, Bridgton's headmaster, said he sent Strawley and Reep 90 pages of information about the school. A day after the visit, the NCAA removed Bridgton from its "watch" list.
"My problem all along is, I wish they had visited prior to putting us on the list," Hursty said.
More immediate on-site visits would have prevented some of the most damaging errors in the NCAA's investigation, administrators said.
Last summer, the NCAA announced that it had not cleared 16 "schools" for initial eligibility. But that painted an inaccurate picture in the case of seven from Santa Ana, Calif. The NCAA news release included Horizon High School, which no longer existed. The NCAA also had listed a school under the name "Access," which is merely an acronym for Alternative, Community and Correctional Education Schools and Services. The five other "schools" in Santa Ana listed by the NCAA are actually programs within Access for children in protective services programs, including remote mountain boot camps for juvenile offenders and inmates at Orange County juvenile hall.
