By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
More than a year after the initial published report on the problem, the NCAA on Monday handed down relevant penalties to a prep basketball power with questionable academic practices. In a news release, the NCAA heralded the announcement as evidence of its "continuing effort to better ensure the integrity of academic credentials."
But school administrators across the nation say the NCAA's effort to clean up prep basketball and eliminate schools that serve as "diploma mills" has caused as many problems as it's solved.
Since it announced July 5 that it had found more than 30 problematic private schools, the NCAA impugned schools that never have fielded basketball teams and punished schools that do not exist, administrators said. It confused two sets of schools with the same name. It sanctioned a program for special-needs children in Virginia and an alternative education program run by a California probation department.
This summer, it questioned the academics at two prominent Virginia schools, Oak Hill and Fork Union, and abruptly cleared them a couple weeks later. In at least one other case, the NCAA publicly tarnished a program, cleared it, yet did not announce the change.
Even the bans announced Monday of Lutheran Christian Academy (Philadelphia), Florida Preparatory Academy (Port Charlotte), American Academy High School (Miami) and Prince Avenue Preparatory Academy (Pickens, S.C.) are imperfect. Florida Prep is closed, and there have been two American Academy schools in Miami cited by the NCAA, but it's unclear which school had been cleared.
"The whole thing is a mess," said Cal Woolard, an administrator at Riverview Learning Center in Chesapeake, Va., a temporarily banned school that serves students with learning disabilities. "The NCAA's got the wrong schools. They're confused. They've got a bunch of mistakes, and we had a nightmare of a time getting them to correct it."
Since it started its investigation in April, the NCAA has reviewed 200 nontraditional high schools and sent investigators to visit about 20 schools, said Kevin Lennon, NCAA vice president of membership services. It continues to investigate schools with perceived academic irregularities.
Lennon said the NCAA investigated only schools that had applied to the NCAA Clearinghouse, an independent organization that certifies the academic records of prospective athletes. But administrators of many of the programs said they never submitted anything to the Clearinghouse. One said that she is such a non-sports fan that she had never heard of the NCAA.
"We're not out there digging up schools that don't have teams and that sort of thing," Lennon said last night. "It certainly wasn't a witch hunt."
The Washington Post reported first on Lutheran Christian, finding that the school had only one full-time employee, the basketball coach, and quoted anonymously a player who said no schoolwork was required to get grades that would make a player eligible in college.
The NCAA's announcement Monday does not change the eligibility status of former Lutheran Christian players, including George Washington guard Maureece Rice, who scored a team-high 16.1 points per game for the Colonials (20-8). Another Lutheran Christian product, Omar Williams, played a key role on last season's NCAA tournament team.
Forward Marc Egerson, also from Lutheran Christian, left Georgetown in January to transfer to Delaware. Three Lutheran Christian players are starters at Texas-El Paso and another, Theo Davis, would have been a part of Gonzaga's run to the NCAA tournament but was injured and then suspended after being arrested and charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana.
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.
They don't play basketball, said Karen Medeiros, Access director of curriculum and instruction.
"Unfortunately," Medeiros said, "we've somehow been characterized as a diploma mill."
Administrators criticized the NCAA's communication practices. Sorgalim Sin Barzaga, the principal at one of the American Academy schools, said the NCAA repeatedly sent her information at the wrong address. Woolard, from Riverview Learning Center, said the NCAA refused to return his calls until he left a message threatening to contact ESPN.
Frank Summerfield, the founder of Word of God Christian Academy in Raleigh, N.C., considered legal action against the NCAA. In September, he gave the NCAA a two-week deadline to remove his school from the list. "If we don't hear something then, we're just going to go ahead and let the attorney take it from here," Summerfield said.
Shortly thereafter, Word of God disappeared from the NCAA list.
"We don't know why we were ever considered," Summerfield said.
Staff writers Melanie Ho, Adam Kilgore and Marc Carig contributed to this report.
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