Last week, the NCAA updated its list of “schools” from which it would not accept academic transcripts.

The NCAA on Wednesday added 16 nontraditional high schools, seven of them in Santa Ana, Calif., to a list of those whose transcripts will no longer be accepted because of questionable academic credentials.

Five schools, including Martinez Adult Education in Martinez, Calif., were removed from an original list of 15 released last month after a review by the NCAA. Other schools are still being investigated and could face similar sanctions in the association’s attempt to crack down on so-called “diploma mills” whose graduates seek athletic scholarships to college.

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The other schools removed from the original list of 15 schools were: Hawaii Electronic, Honolulu; Ranch Academy, Canton, Texas; Tazewell (Va.) City Career and Tech Center; and Virginia Beach (Va.) Central Academy.

The 16 added Wednesday include Access, Horizon, Joplin, Los Pinos, Lyon, Otto A. Fischer and Rio Contiguo, all of Santa Ana. The NCAA said 22 others have been cleared for only those graduates entering college this fall and are subject to review.

Five other schools have applied to the NCAA clearinghouse, but no decision has been made on their status for initial eligibility. They are Educational Consultants, Midlothian, Va.; God’s Academy, Grand Prairie, Texas; Mill Creek Baptist School, Youngstown, Ohio; New Life Academy, Salt Lake City; and Progressive Christian Academy, Camp Springs, Md.

The NCAA listing is not retroactive, meaning it won’t affect any athletes already enrolled in college.

There seems to be a lot of confusion and anger. Shockingly Lutheran Christian Academy out of Philly — the school that was the focus of NYTimes and Washington Post articles — got clearance for students for this fall. They are, however, part of the group of 22 subject to further review. And there’s the problem. Among the 22 that made the list were some schools that have fairly clean histories.

Mere hours after the NCAA released a list Wednesday of 22 schools that it cleared for accreditation during the 2005-06 school year, officials of two of the schools, Oak Hill Academy and Fork Union Military Academy, both based in Virginia, took umbrage at being on such a list at all.

“Our academic rigors and integrity have never been called into question until now,” said Michael Groves, president of Oak Hill, a 127-year-old institution that annually produces a nationally ranked high school basketball team and has a long list of alums that have played professionally. “We’re a high-profile institution, and we’re proud of the success that we’ve had with our young men and women.”

But many of Oak Hill’s high-profile graduates spent only a year or two at the school, and Kevin Lennon, the NCAA’s vice president for membership services, said his investigative staff is focusing on transcripts that show a student “has enrolled for only one year… or has a significant jump in his GPA in his third or fourth year.”
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A separate list of 22 schools, including Lutheran Christian of Philadelphia; Notre Dame Prep of Fitchburg, Mass.; St. Thomas More of Oakdale, Conn.; and Virginia’s Oak Hill and Fork Union Military Academies, were cleared for prospects entering college this year, but are subject to future review.

Fletcher Arritt, who has coached Fork Union’s postgraduate men’s basketball team for 36 years, told The Inquirer that he was a little baffled that a prestigious academy offering multitiered men’s and women’s athletic programs in a variety of sports would be part of such a review.

Hey, Oak Hill is a fine institute. Esepcially since Julian Vaughn, a now potential Pitt recruit, is going there this fall.

Of course, you can question how hard the NCAA is actually investigating the schools at this point (though, to be fair, they just started and gathering information to make a legit case against accepting academic transcripts — due process and all that).

In all, 22 were passed, for now, by the NCAA because they cooperated with a complete survey in response to the basic needs of students and the overall description of the prep school. Although the NCAA put a disclaimer on the 22 by saying the NCAA still has questions (for the classes of 2007 and beyond), the students arriving on campuses this fall can move forward. Sixteen schools, including Christopher Robin Academy in New York and North Atlanta Prep in Georgia, were not cleared.

[Emphasis added.]

Yup, that’s all it took to get NCAA approval for this season. Simply respond to the questionnaire. How bad is it, that 16 schools couldn’t even do that?

This gives columnists to look at the present effort as half-assed and incompetent

In its quest to identify and admonish secondary schools of questionable academic repute, the NCAA set itself up for charges of heavy-handedness by listing some places that have never fielded sports teams. And in publicly censuring some established institutions without having done thorough homework, the administrators probably will have to rescind a few declarations and apologize to Oak Hill Academy and Fork Union Military Academy.
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Of course, this scrutiny is long overdue. After years of operating as a subway turnstile, the NCAA’s Clearinghouse might start to resemble an airport metal detector. Maybe.

And from even a cursory examination, it appears there is plenty to scan.

or at least a starting point.

At least the NCAA took a step toward addressing the latest academic scam: bogus prep schools that clean up three years of lousy transcripts with a one-year makeover, allowing players to gain college eligibility. For too many basketball players, high school has become a vagabond process — bouncing from one school to the next, until finishing at a prep school that magically fixes a player’s academic deficiencies.

Of course, the very fact the NCAA Clearinghouse was rubber-stamping all manner of garbage diploma mills necessitated the corrective action. Now those who wound up on what everyone at the Nike camp is calling the “banned list” are squawking.

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Many coaches at Nike wondered how Lutheran Christian avoided being immediately banned by the NCAA. Lennon said that the review process is continuing for that school — and that its “graduates” have hardly been green-lighted to play in 2006-07.

“Some of the students who attended there might get their records reviewed [by the NCAA Clearinghouse],” Lennon said.

The NCAA’s other hope is that its member schools will stop using the Clearinghouse eligibility standard as their own. In other words, just because the NCAA screwed up in allowing schools like Lutheran Christian to proliferate, it doesn’t mean the schools have to look the other way and admit its players.

“That should not be a de facto admissions standard,” Lennon said.

*cough* Bob Huggins *cough* Kansas State *cough*