The NCAA's Misguided Role in School Reform

School Administrator, Nov, 1998 by Joe Nathan

Why is the governing body for college sports interfering in high school curricula across America?

David Flannery, superintendent in Elk River, Minn., minces no words when asked about the National Collegiate Athletic Administration, known more commonly as the NCAA.

Flannery calls the NCAA "the most arrogant, frustrating, obstinate organization I've ever dealt with." Similar sentiments come from Ken Gunn, principal of Walnut High School in Walnut, Calif., and president of the California Interscholastic Federation, who says, "The NCAA has created a monster."

A growing number of educational leaders on the pre-collegiate level--who until recently have had little reason to be concerned with the governing body for intercollegiate sports--agree with their harsh assessment. Through its recent attempts to establish national curriculum standards, the NCAA is creating enormous problems for high school students, parents and educators throughout the nation.

Object of Scorn

So why is the National Association of State Boards of Education asking the NCAA to stop "micro-managing academic courses" in high schools and warning school districts to be aware of potential legal problems caused by the NCAA? Why are some of the leading school reformers, such as Jonathan Kozol, Asa Hilliard, Deborah Meier and Ted Sizer, challenging the NCAA? Why are school administrators asking, "Who gave the NCAA the right to dictate course standards to secondary school educators?"

Answering these questions requires understanding the NCAA. Formed in 1906 because universities wanted to create a level playing field for sports, the NCAA now is big business, reporting more than $247 million in revenue last year. Naturally, NCAA officials are eager to protect that revenue.

Over the past decade, the NCAA has been vigorously criticized whenever professional athletes disclosed they could barely read, even though they had been students at well-known universities. In response, the NCAA developed high school grade point averages and college entrance test score minimums, which prospective college athletes had to meet to be eligible to compete in their first year.

Unilateral Standards

Without consulting superintendents, school board representatives or others in the K-i 2 community, the NCAA decided that good high school grades and strong test scores were no longer enough to qualify students for participation in collegiate sports. The NCAA opted to specify the content of acceptable high school courses in order to make college-entrance requirements uniform for athletes nationwide.

The NCAA raised the bar for freshmen eligibility by insisting that students earn a certain grade point average and score on college-entrance exams and successfully complete 13 core courses in English, social studies, mathematics and science. Then the NCAA decided to specify which courses it would accept.

The NCAA created an Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse, operated by American College Testing in Iowa City, to standardize the decisions over which courses qualified for the core requirements. (This responsibility for accrediting high school courses traditionally has been handled by each state education agency.) The clearinghouse asked all public and private high schools nationwide to submit a description of each course offered in these disciplines.

What followed were arbitrary and capricious determinations. As a high school principal in Illinois wrote me: "We found that one word in a course description, like 'applied,' was enough to get the course rejected." The Milwaukee Journal found identical courses approved at one school and rejected at another.

Ample Evidence

The clearinghouse, which was set up to review transcripts of college-bound athletes, declared thousands of students with acceptable academic records--including a National Merit Scholar and a school valedictorian--ineligible for athletic scholarships and ineligible to compete in sports as freshmen.

Among the many examples from across the nation:

* Ericka Twedt, who had earned a 3.7 grade point average at her high school in Prairie Farm, Wis., where she excelled in many college preparation courses and earned high SAT scores, watched the NCAA reject two of her high school English courses. After months of appeals, she was granted a waiver, but by then she had missed the fall rowing season at University of Iowa.

* Yale accepted Alison Rosholt, an excellent tennis player, on "early decision" last fall, but it took nine months of phone calls and letters from her highly regarded suburban Minneapolis high school and her parents before the NCAA would let her try our for the team.

* The Air Force Academy accepted Chris Rohe, who compiled a 3.97 high school grade point average, high test scores and membership in the National Honor Society, but the NCAA blocked him from playing football during his freshman year because it rejected 1/3 of a required 10th grade English class.

* Dan Zien, a suburban Milwaukee student who won honors in track at the Junior Olympics, compiled a B high school average and scored above 1300 on his SAT, but was barred from competing in track as a freshman at Indiana University because the NCAA rejected an English course, "Preparation for the 21" Century." His high school noted that the same course had been accepted when submitted by other high schools.