[lbo-talk] sports news

[Jim Devine]

from the WaPo's on-line SLATE's news summary a couple of days ago:
>The NY [TIMES] fronts a great feature on the proliferation of
traveling teenage basketball teams that pretend to represent real high
schools. In fact, these teams—with names like Lutheran Christian
Academy, Rise Academy, and Boys to Men Academy—either offer no real
coursework or outsource their teaching to online schools. All of the
students at these "schools" play basketball. "There were no classes,"
a former Lutheran Christian student tells the Times. "We went to
basketball practice every single day. What we were told when we first
went there was: How you perform on the court, that's what you do for
your grades."


> These Potemkin high schools are filling a market niche created by the NCAA, the Times notes. In the last few years, the NCAA has changed policy to 1) allow high-school administrators to determine the legitimacy of their own courses, and 2) allow students who flunk standardized tests to compensate with a decent G.P.A. Lutheran Christian told the NCAA that it was accredited by the state (untrue) and listed 35 courses it offers, including Latin 2, chemistry, and physics. The NCAA certified Lutheran's transcripts without question. Last year the "school" sent 11 "students" to Division I teams.<
--
Jim Devine / Bust Big Brother Bush!
"To be positive: To be mistaken at the top of one's voice." -- 
Ambrose Bierce, Devil's Dictionary.