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NCAA rejects K12 courses


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Does anyone know if they're discontinuing the use of K12 classes for college credit, or rejecting K12 as a source of high school credit for incoming freshmen?

 

This happened a year ago (April 2014), and it involved K12 courses used for HS credit. The NCAA said that, due to inadequate levels of teacher access, they would no longer accept certain K12 courses for the 16 "Core Courses" that athletes need to have approved if they want to play Div I or Div II sports. I haven't seen any updates in the last year, although the K12 website directs people to check the NCAA website to see which of their classes are approved. (ETA: Apparently it depends on which virtual school offers the classes.)

 

I think it was incredibly unfair of the NCAA to make the decision so suddenly, because they only allowed the courses for 2014 graduates, said they would review courses individually for 2015 graduates, and would not accept any courses for students beyond that. So there were almost certainly athletes in 9th & 10th grades who were using the affected K12 schools, and were suddenly scrambling for another school. They also refused to provide K12 with any kind of guideline or rubric for the amount of teacher access they required to approve a course. But very little of what the NCAA does is "fair" or even reasonable, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.  :thumbdown:

 

 

 

 

 

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Yes, it applies to these virtual public schools that use K12:

 

California Virtual Academy – San Joaquin

California Virtual Academy – San Diego

California Virtual Academy – Los Angeles

California Virtual Academy – Sutter

California Virtual Academy – Jamestown

California Virtual Academy – Kern

California Virtual Academy – San Mateo

California Virtual Academy – Kings

California Virtual Academy – Sonoma

San Francisco Flex Academy (CA)

Silicon Valley Flex Academy (Morgan Hill, CA)

California Virtual Academy – LA High

California Virtual Academy – Santa Ysabel

Colorado Virtual Academy Cova (North Glenn, CO)

Georgia Cyber Academy (Atlanta, GA)

Nevada Virtual Academy (Las Vegas, NV)

Ohio Virtual Academy (Maumee, OH)

Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy (Nicoma Park, OK)

Agora Cyber Charter School (Wayne, PA)

South Carolina Virtual Charter (Columbia, SC)

Washington Virtual Academy – Monroe (Tacoma, WA)

Insight School of Colorado (Westminster, CO)

Insight School of Washington (Tacoma, WA)

IQ Academy Washington (Vancouver, WA)

 

"In addition to the 24 schools, other schools affiliated with K12 Inc. remain under Extended Evaluation. This means the NCAA will continue to review coursework coming from those schools to see whether it meets the NCAA’s core course and nontraditional course requirements. Prospects with coursework from those schools must submit additional documentation no matter when the coursework was completed."

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I'm surprised this is not a hotter issue.  I know most of us aren't raising professional atheletes (I'm certain I'm not) but the idea that a powerful body like the NCAA would shut out kids in the most affordable virtual school out there from an entire category of careers seems like a big deal.  

 

I believe they're doing this because of some of the cheating operations that have been going on, where high school atheletes find someone to complete their online school work for them so they can play ball in college. But IMO it's a cop-out to say "therefore no one from this virtual school is allowed in college atheletics."  Sorry, you need to find a way to validate the work so you're not punishing the kids who legitmately took their K12 courses.

 

I would also say, this is not a side issue for homeschoolers.  We don't have any better ways of proving our kids' transcripts are legitimate than virtual schoolers do.  If colleges decided to take the same cop-out with homeschoolers, I think we'd all see how unreasonable it is to shut out a whole schooling option because of a fraud problem.

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I'm surprised this is not a hotter issue.  I know most of us aren't raising professional atheletes (I'm certain I'm not) but the idea that a powerful body like the NCAA would shut out kids in the most affordable virtual school out there from an entire category of careers seems like a big deal.  

 

I believe they're doing this because of some of the cheating operations that have been going on, where high school atheletes find someone to complete their online school work for them so they can play ball in college. But IMO it's a cop-out to say "therefore no one from this virtual school is allowed in college atheletics."  Sorry, you need to find a way to validate the work so you're not punishing the kids who legitmately took their K12 courses.

 

I would also say, this is not a side issue for homeschoolers.  We don't have any better ways of proving our kids' transcripts are legitimate than virtual schoolers do.  If colleges decided to take the same cop-out with homeschoolers, I think we'd all see how unreasonable it is to shut out a whole schooling option because of a fraud problem.

:iagree:  I'm definitely concerned about this.

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I'm surprised this is not a hotter issue.  I know most of us aren't raising professional atheletes (I'm certain I'm not) but the idea that a powerful body like the NCAA would shut out kids in the most affordable virtual school out there from an entire category of careers seems like a big deal. 

:iagree:

I also find it appalling the NCAA has the power to impose new regulations retroactively.  There is no guarantee that the courses our kids are taking today will still be acceptable when it is time to go through the NCAA process.

 

The NCAA is corrupt to its core.  Unfortunately, it also has very deep pockets.

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The NCAA is just reacting to the latest scandal of coaches/counselors enrolling athletes in online courses and doing the work for them. The NCAA has many, many problems. And as they react to attempts to get around their rules and requirements, they merely create more problems, unfairness, and comparisons with unsavory organizations with RICO convictions.

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Wouldn't it make more sense to require all NCAA athletes to do a comprehensive exam under their supervision (maybe something like the Accuplacer used by community colleges)? It's not like there haven't been academic fraud cases for high school students attending traditional schools, too.

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Wouldn't it make more sense to require all NCAA athletes to do a comprehensive exam under their supervision (maybe something like the Accuplacer used by community colleges)? It's not like there haven't been academic fraud cases for high school students attending traditional schools, too.

Like the ACT? Or the SAT? Those have to be submitted to the NCAA already, in addition to transcripts for all and worksheets plus transcripts for the homeschoolers. There is no reason athletes should have to do more to be admitted than any other student. Remedial classes at universities are full of all kinds of students.

A national exit exam for all high schoolers would solve some problems, but I imagine, the nosiest opponent would be the NEA.

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Wouldn't it make more sense to require all NCAA athletes to do a comprehensive exam under their supervision (maybe something like the Accuplacer used by community colleges)? It's not like there haven't been academic fraud cases for high school students attending traditional schools, too.

 

Like MysteryJen has already said, the athletes already submit ACT or SAT scores.  After the conversations I have had with the NCAA, I am convinced that they could not care less whether or not a student has received an education; all they care about is $$$.  Each athlete has to pay a fee to go through this NCAA process. 

 

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And that fee is paid whether or not they review your file. The file is only reviewed when a coach requests it. Thousands of hopefuls sign up for the clearinghouse every year and only a fraction of those go on to play.

 

The money involved is staggering.

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And that fee is paid whether or not they review your file. The file is only reviewed when a coach requests it. Thousands of hopefuls sign up for the clearinghouse every year and only a fraction of those go on to play.

 

The money involved is staggering.

 

Yep.  Count us as one of those families that paid the fee and never went through the process due to a major injury junior year.  I don't know if the NCAA website has been changed, but a couple of years ago, the NCAA stated on its website that students should register in sophomore year, which we did.  I don't know if this is still the case, but when my oldest registered, the NCAA never disclosed that the fee would not be refunded if the file was never read.

 

My middle most probably will play Div I (although I am silently hoping he will elect to play Div III).  If he goes Div I, I am waiting until the start of senior year to register with the NCAA as there doesn't seem any reason to do so earlier in the process.

 

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"K12 is known to have a high dropout rate and low graduation rates."  (from the link above)

 

That seems so silly.  I mean, my guess is that K12 attracts a lot of non-traditional students, some of them being serious homeschoolers of course, but some of them being students who just weren't making it in the traditional system and this was kind of like a last chance for them.  They maybe even made it further in the K12 system than they would have made it in the traditional system, who knows. 

 

I think they are trying to say that K12 CAUSES a higher dropout rate and low graduation rates, but the cause and effect they are referring to may not exist at all.

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Snowbeltmom, I would just look at the tennis recruiting timeline. For us, coaches wanted an NCAA ID as soon as the emailing started. I think it was required for the questionnaires as well. So for us, we needed it July 1 prior to jr year.

 

That fee is the cost of doing business with DI or DII. Another word for it would be "shakedown."

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I would be curious what drop out rate Ravitch is referring to. If you decide to homeschool and sign up with a charter or virtual school that uses K12, then move to independent homeschooling the next year would that be tallied as dropping out of the K12 program or even from school itself. (I know homeschool isn't dropping out, but I don't know how a report would characterize such students.)

 

NCAA does require test scores. But they also have a table where the required score is inversely related to gpa. A student with low grades needs higher scores than a student with high grades. I've never understood the purpose of this. Why not say that the college benchmark score is 1000 and recruited athletes need a 900 or better.

 

The inverse score-gpa table means there is a greater incentive on schools to pass athletes along to maintain their eligibility. The SAT scores don't serve to verify college readiness. (A Div I student with a high gpa only needs a 400 (math and reading combined. While a Div II student needs an 800.)

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NCAA does require test scores. But they also have a table where the required score is inversely related to gpa. A student with low grades needs higher scores than a student with high grades. I've never understood the purpose of this. Why not say that the college benchmark score is 500 and recruited athletes need a 450 or better.

Because decades ago, the tests were deemed prejudicial against minorities. So they introduced the sliding scale. And thus, the cheating problems started. In the 1980s, you could sign your name to the SAT and answer zero problems and get a combined score of 400. Then, you needed a 3.8 or higher. So kids took easy courses with little college prep value. So then the concept of core courses were introduced. The NCAA creates problems and then plays catch up.

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I'd also like to point out that there is a huge amount of cheating - some of it with administrative blessing because it artificially inflates scores in states where funding is tied to graduation rates and "merit" - in many public schools. As several deans have said during our college visits - "Who knows what a grade means anymore? Does an 'A' give any indication of work accomplished?". It is sanctioned faculty cheating authorized by administrators and forced on the teachers through threat of loss of job for "job performance". Every teacher I know in our district says the same thing, there are no circumstances in which a student playing sports can be issued less than a C+. None. Frankly, they don't have any reason to really trust what brick and mortar schools put on a transcript.

 

And I agree, the NCAA is always very behind the eight ball, as the saying goes, and is often the instigator of the problem in the first place!

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Wouldn't it make more sense to require all NCAA athletes to do a comprehensive exam under their supervision (maybe something like the Accuplacer used by community colleges)? It's not like there haven't been academic fraud cases for high school students attending traditional schools, too.

 

They don't care about outcomes, all they care about it is that the courses students take meet their arbitrary criteria for "approval." A boardie who has been through this process with NCAA offered a high score on the AP Chem test as validation of an online course and they explicitly said they didn't care about the exam score, all they cared about was whether the course was pre-approved by them (it wasn't).

 

A student could take AP Latin through Lukeion, get a 5 on the AP exam and a gold medal on the NLE, and NCAA still won't accept it if you try to submit it as an online course with Amy Barr as the teacher of record. But if you list the exact same course as a homeschooled course, with yourself as the teacher of record and Amy as an additional teacher, then they will take it.

 

The system is truly Kafkaesque in its absurdity.

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They don't care about outcomes, all they care about it is that the courses students take meet their arbitrary criteria for "approval." A boardie who has been through this process with NCAA offered a high score on the AP Chem test as validation of an online course and they explicitly said they didn't care about the exam score, all they cared about was whether the course was pre-approved by them (it wasn't).

 

A student could take AP Latin through Lukeion, get a 5 on the AP exam and a gold medal on the NLE, and NCAA still won't accept it if you try to submit it as an online course with Amy Barr as the teacher of record. But if you list the exact same course as a homeschooled course, with yourself as the teacher of record and Amy as an additional teacher, then they will take it.

 

The system is truly Kafkaesque in its absurdity.

This isn't just homeschool courses either. A couple years ago German online was not an NCAA approved course (I don't know their current status). But a state virtual school (ie one run by the state DOE for a la carte courses not a charter) was approved by NCAA. Even though what the virtual school did was register kids for German Online and then issue grades.

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They don't care about outcomes, all they care about it is that the courses students take meet their arbitrary criteria for "approval." A boardie who has been through this process with NCAA offered a high score on the AP Chem test as validation of an online course and they explicitly said they didn't care about the exam score, all they cared about was whether the course was pre-approved by them (it wasn't).

 

A student could take AP Latin through Lukeion, get a 5 on the AP exam and a gold medal on the NLE, and NCAA still won't accept it if you try to submit it as an online course with Amy Barr as the teacher of record. But if you list the exact same course as a homeschooled course, with yourself as the teacher of record and Amy as an additional teacher, then they will take it.

 

The system is truly Kafkaesque in its absurdity.

The chemistry class was offered by ChemAdvantage.  Had I registered my son with PA Homeschoolers rather than registering directly with ChemAdvantage, the NCAA would have approved the course because PA Homeschoolers are an NCAA approved provider.  I explained to the folks at the NCAA that the course was the exact same class, but they didn't care: ChemAdvantage wasn't an approved provider.

 

Absurd sums up the process very well  :cursing: .  

 

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The chemistry class was offered by ChemAdvantage. Had I registered my son with PA Homeschoolers rather than registering directly with ChemAdvantage, the NCAA would have approved the course because PA Homeschoolers are an NCAA approved provider. I explained to the folks at the NCAA that the course was the exact same class, but they didn't care: ChemAdvantage wasn't an approved provider.

 

Absurd sums up the process very well :cursing: .

Doesn't the same situation exist with JHU CTY courses which uses Thinkwell?

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I'm surprised this is not a hotter issue.  I know most of us aren't raising professional atheletes (I'm certain I'm not) but the idea that a powerful body like the NCAA would shut out kids in the most affordable virtual school out there from an entire category of careers seems like a big deal.  

 

 

The assumption, I believe, is that there are alternatives, namely, the public schools, which are not allowed to refuse admission to anybody.

 

I believe they're doing this because of some of the cheating operations that have been going on, where high school atheletes find someone to complete their online school work for them so they can play ball in college. But IMO it's a cop-out to say "therefore no one from this virtual school is allowed in college atheletics."  Sorry, you need to find a way to validate the work so you're not punishing the kids who legitmately took their K12 courses.

 

I disagree.

 

The NCAA is not responsible for separately accrediting each and every school that feeds athletes into college.

 

If an institution is so rife with a problem among a specific population OR its entire population, and if its students aren't meeting goals, then it can lose accreditation.

 

I believe in this case, the absolutely screwed up thing is, this for-profit institution has lower pass rates and higher cheating rates than the public schools it was intended to replace.

 

I mean you really can't go lower.

 

 

I would also say, this is not a side issue for homeschoolers.  We don't have any better ways of proving our kids' transcripts are legitimate than virtual schoolers do.  If colleges decided to take the same cop-out with homeschoolers, I think we'd all see how unreasonable it is to shut out a whole schooling option because of a fraud problem.

 

 

Virtual schoolers who are participating in a system which is known to have entrenched cheating patterns face a higher burden of proof.

 

But moreover, what has happened here is that they were unable to verify the transcripts because there was cheating going on. ANY school could be subjected to this scrutiny and have the standard applied:

 

--What was the curriculum?

--What were the methods of assessing the curriculum?

--When were those assessments carried out?

--What were the results?

--Can we triangulate the results with other work by the student?

 

Public, private, online, and homeschool should ALL be able to do this. Believe it or not, public and most private schools already do this. There is regular oversight and public scrutiny into passing every last child that gets through there. Sometimes they fail, true, but then, they are schooling millions of children, so we'd expect to hear some nightmares and some heroism.

 

For a homeschooler, if everything's in order and there is no evidence of widespread faking of homeschool transcripts for the purpose of getting children into NCAA sports positions, I don't see the problem.

 

If, however, those K12ers drop out and decide to fake HS credits instead, you all are kind of screwed.

 

This, by the way, is why people do instill regulation, guidelines, oversight, etc. It's easy to self-regulate when you're small and the barriers to entering the group are high (social exclusion, high costs to start homeschooling, high effort, lack of information). Once you get mainstream, those barriers by definition are lowering. And you get the moochers, cheaters, etc.

 

That is what happened to, and will continue to, plague any system that purports to be ideal based on a tiny sample size creamed from those showing the most effort and willingness to take risks for the sake of education.

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Doesn't the same situation exist with JHU CTY courses which uses Thinkwell?

 

I think there is a difference there because JHU does have an actual teacher and there is a lab component to the CTY class.  

 

The ChemAdvantage class and the PA Homeschoolers class is the exact same online class - the kids who signed up directly with ChemAdvantage are in the same class as those who registered via PA Homeschoolers.

 

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Snowbeltmom, I would just look at the tennis recruiting timeline. For us, coaches wanted an NCAA ID as soon as the emailing started. I think it was required for the questionnaires as well. So for us, we needed it July 1 prior to jr year.

 

That fee is the cost of doing business with DI or DII. Another word for it would be "shakedown."

 

Thanks, this is good to know.  The last time I checked, the coaches could start calling July 1st after junior year.  I will need to check to see if this has changed since each sport seems to have its own time frame for official contact.

 

"Shakedown" sums it up nicely.

 

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The Colorado schools on the list that were denied approval are public schools. They were subject to the rules and oversight of the chartering districts. Virtual schools may have a pattern of cheating, but I don't believe there are any concrete studies to back that up.

Schools can and do move athletes into "approved" courses with a teacher known for lenient grading. Private schools can and do award credit for online courses that appear as regular courses on the transcript.

 

The NCAA is not an accrediting body (I don't know what Ravitch is referring to) and they don't care if the students actually learn anything or frankly, if they are college ready.

 

When high schools graduate kids that can barely read and do arithmetic, color me less than impressed with "oversight" and regulation. But if they took the right courses with the right names, they will be rubber stamped by the NCAA. No questions asked.

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The NCAA is not responsible for separately accrediting each and every school that feeds athletes into college.

 

The NCAA doesn't accredit anything, they just decide which courses, from which providers, they will allow athletes to take in high school in order to be able to compete in college (which, IMO, is none of their damn business anyway).

 

But they do in fact approve each provider "separately." B&M public schools get a pass, but fully accredited online schools, and even hybrid schools, are individually approved, based on criteria that they refuse to disclose to the schools they are approving. A school can be fully accredited, awarding diplomas that all colleges accept for admission, but NCAA can arbitrarily decide that they won't accept the courses and will therefore bar a student from competing in Div I/II sports. 

 

It makes no sense to say the NCAA is "not responsible" for evaluating every course and program that involves athletes heading into college, because that is exactly what they have given themselves the power to do.

 

 

If an institution is so rife with a problem among a specific population OR its entire population, and if its students aren't meeting goals, then it can lose accreditation.

 

I believe in this case, the absolutely screwed up thing is, this for-profit institution has lower pass rates and higher cheating rates than the public schools it was intended to replace.

 

I mean you really can't go lower.

 

 

 

Virtual schoolers who are participating in a system which is known to have entrenched cheating patterns face a higher burden of proof.

 

But moreover, what has happened here is that they were unable to verify the transcripts because there was cheating going on. ANY school could be subjected to this scrutiny and have the standard applied:

 

--What was the curriculum?

--What were the methods of assessing the curriculum?

--When were those assessments carried out?

--What were the results?

--Can we triangulate the results with other work by the student?

 

Public, private, online, and homeschool should ALL be able to do this. Believe it or not, public and most private schools already do this. There is regular oversight and public scrutiny into passing every last child that gets through there. Sometimes they fail, true, but then, they are schooling millions of children, so we'd expect to hear some nightmares and some heroism.

 

For a homeschooler, if everything's in order and there is no evidence of widespread faking of homeschool transcripts for the purpose of getting children into NCAA sports positions, I don't see the problem.

 

If, however, those K12ers drop out and decide to fake HS credits instead, you all are kind of screwed.

 

This, by the way, is why people do instill regulation, guidelines, oversight, etc. It's easy to self-regulate when you're small and the barriers to entering the group are high (social exclusion, high costs to start homeschooling, high effort, lack of information). Once you get mainstream, those barriers by definition are lowering. And you get the moochers, cheaters, etc.

 

That is what happened to, and will continue to, plague any system that purports to be ideal based on a tiny sample size creamed from those showing the most effort and willingness to take risks for the sake of education.

 

I'm curious where you're getting the data from that the 24 schools the NCAA disallowed had unusually high cheating rates. If that is true, then that is important information to have, but I haven't seen that published anywhere. There are some K12-based virtual schools that the NCAA does accept, along with many other virtual schools. What I have seen is that NCAA did not feel that there were enough hours of teacher-student interaction at those particular schools. That is something that could lead to cheating, but I haven't seen any evidence that it did, or that cheating was the reason for refusing to approve those courses.

 

And even if there were higher levels of cheating at those particular schools, I think it's incredibly unfair and unreasonable to suddenly refuse to accept any courses from any of those schools for any athlete using them, even if there is no evidence whatsoever that a particular athlete ever cheated.

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I think the National Collegiate Athletic Association needs to get out of the "high school eligibility" business altogether and focus on the very real issues with collegiate athletes who cheat in college classes. I understand that they have a legitimate role to play in supervising recruitment, but IMO that should be the limit of their involvement in high school athletics. But that won't ever happen because high school eligibility is a cash cow for them — they rake in $13 million a year from high school "registrations" alone, the majority of which will never even be looked at. 

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I think there is a difference there because JHU does have an actual teacher and there is a lab component to the CTY class.

 

The ChemAdvantage class and the PA Homeschoolers class is the exact same online class - the kids who signed up directly with ChemAdvantage are in the same class as those who registered via PA Homeschoolers.

 

You may be right about CTY. I don't have personal experience with their courses.

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I think the National Collegiate Athletic Association needs to get out of the "high school eligibility" business altogether and focus on the very real issues with collegiate athletes who cheat in college classes. I understand that they have a legitimate role to play in supervising recruitment, but IMO that should be the limit of their involvement in high school athletics. But that won't ever happen because high school eligibility is a cash cow for them — they rake in $13 million a year from high school "registrations" alone, the majority of which will never even be looked at.

Irregular college classes primarily taken by athletes? Say it isn't so.

 

http://chronicle.com/article/Need-3-Quick-Credits-to-Play/135690/

 

Western Oklahoma has since backed off of these courses because they risked losing accreditation. To my knowledge NCAA did not challenge the courses.

 

Nor do I think UNC has had any issue with NCAA over their quite fraudulent courses.

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Irregular college classes primarily taken by athletes? Say it isn't so.

 

http://chronicle.com/article/Need-3-Quick-Credits-to-Play/135690/

 

Western Oklahoma has since backed off of these courses because they risked losing accreditation. To my knowledge NCAA did not challenge the courses.

 

Nor do I think UNC has had any issue with NCAA over their quite fraudulent courses.

 

Exactly! I love this quote from the article you linked: "[NCAA] has largely stayed away from evaluating college-level courses, leaving that process to individual colleges." So, let's allow the colleges, who have a major financial interest in helping athletes cheat, to police themselves, while we screw a bunch of high school students who are getting diplomas from fully accredited online high schools. 

 

The irony is that NCAA will accept without question any online CC classes for high school students, no matter how few hours of "teacher interaction" there are, while refusing to accept classes from certain K12 schools, or from "unapproved" providers like Lukeion or Chem Advantage, where there is tons of teacher interaction.

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The clearinghouse and its hypocrisy is just the tip of the iceberg that is the NCAA. There are the rules of amateurism applied randomly and harshly. This is all before an athlete even takes a college class.

 

The UNC scandal is a disgrace, but a logical result of admitting people not qualified and financing their education with "pay for performance." That is the very definition of a professional. The O'Bannon lawsuit will cost money, but the Northwestern case before the National labor relations board could actually bring the structure down,

 

My dd1's sport is financed on the backs of the revenue sports. There is nothing remotely okay about how the revenue athletes are treated.

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They don't care about outcomes, all they care about it is that the courses students take meet their arbitrary criteria for "approval." A boardie who has been through this process with NCAA offered a high score on the AP Chem test as validation of an online course and they explicitly said they didn't care about the exam score, all they cared about was whether the course was pre-approved by them (it wasn't).

 

A student could take AP Latin through Lukeion, get a 5 on the AP exam and a gold medal on the NLE, and NCAA still won't accept it if you try to submit it as an online course with Amy Barr as the teacher of record. But if you list the exact same course as a homeschooled course, with yourself as the teacher of record and Amy as an additional teacher, then they will take it.

 

The system is truly Kafkaesque in its absurdity.

 

So is that how an AP course with Pennsylvania Homeschoolers would be listed? Ack! That seems so dishonest. My son has had really good teachers and it would feel weird not to give them credit. All I did was say, "Did you get that essay in on time?" He will also be taking Lukeion's Advanced Research Writing class next spring. Now I know how to list it, but that still feels weird.

 

In order for ds to participate in high school swimming, he has to take a nationally normed test every year, not just for tenth grade as our state law requires. The test runs me about $75 and takes 2+ hours of his time. This is after the slew of ACT, SAT 2, and AP tests the next few weeks will entail. Those test aren't good enough. Oh no. We are submitting the Terra Nova so they can be assured he is getting a solid education. Can you all hear the irony in my voice?

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Irregular college classes primarily taken by athletes? Say it isn't so.

 

http://chronicle.com/article/Need-3-Quick-Credits-to-Play/135690/

 

Western Oklahoma has since backed off of these courses because they risked losing accreditation. To my knowledge NCAA did not challenge the courses.

 

Nor do I think UNC has had any issue with NCAA over their quite fraudulent courses.

My favorite specialty course from Crappy State U down the road - a division II school - is "History Through Nursery Rhymes".

 

I know several students who have taken this course including some girls on the softball team and two football players.

 

This is what they do:

 

Every class period your "group" - usually consisting of 5 students - is supposed to bring a nursery rhyme or children's story to class and take turns reading parts of it aloud. Then they provide a coloring page for the class and everyone colors it. This is followed by discussing their "art". The history part is that they have to note the author if this is known, the time frame in which it was written, and ONE historical fact from that time period.

 

That's it.

 

This constitutes 3 credits of Gen Ed history. Enrollment in the class is restricted to only members of the sports teams.

 

This is not the only special course for the athletes, but one of the most notorious.

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So is that how an AP course with Pennsylvania Homeschoolers would be listed? Ack! That seems so dishonest. My son has had really good teachers and it would feel weird not to give them credit. All I did was say, "Did you get that essay in on time?" He will also be taking Lukeion's Advanced Research Writing class next spring. Now I know how to list it, but that still feels weird.

 

Yep. Despite the fact that the PAHS website still coyly states that they will send out "official transcripts verifying AP course completion and course grades ... to colleges, NCAA, the military academies, or scholarship programs," if you go to the NCAA eligibility center and put in the PAHS school code (392057), it shows that none of their courses are currently NCAA approved. So you have to list yourself as "Teacher of Record" and the actual instructor as "Other Teacher." Because forcing people to list themselves as teachers of courses they didn't teach, in order to ensure academic honesty and integrity, makes perfect sense, right? 

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Doesn't the same situation exist with JHU CTY courses which uses Thinkwell?

Not all CTY courses use Thinkwell.  Those that do don't always use Thinkwell in the say way or order that a student directly associated with Thinkwell would.  And even the Thinkwell based courses have a supervising teacher who monitors progress, intervenes when work is slow or not scoring well, etc.  

 

But that aside, the NCAA is truly messed up on how they evaluate these things.  

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My favorite specialty course from Crappy State U down the road - a division II school - is "History Through Nursery Rhymes".

 

I know several students who have taken this course including some girls on the softball team and two football players.

 

This is what they do:

 

Every class period your "group" - usually consisting of 5 students - is supposed to bring a nursery rhyme or children's story to class and take turns reading parts of it aloud. Then they provide a coloring page for the class and everyone colors it. This is followed by discussing their "art". The history part is that they have to note the author if this is known, the time frame in which it was written, and ONE historical fact from that time period.

 

That's it.

 

This constitutes 3 credits of Gen Ed history. Enrollment in the class is restricted to only members of the sports teams.

 

This is not the only special course for the athletes, but one of the most notorious.

Oh my.  I think my eyes may be bleeding just from having read this.  There really is no shame.

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Yep. Despite the fact that the PAHS website still coyly states that they will send out "official transcripts verifying AP course completion and course grades ... to colleges, NCAA, the military academies, or scholarship programs," if you go to the NCAA eligibility center and put in the PAHS school code (392057), it shows that none of their courses are currently NCAA approved. So you have to list yourself as "Teacher of Record" and the actual instructor as "Other Teacher." Because forcing people to list themselves as teachers of courses they didn't teach, in order to ensure academic honesty and integrity, makes perfect sense, right? 

 

Oh, I can definitely hear the irony in your voice on that one. :D

 

Ds's PAHS classes have been leagues above most of his public high school classes. I say most, because his AP Biology class and the AP Euro class his older siblings took also had excellent teachers. NCAA and their rational beyond $ is just one big mystery to me.

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The word that comes to mind when I think of NCAA is usually something like "grubby."

 

It's that "ick" kind of grubby, where you can't wait to wash your hands after spending a day sightseeing using various forms of mass transit, not the camping without a shower grubby. :D

 

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When planning what to use for my high schooler, how can I know what will be approved?  Is there still no way to know?  I ask because in reading through this thread, I see that certain courses/vendors are or are not pre-approved.  Where and how do I find out if what I want to use for high school will be approved?  When I asked a similar question last year, the answer was that there is no solid way to know.  Has anything changed since?

 

Ugh, I'm not looking forward to this process.

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When planning what to use for my high schooler, how can I know what will be approved?  Is there still no way to know?  I ask because in reading through this thread, I see that certain courses/vendors are or are not pre-approved.  Where and how do I find out if what I want to use for high school will be approved?  When I asked a similar question last year, the answer was that there is no solid way to know.  Has anything changed since?

 

Ugh, I'm not looking forward to this process.

I asked the NCAA folks if I could submit coursework and have it approved prior to senior year and was told that was not possible.  In addition, even if a provider is approved today, there is no guarantee that the provider will still be listed in the NCAA database when your child goes through the clearinghouse senior year.

 

As long as you use high school level (or higher) textbooks, provide grades, and list yourself as the teacher of record for every single class that is not taken at a community college or 4 year university/college, you should be fine.

 

The "problem" arises when you list, for example, "ChemAdvantage" as the teacher of record for the online class when ChemAdvantage is not in their database of approved suppliers.  In these situations, I am adding a little bit of extra work for my kids to complete in addition to the online class and listing myself as the teacher of record. 

 

I have absolutely no qualms in doing this as I feel the NCAA has left us with no other options since we can't use test scores to prove that the online class was effective because the NCAA doesn't care about the educational outcome, only that the online provider has been approved.

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I asked the NCAA folks if I could submit coursework and have it approved prior to senior year and was told that was not possible.  In addition, even if a provider is approved today, there is no guarantee that the provider will still be listed in the NCAA database when your child goes through the clearinghouse senior year.

 

As long as you use high school level (or higher) textbooks, provide grades, and list yourself as the teacher of record for every single class that is not taken at a community college or 4 year university/college, you should be fine.

 

The "problem" arises when you list, for example, "ChemAdvantage" as the teacher of record for the online class when ChemAdvantage is not in their database of approved suppliers.  In these situations, I am adding a little bit of extra work for my kids to complete in addition to the online class and listing myself as the teacher of record. 

 

I have absolutely no qualms in doing this as I feel the NCAA has left us with no other options since we can't use test scores to prove that the online class was effective because the NCAA doesn't care about the educational outcome, only that the online provider has been approved.

 

This is the conclusion I have come to as well. 

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And with reading this, I've decided not to sweat it, and simply make myself the teacher of record for everything...and every other tutor/lecturer instructor supplementary.  I don't have time to worry about NCAA approval for children who may not even need it.  If making myself the teacher of record gets me around this approval nightmare, count me in.

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Is K12 related to Pearson?  Just curious because I think that is who does our state's virtual school courses.  We haven't taken anything with them, but I do think it's interesting (or maybe another adjective?) that a lot of these companies who are producing the surge of online curriculum are also big in the standardized testing industry.

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Is K12 related to Pearson? Just curious because I think that is who does our state's virtual school courses. We haven't taken anything with them, but I do think it's interesting (or maybe another adjective?) that a lot of these companies who are producing the surge of online curriculum are also big in the standardized testing industry.

There is no direct relationship between them. One is a US firm, the other a UK firm.

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Is K12 related to Pearson?  Just curious because I think that is who does our state's virtual school courses.  We haven't taken anything with them, but I do think it's interesting (or maybe another adjective?) that a lot of these companies who are producing the surge of online curriculum are also big in the standardized testing industry.

Pearson owns Connections Academy - a competitor to K12.com  

http://www.connectionsacademy.com/news/pearson-acquisition

 

Pearson is a world wide corporation based in the UK  but does plenty of business in the USA

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