Academic Progress

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- The college basketball season that ends Monday night began in November under the cloud of a possible boycott by members of the Black Coaches Association.The BCA was able to make its point regarding minority opportunities to the NCAA in meetings that were mediated by the U.S. Justice Department. The executive secretary of the NCAA isn't making any promises, but the feeling within the BCA and the larger National Association of Basketball Coaches is that the il,7p,14l higher standards for freshman eligibility scheduled for adoption in 1995 will be revised.

The alarmist can only wag his finger. The Maryland men's basketball team has the worst academic score of any Atlantic Coast Conference school. It's also the worst of any of Maryland's 27 sports teams. The realist can only shake his head. In all, men's basketball teams from 124 Division I schools posted insufficient grades in the NCAA's latest report card - its annual Academic Progress Rate report. The basketball fan can only shrug his shoulders. What does it all mean? Either basketball players are dumb as rocks for taking a free education for granted, college coaches are sleazeballs for pretending they care, or everyone else is naive for thinking grades still matter.

Since Randy Edsall took over for Ralph Friedgen in January, there has been a revolving door of coaches and players shuffling in and out of the Maryland football program. And it still hasn't stopped spinning. In recent weeks, linebacker Ryan Donohue, running back Gary Douglas and quarterback Tyler Smith announced plans to transfer, while fullbacks Haroon Brown and Taylor Watson — both of whom are graduating — decided they wouldn't return for their final season of eligibility. It's the type of attrition one might expect from a coaching change.

TODAY MARKS MY first Neighbors column for Northwest Carroll. As a Uniontown resident, I have always made it a point to read Judy Reilly's weekly column. We will all miss Judy, and I have big shoes to fill. Many of you who kept in touch with Judy will receive calls and visits from me. One of the first things I wanted to do was to introduce myself to the principals of the six schools in this area. My visits yielded so many good stories I felt as if I were back in Florida covering the school beat for the newspaper I used to work for. The day I called Mary Stong, principal of Elmer A. Wolfe Elementary School in Union Bridge, she was very happy.

Impressed with the first-semester progress of 18 Baltimore boys at a new private boarding school in Kenya, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke has pledged about $68,000 this year to their continuing education.The money will be shifted from the public school budget to support the nonprofit Baraka School, which opened in September on ranch land more than three hours north of Nairobi.All 18 students -- ages 11, 12 and 13 -- were recruited by Baraka from Baltimore middle schools. Schmoke has agreed to send to the private school the city allocation that would have funded their public education.

The NCAA yesterday announced dozens of proposed reforms designed to clean up college basketball. Linking scholarship allotments to graduation rates and lessening the importance of AAU tournaments in the recruiting process were among the recommendations of a 27-person committee, which spent 10 months studying the game and its ills.Some of the committee's recommendations could become NCAA rules as early as the 2000-2001 school year."We asked these folks to be `practical idealists,' " said Kenneth Shaw, the Syracuse chancellor who chaired the Division I Working Group to Study Basketball Issues.

For Anne Arundel County public schools, this was supposed to have been a year of expansion and team-building. But budget constraints, internal politics and public controversies have slowed the progress of the 76,000-student school system headed by Eric J. Smith, a nationally recognized schools chief from Charlotte, N.C., in his second year as Anne Arundel's superintendent. Last fall, school officials rolled out several initiatives to shake up the system, which ranks average in academic performance in the state and suffers from a persistent achievement gap between white and minority students.

Of the 2,200 pupils eligible to transfer from six struggling Howard County schools, fewer than 2 percent exercised the option this year, Board of Education members learned during their meeting last night. "Most of the parents do not want to [transfer]," said move coordinator Rae Ellen Levene, adding that the school system does not try to sell the option. "We don't discourage, and we don't encourage," Levene said. "We just trust our parents to do what's best for their children." This is the second year such switches have been allowed under the Public School Choice section of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which states that parents may pull their children from certain schools with low test scores.

For children, it might seem a gift from above - an unscheduled holiday of sledding and snowball fights, or a chance to sleep in and then laze in front of the TV. But what parent hasn't spent at least one snow day wondering: Shouldn't that kid be in school? Now a college professor is launching a study to measure the brain drain that comes when slick roads close schoolhouse doors. When youngsters are sliding down snow-covered hills, their test scores might also be falling, says University of Maryland, Baltimore County public policy professor David Marcotte.

Heather A. Dinich explains how the Maryland men's basketball team could lose scholarships if it doesn't raise its Academic Progress Rate. Go to baltimoresun.com/dinich.