Graduation Rates

The incoming president of Coppin State University vowed yesterday to transform the struggling public college into a "first-choice" campus with high academic standards and improved graduation rates. Reginald S. Avery, chief academic officer of the University of South Carolina Upstate, will become the fifth president of the 107-year-old West Baltimore institution in January, officials announced yesterday. "In the next three years ... we should have increased our graduation rate to 50 percent" - or more than double the current rate, Avery said in a telephone interview from his Spartanburg office, where he has been executive vice chancellor since 2003.

EVERYONE who loves college sports applauds the opportunity afforded athletes who get scholarships to big time programs. Competition, travel and the challenges of university life in the NCAA's Division I surely broaden and educate. The joy of victory and the agony of defeat are lessons for life.The growth of international basketball leagues -- with many more jobs for players -- represent another reason to nurture hoop dreams.But the name of the game is still education -- and not just because the athlete will need another source of income some day. The nation's colleges and universities need to be held accountable for the bargains they make -- and too often break.

WASHINGTON -- The college football season began before most college classes did. First things first.There is a plan -- adored by fans, but not yet by university and athletic conferences' officials -- to extend the season with a 16-team playoff culminating in a national championship game that promoters say would generate $3 billion over eight years.Fan interest, measured by television audiences, in post-season bowl games has declined over the past decade, while college basketball's playoff -- "March Madness" -- has become so successful that the National Collegiate Athletic Association is reportedly negotiating a $3 billion to $4 billion (the number of years is unsettled)

Fact: If and when Cal Ripken reaches both milestones of 400 homers and 3,000 hits, he'll become only the seventh player in history to do it. The others are Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Stan Musial, Eddie Murray, Carl Yastrzemski and -- surprise -- Dave Winfield.Opinion: So much for the notion that Ripken's consecutive-games streak is his only Hall of Fame credential.Fact: Even with their attendance down some 3,000 fans per game, the Orioles are still averaging more than the Expos, Twins and White Sox combined.

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.

Making freshmen ineligible? Tying scholarships to graduation rates? Denying coaches the right to reassign the scholarships of players who lose their academic eligibility?Only in a fantasy world, you'd think, would the NCAA consider adopting such radical measures to return a semblance of academic integrity to men's college basketball.But it's happening now.The ideas are still lodged in various panels and committees, a long way from becoming a reality, but it's a good sign they're even on the table.

We've read enough about SchoonoverIn response to The Sun's Nov. 16 article in Today, "Who's afraid of Jamie Schoonover?": I am disappointed that your paper would waste so much time, space and ink on such a parenthetical issue.I am empathetic toward Miss Schoonover's situation. However, I do not feel that this issue needed to be publicized to the extent that it has been.This same issue has been written about at least twice in your paper, although the last article seemed to be more about publicity for Miss Schoonover's "normal" teen-age life than a follow-up on the situation.

IN THESE days of global competitiveness, a nation that fails to move ahead falls behind. That is the first lesson that can be drawn from a recent report comparing graduation rates of the world's industrialized countries.Lesson two: The United States is falling behind on several important education indicators.The study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that the United States is no longer No. 1 in high school completion rates. Of the 29 countries studied, the United States ranked next to last, beating out only Mexico, in the proportion of high school graduates.

WASHINGTON -- Young adult African-Americans who are now in their late 20s graduated from high school at the same rates as whites, a change that educators say could herald greater black economic success and equality.The Census finding, released yesterday, was the first to show equal graduation rates between the two races."It's really highly significant," said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of the nation's 50 largest urban school districts.

University of Maryland officials said recently that their athletes are doing better academically than the overall student body.But 10 years after Len Bias' June 1986 death, the men's basketball team still is struggling to balance athletics and academics.Of the eight players who have spent four years in coach Gary Williams' program, one -- reserve guard Wayne Bristol -- has graduated, according to university records and interviews with players and their families.Those eight players include Williams' four seniors this past season -- Exree Hipp, Mario Lucas, Johnny Rhodes and Duane Simpkins.

Recently, the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research released a report pointing out that at 19 percent, Coppin State University's retention and graduation rates rank among the lowest in the nation. Those numbers are based on a six-year cohort dating from 2000-2006. We acknowledge this. We understand our obligation to be good stewards of the public's investment in us and that we will be held accountable. Improving retention and graduation rates has been the No. 1 priority of my nearly 16-month tenure as president.

By the time Jodie Meeks got going for Kentucky, Notre Dame was all but packing its bags for New York. The Irish were up by 15 points before Meeks made his second basket, on just his fourth shot with 12:18 left in the game, and the Irish survived a 17-5 run late by the visiting Wildcats to end a 10-game losing streak to Kentucky with a 77-67 victory Wednesday night to advance to the National Invitation Tournament semifinals. "They did a great job of guarding him," Kentucky coach Billy Gillispie said.

Fla. St. to appeal NCAA's punishment colleges Florida State will appeal part of an NCAA punishment that would strip the school of victories in 10 sports, including as many as 14 in football. The university president called the penalty "excessive and inappropriate." Football coach Bobby Bowden has 382 career wins - one fewer than Penn State's Joe Paterno, the major college leader. "The coaches had no involvement," Florida State president T.K. Wetherell said yesterday. "To hold them responsible in this case is simply wrong."

African-American students are falling further behind their peers at state universities, according to data released yesterday that show a widening gap in graduation rates despite efforts to close it. The state university system reported that 40 percent of black students earn a degree within six years of entering college, compared with 65 percent of all students. That 25-point gap is a significant increase over three years ago, when the gap was 15 percentage points. Officials said the system is enrolling thousands more African-American students, and particularly more lower-income students who often have to drop out for financial reasons.

You actually have a choice, you know. You can gripe and whine about the unfairness of the Bowl Championship Series and the stupidity of the entire college football bowl system - again. But you don't have to do it while glued to your television. The powers that be in the sport and at the networks don't provide the bowls and the BCS games as a public service, after all. They wouldn't be on the air, getting contracts extended and increased (half a billion dollars for four years from ESPN starting in 2010)

Three years ago, the city of Kalamazoo, Mich., was beset by shrinking public school enrollments, high dropout rates and a loss of manufacturing jobs that crippled efforts at economic development. The city's response: Rally local businesses and foundations to create a new kind of scholarship program that guarantees free college tuition to every public school student in the city, regardless of race or income. The program, known as Promise, aimed to attract middle-class families and jobs back to the city, keep the best students in state schools and encourage academic achievement at both the secondary and college levels.

Maryland must spend more on its historically black colleges and universities if they are to make up a wide gap in graduation rates and campus facilities compared with other public universities, a state panel has found. The panel's 34-page report, released yesterday, identifies many ways in which Maryland's four public historically black colleges have fallen behind other state schools - in science and technology labs, buildings, and retention and graduation rates. "Substantial additional resources must be invested in [the historically black colleges]

CHICAGO -- In a last-ditch effort to strengthen the No Child Left Behind law, the Bush administration announced yesterday that it will require schools to make sure that low-income and minority students graduate from high school at the same rate as their white and more affluent counterparts. Schools that fail to meet those goals would face sanctions, according to a wide-ranging plan unveiled by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Currently, the law requires that schools meet a graduation target for the entire senior class.

The disparity in graduation rates between Baltimore and its suburbs is the most extreme in the nation, according to a report scheduled to be released today by America's Promise Alliance. Slightly more than a third of students in Baltimore schools graduate from high school, compared with 82 percent of students in the surrounding counties, according to the report. That difference is the greatest for any city in the nation, the report says. Baltimore's suburban counties have graduation rates well above the national average, and the city has the fourth-lowest rate, the group found.

The Annapolis High School senior was at risk of not graduating. She had been doing well in her classes but suddenly, during final exams, stopped going to school. There was a time when she might not have been noticed in a school with 1,700 students. But this year, the school employed community ambassadors to make sure no student was lost. One of the ambassadors tracked the student down and coaxed her back to school in time for the English exam that she needed to pass to earn a diploma.