Some college athletes read at 5th-grade level

http://us.cnn.com/2014/01/07/us/ncaa-ath...ar_twitter


Saw this on CNN at 3:25pm today. I have not read it yet but the report made it seem like a minor investigation that didn't really put it in perspective or comparison the schools with each other.

Shocker....


Sent from my iPhone.

We all know that NIU has a high APR and runs strong programs so we should assume the best about our University until evidence is clearly otherwise. NIU is not referenced negatively in the report so there is hope that the NIU scores are appropriate.

Though I get the feeling North Carolina is THIS close to some real NCAA sanctions. Lots of smoke there.....

http://youtu.be/srw3RdiIlrQ


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So what does that say about some high schools...they should focus on the problem ...poor high schools

The sad point is that many of these students had several learning disabilities that should been diagnosed at an early age. Poor districts and some rich districts do not have the funding or prioritize hiring reading specialist to correct the disability. I can only assume that many of these students went to districts that were grade promoted from grade school, to middle school and pushed out at high school. Colleges then continue the problem by not dealing with it. I have never met a student who did not want to read. How did the system fail to help so many students?

(01-08-2014 04:28 PM)NIU75 Wrote:  The sad point is that many of these students had several learning disabilities that should been diagnosed at an early age. Poor districts and some rich districts do not have the funding or prioritize hiring reading specialist to correct the disability. I can only assume that many of these students went to districts that were grade promoted from grade school, to middle school and pushed out at high school. Colleges then continue the problem by not dealing with it. I have never met a student who did not want to read. How did the system fail to help so many students?

so why is our logo there. You don't throw up a logo and then have no evidence that the allegation is true. Pretty shoddy journalism

(01-08-2014 05:19 PM)GCD70 Wrote:  

(01-08-2014 04:28 PM)NIU75 Wrote:  The sad point is that many of these students had several learning disabilities that should been diagnosed at an early age. Poor districts and some rich districts do not have the funding or prioritize hiring reading specialist to correct the disability. I can only assume that many of these students went to districts that were grade promoted from grade school, to middle school and pushed out at high school. Colleges then continue the problem by not dealing with it. I have never met a student who did not want to read. How did the system fail to help so many students?

so why is our logo there. You don't throw up a logo and then have no evidence that the allegation is true. Pretty shoddy journalism

It's a pretty big report. You can click on each logo & get the results they supplied. According to our results, 12% of football players scored "below the threshold".

From the report>
"Northern Illinois University


According to several academic experts, the threshold for being college literate is a score of 400 or below on the SAT critical reading or writing test. On the ACT, that threshold is 16.

CNN also compared the average athlete score to the average student admitted to the university.

Some athletes only took one test, but if they took both, the score was only counted if they scored below the threshold on both.

Football team:

Out of 244 total sets of scores provided (some students took both the SAT and ACT):

-- Twenty-two athletes scored a 16 or below on both the ACT English and ACT Reading. One athlete who additionally took the SAT test also scored below a 400 on the verbal section. An additional 8 who only took the SAT scored below 400 on the verbal test.

-- That means 12% of of all football players scored below the threshold.

By the university's own calculations, the average ACT Reading score was 20.91. The average ACT English score was 19.88 and the average SAT Verbal score was 443.33. "

http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2014/01/u...index.html

Link to ACT scores:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/...-data.html

Very sad when you look at the numbers of students scoring at 15 or lower in English or Reading.

Keep in mind if a student has an IEP or a learning disability, special accommodations can be made for taking the ACT test. The student could request extra time or have the test read to him/her. We can also assume an athlete takes several test and the one reported is the best one. We can also assume the ACT math and science scores are at this level. The college graduation rate for a student with these test scores is almost zero. You do have some success stories but very few.

I have between 20-50 athletes in my classes each semester, many of them football players. I can say that as far as my dealings are concerned, NIU Athletics has never asked for special treatment or consideration for a failing athlete. While it is illegal for me to discuss individual players, in general the athletes I have in my classes have mostly been quality with the occasional exception. I am proud of our APR and can say we do a fine job of recruiting Student Athletes.