NCAA: Maine school among ‘diploma mills’

INDIANAPOLIS – The NCAA will no longer accept transcripts from 15 nontraditional high schools, including one in Florida with a Web site that promises students an opportunity to earn a diploma in weeks.

Others include an institution in Maine that offers home schooling and one in Pennsylvania whose charter was revoked by the state three years ago.

Other schools are still being investigated and could face similar sanctions by the NCAA in an attempt to deal with so-called “diploma mills” whose graduates seek athletic scholarships to college. An NCAA spokesman last week said some cases involved abuse and even fraud in academic standards.

Goliath Academy of Miami Lakes, which offers correspondence and online courses, was among four Florida schools identified with questionable academic credentials Wednesday by the NCAA initial-eligibility clearinghouse. A telephone message seeking comment from Goliath was not immediately returned.

The NCAA board of directors in April gave the association authority to look into the schools’ standards, including the examination of individual transcripts. The investigation was accelerated after a New York Times story on University High School, a Miami correspondence school that had no classes or instructors and operated almost without supervision.

A telephone number for University has been disconnected, as has one for American Academy of Miami, which is also on the NCAA list.

The North Atlantic Regional High School in Lewiston, Maine, also is on the list and has been notified of the NCAA’s action, school founder Steve Moitozo said.

“They want students who have put in seat time at the school, and our students are home-schooled,” said Moitozo, a Baptist minister who founded the school in the 1980s as an offshoot of a support group for families of home-schooled children. “We have state certified teachers who review their work, but they don’t have seat time.”

Moitozo, whose school claims about 2,400 students, said he would not fight the NCAA’s action.

“We fought for home schooling for years and we got that, but this is between them and the family,” he said. “It’s just not that big a deal to us.”