What do you think he should have said?

And what is wrong with seeking to punish low performing institutions? I can see why some of the anti-union stuff makes me nervous but that's a different issue than saying all punishment of low performing institutions is bad.

I don't get this article either . . . should the education secretary not be appalled by such dismal graduation rates?

Do you know how many college basketball players make the NBA? There are about 10,000 NCAA backetball players, and at most, 40 make the NBA -- .0004%. Those hoping to make the NBA are the real believers in "unicorns and pixies."

Seems like Zirin wrote this backwards: he wants to bash Arne Duncan first, and then come up with proxy arguments to do it.

And why? The truth is that Zirin is so ideologically and reflexively pro-union. As I understand it, Zirin temporarily taught in the DC school system. He's going to bash Duncan, who has tried to defend reforms that the hide-bound American Federation of Teachers has reflexively opposed.

Black parents favor such innovations as vouchers, charter schools, incentive pay for good teachers, and easier ways to fire bad teachers.

Zirin favors hide-bound adherence to ideology-- not kids.

You may not want to hear it Jordan, but Zirin opposes what the overwhelming number of black parents support, and have for a long time.

While it is true that black parents are more politically diverse than people like Zirin want to believe, 68% is about as close to a consensus as you get.

<< A 1999 survey by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan research group, found that 68 percent of blacks favor vouchers.>>

Vouchers might not be so popular among desperate parents if full disclosure was allowed. The voucher system allows 'cherry-picking', thereby robbing many inner-city schools of the best, leaving the troubled behind. Also, each student drained from the public system is money not received by struggling schools. Each student is, in short, a funding unit.

best I can see is 46% for african american families favoring vouchers

personally i would prefer to see us fix public schools rather than just give up on them and allow people to get vouchers. but that's not the point of this discussion.

i think both parties' arguments have some validity. gary williams has a point in that the point of colleges is not necessarily to make sure students get good grades but rather to prepare them for their future careers - thus if an elite athlete goes to college then the college should prepare him for his next profession - namely professional athletics. still, 8% seems abysmally low, and i doubt four players lowered it that much. williams is right though that in analyzing graduation rates we have to account for athletes that turn pro early - these students fail to graduate because of their tremendous athletic ability and not necessarily because of the university's failure.

I can see why Arne Duncan would want to hold universities accountable for graduating players. as long as the metric takes into account players who choose to leave school early and only looks at the number of seniors that graduate, then perhaps we could punish teams for pathetic graduation rates.

by the way everyone, when you're done here make sure to check out www.arjun-allthingssports.blogspot.com for candid and insightful analysis

Tornado, is that a American Gladitor or a retired male go-go dancer? Just wondering.

I'm a Black parent, and I was suprised to read what I actually prefer. Thanks for the link, I'll have to change my belief system accordingly.

Parents, Black or otherwise, want good schools for their children. If the local public school is going to underserve a particular community, then yes, parents might be more receptive to creative ideas or education.

Arne Duncan was the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools in 2006, when the district was failing to graduate half of its Black and Hispanic male students.

But, the graduation rates for the charter school students, nationally and in Chicago, weren't any better. In fact, the big secret of the charter school movement is that most charter schools have even less oversight than public schools, even though those charter schools use public funds. Charter schools are free to hire unlicensed teachers, set their own cirriculums--for good or for bad, and set their own pay rates. Odd how most charter school teachers are underpaid compared to their public school counterparts, while most charter school adminstrators are grossly overpaid compared to their public school dopplegangers.

Higher management salaries and less oversight without higher results. Not to insult any little green men who may be fans of Dave Zirin's work like I am, but the success of charter schools is largely science fiction. That stuff may work on Mars, but it hasn't proven successful in Chicago or Detroit or in most urban centers. If it did, there'd be more charter schools in the suburbs because suburban parents would want some of this magic hocus-pocus for themselves.

By in large, most charter schools are educational sweat shops were grades get fudged, standardized test scores get changed, and administrators ride the gravy train of public funds until the ride stops.

I'm waiting for Dave to post a comment clearing up his opposition to Duncan's proposal; I definitely don't want to put words in the man's mouth.

And I do get that banning schools that don't graduate players from competing in March Madness does feel good and have the ring of fairness to it.

I'm guessing though that the concern isn't tweaking a corrupt college athletic system in order to get that system to better follow its own rules. I would think the goal that would be preferable would be to change the rules and the corrupt system all together.

College athletics may take place on college campuses, but the big college sports have little to do with education. Lebron James played high school ball for St. Mary's, but it didn't make him a Catholic. Running up and down the court or field for Kentucky, or Cincinnati, or West Virginia doesn't make you a real student or a graduate--especially if you play for Bob Huggins, cause that dude almost never gets a diploma in the hands of any of his players.

Student athletes haven't been expected to be real students for quite some time. So if it's not about the sheepskin, at least not the diploma sheepskin, then it has to be about the money, either money earned or money promised. The schools and coaches earn the money. The athletes play for the possibility of money down the road.

That's too much like a bad game of chance; "you might get lots of money in the future, but I'll be making all of the money right now."

We are talking about colleges and not casinos, right?

We already know what it is. His major is playing in the NBA next year.

The NBA needs to draft players like Wall, who is using a public university to play basketball. They have a Developmental League. Draft Wall and have him play in the D-League, I say.

Zirin is right on about the farce of the "amateur" status of D1 men's basketball. If it is an "amateur" sport, then broadcast the games on public and university television stations. Why should CBS mine gold off the selling of advertising of what is supposedly a "amateur" sport? The are all publicly supported institutions, including so called "private" universities. This amounts to a huge indirect subsidy for the broadcasters. The public pays for it, while the broadcasters make out like bandits exploiting the labor of college athletes.

As far as vouchers go, you have to be very naive to believe that most black people won't get a substandard education after the dismantling of our public education system, which is happening right before our very eyes. The same well off white people who have fled the cities for the suburbs and gated communities are going to pay for the private education of poor black students? Give me a break. This is about re-instituting Jim Crow in a different guise, and making it impossible for most black people to compete with white people for higher paying professional jobs.

Tornado's representation of numbers is incorrect and misleading. Let's say it is 40 out of 10,000.

That is properly represented by either .4% or .0004. The representation shown, .0004% would be 4 in 1 million, not 40 in 10,000. Can I have a real math teacher, not a former sub like myself confirm this? Misrepresented numbers are significantly worse than misspellings.

Duncan clearly has shown an overall agenda of supporting charter schools and Jr. ROTC.

But back to student athletes. At many schools they generate big bucks. Some student athletes are injured , not only limiting future professional sports employment but creating future health problems.

Clearly student athletes MUST get more in their education so that they can deal with professional career ending injuries. There should be a pool from which student athletes can draw if they suffer injuries that prevent future employment as an athlete. It's called workers compensation elsewhere.

Dave Z. asks serious questions about how sports is organized at the college level. Not all college athletes are Physical Ed, Kinesiology majors whose education may give them a leg up to adapt to career ending/altering injuries.
Athletic associations and other athletic associations have not done their part to do right by athletes, a tiny percentage of which make good livings through professional sports.

Dave is just pulling the curtain back, like the tenacious Toto, imploring us to pay attention to the Man (or the institutions) behind the curtain.

Thanks Dave for putting the spotlight on college basketball (this could include football as well) as a "free" minor league for the pros. The NBA (and be default, the NFL) uses college basketball as a free developmental league without putting a dime into it. The prevailing wisdom for an age restriction is to ensure that that pro players develop into better ball players with no regard to academic development. John Wall and others would be silly to to spend more than one year in college ball with millions awaiting him but to assail UK for having poor graduation rates is asinine under the current system in place.