Friday, January 17, 2014

UNC board suspends whistle-blower's research on literacy level of athletes

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina  -- UNC-Chapel Hill announced Thursday evening that its research review board had suspended whistle-blower Mary Willingham’s work on the literacy levels of university athletes.

The university said that its institutional review board, which governs research projects, found that Willingham had released data that could identify research subjects.

Willingham’s research indicated that more than half of 183 athletes screened for their reading skills over an eight-year period could not read beyond the eighth-grade level; it was based on tests the university administered to athletes admitted despite concerns they might be academically challenged. She said roughly 10 percent of those students were functionally illiterate.

The research, publicized on CNN last week, helped kick up more concerns about the academic fraud scandal at UNC-Chapel Hill that involved dozens of lecture-style classes that never met. Willingham, a former learning specialist with the tutoring program for athletes, blew the whistle on those classes to The News & Observer in 2011. Athletes made up nearly half of the enrollments in those classes.

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Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/16/3538799/uncs-folt-questions-literacy-findings.html#storylink=cpy

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