The Division I Committee on Academic Performance is launching a review of the Academic Performance Program over the next year that includes a study of whether the 900 and 925 Academic Progress Rate benchmarks remain appropriate, given adjustments that have been made to the metric since its creation.

Committee members said the review is necessary because they have reason to believe that the current benchmarks may no longer correspond with the expected minimum graduation rate at the time the Academic Progress Rate (APR) was developed. When the APR was initially created, 925 correlated roughly with a 50 percent federal graduation rate. However, as the Committee on Academic Performance evaluated the APR and made adjustments (transfer students and students who depart for professional athletics opportunities), the relationship between the APR benchmarks and graduation rates has changed.

The committee will use data available later this year that match student-athletes who entered college under the APP with their graduation rates within six years of enrollment as part of an assessment to determine whether the APR benchmarks should be adjusted.

The review also will include an assessment of whether the filters and penalty waivers in place for teams and institutions that meet specific criteria remain appropriate.

That will include a look at:

• The institutional-characteristics filter, which allows teams to avoid a long-term penalty if they demonstrate real improvement and show that the team’s academic performance is outperforming expectations given the academic performance of the student body at that school;
• The by-sport comparison, which requires teams to demonstrate real improvement and outperform the bottom 10 percent of teams in that sport; and
• The resource-level filter, which requires demonstration of real APR improvement despite limited resources and is available to teams on campuses that fall in the bottom 10 percent of institutions with regard to resource level (per capita expenditures on athletics, per capita educational expenditures for the student body and average Pell Grant funds among all students).

Research shows that a small number of teams currently meet the institutional-characteristics and by-sport filters, in contrast to what was occurring at the start of the APR program, while many do avoid penalties through the resource-level filter. The Committee on Academic Performance will examine the data more thoroughly in the coming year and will discuss the implications of changing the way institutions are relieved of penalties, including the possibility of refining the definition of a “low-resource” institution.

That discussion also will focus on data indicating that penalties tend to work as a motivational tool in convincing institutions to improve academically. Teams subject to penalties showed more dramatic – and immediate – improvement than those that were able to avoid penalties through a waiver or the adjustment processes.

Coach APR

In other business, committee members discussed the head coaches’ APR portfolio, which will be available publicly in six sports (baseball, men’s and women’s basketball, football, and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field) next summer, after the annual release of APR data. Data collection for the portfolio has begun and feedback from institutions has been positive.

Additionally, a subgroup of the Committee on Academic Performance recommended that the head coaches’ portfolio include, in addition to the single-year APR for each head coach by year, additional information to provide context:

• Link to federal graduation rate for the institution
• Link to Graduation Success Rate for the institution
• Link to public APR and Academic Performance Program penalty reports for the institution

In 2011-12, after full implementation of the portfolio site for all sports, the Committee on Academic Performance will further consider developing a head coaches’ dashboard that could include the incoming academic profiles of all student-athletes recruited by that coach, including test scores, high school core-course grade-point average, percentage of two-year college transfers and percentage of four-year college transfers; eligibility and retention rates for teams associated with that head coach; number of “0-for-2” student-athletes; and Academic Performance Program penalty history by year (including both real-time and long-term penalties).

The committee did not recommend including infractions and enforcement matters on the head coaches’ dashboard because the information is not tied to academics and is available elsewhere.

The Committee on Academic Performance meets next in February, though much of that meeting will be spent hearing appeals of the most serious penalties.