Questions Raised About High Point School's NC Diplomas

The Marine Corps is investigating whether recruiters acted properly by letting students from a private school in High Point join the service despite questions about their education. Five students from Brittain Academy didn't meet the Marines' entrance requirements.They also didn't complete a traditional course of classroom study to get their diplomas, as the service had previously believed, a Marine Corps official said. Among the Brittain Academy students was Dustin Lawing of Taylorsville, who was within two weeks of completing training at Parris Island, S.C., before he was sent home on a bus Jan. 10.The four other students face the same fate. "I've done everything they asked me to do," Lawing said. "Why have a kid go through all your training when you're just going to kick him out at the end? It's not right." Brittain Academy officials say Lawing's diploma is valid and that they're outraged the military has questioned it. "My name is on that diploma," Principal Stephen Napier said. "I sign them. I can assure you, if I doubted the integrity of that diploma, my name wouldn't be on them. This outrages me." Lawing finished 11th grade and was attending an adult high school program when he received a recruitment letter from the Marines. He responded and got a call from a recruiter.The two wondered if there was a quicker way for him to get a diploma, and the recruiter suggested Brittain Academy, Lawing said. The school, which is registered with the state, specializes in educating students with special needs.It has been open since the mid-1990s and has about 100 students. Academy officials told Lawing he was just short of the credits he needed for graduation.Lawing said he paid the school $190 for a packet that included a copy of the California Achievement Test. He said school officials told him to take the test home, complete it within 30 days and return it.He did that and, soon afterward, the school mailed him a diploma. Later, he took the military aptitude exam, but scored low.On Oct. 14, the recruiter called to say the Marines needed Lawing right away.Two days later, he arrived at Parris Island. But after a conversation with another Brittain Academy graduate at Parris Island, officers there began to question how Lawing and the others had obtained their diplomas. Students with no high school diploma, or a nontraditional one, need higher scores on military aptitude exams to become Marines, said Maj. Ken White, a Parris Island spokesman. Lawing and four other Brittain Academy graduates didn't make the cut, he said.Two others did. "This outcome is regrettable, given the circumstances," White said. "But it's the letter of the law we operate under." A Marine inquiry is focusing on the actions of eight recruiters who worked with the Brittain Academy graduates.Among other things, the Marine Corps is looking at whether the recruiters knew there was anything questionable about Brittain Academy's diploma. Lawing's recruiter, Sgt. Allen Carpenter, declined to be interviewed. Rod Helder, director of the North Carolina Division of Non-Public Education, said he has received one or two complaints from parents whose children paid money for test packets from Brittain Academy but didn't actually attend classes. In North Carolina, there are few rules governing the requirements private high schools can set for graduation.There's nothing illegal about letting students take a standardized test at home, Helder said, or issuing a diploma largely on the basis of scores from such a test. Results on the California Achievement Test are meaningless unless someone times and proctors the test takers, according to Michael Kean, a spokesman for CTB/McGraw Hill, the company that publishes the test. Kean said the test isn't designed to determine whether students are eligible for high school diplomas. Napier said the school's teachers proctor most students who take the California Achievement Test. But the school makes exceptions for some older students, letting them take the test home.