The NCAA is finally starting to do something about the nasty trend of artificial high schools for basketball players, by
disallowing credits from 15 “schools.” Of course, being the NCAA, they pretty much whiffed on the actual diploma mills (none of the 15 schools still have teams and some never did), but it looks like they are headed in the right direction.
If you aren’t aware of the trend, what happens is that some coach, usually an AAU snake, decides that he really wants to run an elite high school team. So he finds a group of top players who aren’t doing well in regular high schools and he founds a school where they are the only students. Usually they have only a couple (if that) teachers, and those are rarely real teachers with certificates. The schools then give out pretty much all A’s to their players. The attraction for the players is easy to see – a good basketball team, no actual schoolwork and instant college eligibility (if they can just manage a minimal SAT score). It’s disgusting and I’m glad the NCAA is finally acting.

The first ACC victim may well be Clemson and their top recruit for 2007, LaRon Dendy.
Check out this section from that article (emphasis mine):

Mark Knight, Prince Avenue’s director and basketball coach, told Charleston’s The Post and Courier newspaper that four NCAA representatives had visited the school in early May to examine its credibility.
The school, which has an enrollment of about 85, is not accredited, nor is it affiliated with any state or national high school association. According to the report, none of Prince Avenue’s five faculty members has a teaching certificate.

Anytime that your school’s director is also the basketball coach, it’s a pretty good bet that the school is a fraud. Of course no teachers with teaching certificates is a clue as well. I’d bet that the claim of 85 students is a lie as well. I’d guess that the actual enrollment is closer to 12-25 (gotta have a JV team too!).
And no, I have no sympathy for Dendy. Sure he’s a kid and was probably manipulated, but at some point in your life you have to take some responsibility for yourself, and he’s old enough to know what’s right and wrong. A kid that attends four high schools in two years, trying to find that perfect fit for his basketball game, is NOT someone that is ready for college. Having his transcript invalidated might be the best thing to ever happen to Dendy, if he really does go on to Hargrave Military Academy as they suggest. Something tells me he won’t opt for military school though.
Thanks to the DBR and ACC Basketblog for the links.