“Mary Willingham’s credibility is collapsing”, according to a learning specialist at UNC.
Bradley Bethel is the author of Coaching the Mind: Putting the Student in Student-Athlete. He is listed as a learning specialist under student-athlete services of the staff directory section on GoHeels.com.
In a series of entries of Bethel’s blog, he writes lengthy essays about the ongoing conversation about the academic scandal at UNC. Bethel’s first entry on Coaching the Mind was on May 7, 2012. In that essay he talks about teaching student-athletes the importance of learning and doing so by setting goals.
There are only two entries from 2012 on the blog, one in 2013, and in 2014, the blog comes alive.
On February 24, Bethel wrote Truth and Literacy at UNC. He talks about the infamous CNN article that broke this story wide open and the ensuing fodder.
Quickly comments came pouring in both supporting and opposing Bethel’s thoughts, and they haven’t stopped since.
Bethel has posted at least one lengthy essay each week since then, except for one week in the middle of March. In April, it’s been more along the lines of two or three per week.
The most recent entry came Wednesday when Bethel say’s Willingham’s credibility is collapsing. On multiple occasions, he says her actions of writing a response and not engaging in academic discourse are ironic, hypocritical, and lack transparency.
Mary Willingham sent a written statement to WCHL Friday when the report from three outside experts discrediting here SATA RV research was released. She said she was going to respond to the release when she had more time to review what the experts said.
On Willingham’s website, PaperClassInc.com, she posted a response saying the independent (using quotation marks around independent) review of her data “did not come close to replicating (her) analysis.” She claimed that the outside experts were “denied access to the full range of test scores (i.e., SAT/ACT scores, SATA raw scores, SATA WM scores, WAIS scores, and DOB).”
WCHL has tried since Friday to have Willingham on the air to comment. Wednesday, she told us that she is “taking a little break from the smear to finish the semester with (her) students”.
Bethel told WCHL that he doesn’t want to come on the air until he is finished writing his essays on the topic. He says he doesn’t know how many more essays he has; he says he just has outlined notes at this point.
