In 2018, the Supreme Court overturned the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, which prohibited states from allowing legal gambling. Since then, 36 states have legalized sports betting, and 26 states have legalized mobile sports betting. In the wake of these changes, online sports betting companies like PointsBet and Caesars have begun paying colleges across the nation to promote gambling services to their student bodies.
In 2020, the University of Colorado and PointsBet signed what is believed to be the first sponsorship deal between a gambling company and a university, with CU set to earn at least $1.625 million over the course of five years for advertising PointsBet to the student body. The deal included advertisements across campus, during athletic competitions, and via emails sent to the student body encouraging them to use PointsBet. Since Colorado inked its deal, at least seven other universities, including Michigan State University and Louisiana State University, have accepted similar sponsorship contracts from a variety of online gambling companies.
Unsurprisingly, these contracts have met with serious backlash from people who are concerned about the vulnerability of college-aged students to potential gambling problems. The financial guru Dave Ramsey has condemned such deals, pointing out that “the number-two addiction in North America today—and [the] fastest growing addiction in North America today—is online gambling. It starts with sports betting as a gateway drug.” Ramsey called the relevant school administrators “freakin’ idiots” for “selling out [their] own students who [they’re] supposed to be caring for.” Ramsey isn’t the only public figure to express concern about these sponsorship deals, in which students often receive “free” bets in exchange for using a university-generated sign-up code. On November 25, 2022, Senator Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.) sent a letter to Caesars CEO Thomas Reeg expressing his concern over betting on college campuses: “Young people should not be targeted by sports wagering advertisements, and Caesars’ deliberate marketing towards college-aged students cannot continue.”
These and similar concerns are based on both the promotion of gambling to underage students and the impact of problem gambling on of-age students’ educations and lives. At Louisiana State University, for example, several students reported receiving an email encouraging them to place their first bets. Many of the students who received this email were below the legal gambling age. And, of course, there are also the underage students who attend sporting events where betting services are advertised throughout the course of the games.
According to the National Library of Medicine, about six percent of college students could be classified as pathological gamblers, and about 10 percent could be classified as problem gamblers. Students with these issues face higher possibilities of financial difficulties, depression, alcohol and drug use, and unhealthy relationships.
Whether gambling addictions would be just as much of a problem without the sponsorship deals between online sports betting companies and colleges is difficult to assess. However, it seems clear that these deals have rightly earned the suspicion and outrage of people who are worried about the well-being of students.
Members of the UNC Board of Governors are not happy. A years-long effort to align teacher training with the best scientifically proven methods to teach reading has fallen flat on its face. Given the grim state of literacy in the state, a January report outlining UNC-System schools’ failures is particularly egregious.
According to a recent third-party review of UNC educator preparation programs (EPPs), only UNC Charlotte’s EPP is properly grounding teachers in research-based literacy instruction methods, also known as the “science of reading.” The skills addressed in that science include phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The review was conducted by TPI-US, an organization that inspects teacher preparation programs. The review was commissioned by the legislature to evaluate how well EPPs are preparing future teachers in the science of reading, as mandated by the 2021 state law, the Excellent Public Schools Act.
As charged by the legislature, TPI-US reviewed 30 programs across North Carolina, 15 of which were UNC-System schools. The method of evaluation consisted of reviewing course materials and faculty teaching videos and conducting interviews with faculty and leadership about the nature of their instruction in the science of reading. TPI-US then sent each institution individual reports with one of four ratings: “strong,” “good,” “needs improvement,” or “inadequate.” Of the 15 UNC schools, one was rated “strong,” five were rated “good,” eight were rated “needs improvement,” and one was rated “inadequate.”
After TPI-US presented these results at the January 18 meeting of the Educational Planning, Policies, and Programs committee, UNC-System president Peter Hans expressed deep concern. In his comments, Hans revealed which schools had received which ratings.
Among the UNC institutions, UNC Charlotte received the “strong” rating. The five schools that received the “good” rating were North Carolina A&T, Fayetteville State, UNC-Chapel Hill, North Carolina State, and UNC Wilmington. The remaining nine programs were rated as either “needs improvement” or “inadequate.” Notably, Hans did not reveal which program had received the “inadequate” rating.
“This list [of the nine schools] includes some of the largest providers of educator preparation in the state,” said Hans. “We simply must do better. We must do better immediately.”
Of course, the fact that only one of 15 teacher education programs fared well is alone cause for dismay. But these results come after years of planning, state investment, advisory groups, and the appointment of numerous committees and subcommittees.
At the full board meeting on January 19, BOG member Thom Goolsby commented that the state has spent “billions of dollars in both K-12 and in training our teachers.” He continued, “This is embarrassing for the Board of Governors, this is embarrassing for the university system, and for the state of North Carolina.” Given that the UNC System is the largest provider of teachers in the state, data on early literacy levels is indeed embarrassing. According to the 2019 NAEP reading assessment scores across North Carolina, only 36 percent of fourth-graders can read at a “proficient or better” level. That number drops to 33 percent for eighth-graders. Far too many fall in the “below basic” category (33 percent of fourth-graders and 28 percent of eighth-graders).
The numbers get even worse when broken down by sub-group (black, Hispanic, low-income, and white). Only 14 percent of black eighth-graders can read proficiently. White students fared much better by comparison, but their numbers are still outrageous. Roughly 40 percent of fourth-grade and eighth-grade white students can read proficiently—meaning that more than half cannot.
At both the committee and full board meetings, BOG vice-chair Wendy Murphy gave a scathing account of the System’s circuitous—and fruitless—attempts to improve literacy instruction.
Murphy commenced by stating, “I cannot begin to describe the anger and frustration felt by us all after hearing the results.” She proceeded to provide a history of the System’s efforts to improve teacher preparation.
In 2017, former UNC-System president Margaret Spellings commissioned a group of consultants to evaluate the System’s schools of education. The results of that review, reported on by the Martin Center here, were compiled in a 2018 report entitled “Leading on Literacy.” The report showed wide variation in course quality and content among the EPPs. Referring to the report, Murphy stated, “Some instructors were requiring candidates to write their personal philosophies about how to teach reading, equating what they ‘feel about reading’ or how they learned to read as a valid way to make instructional decisions.”
Again referring to the report, Murphy added that some assignments appeared to be “irrelevant to teaching literacy.” Furthermore, “Some candidates spent class time constructing alphabet books or writing their own children’s books.” In response to the “Leading on Literacy” report, the System office launched the EPP advisory group, which was first convened in 2018 and reported on by the Martin Center here. The group synthesized a list of strategies for improving literacy instruction, and several “communities of practice” (i.e., committees) were instituted to address each of these strategies in depth.
In February 2020, the advisory group presented its work to the Strategic Initiatives Committee, recommending that the board establish a common literacy framework that all teacher preparation programs would adopt. This led to the BOG passing a resolution in April 2020. This resolution called for the development of a common literacy framework that:
is “based on the abundance of evidence on effective reading instruction”; “complies with state law and regulation”; “ensures that teaching candidates receive explicit, systematic, and scaffolded instruction in the essential components of reading.” The resulting literacy framework, outlining the competencies and sub-competencies teachers should be taught, was released in February 2021. Soon after, all of the EPPs conducted a self-assessment of their curricula to align their coursework with the new literacy framework. That work occurred in three phases, from March 2021 through the fall of that year. (The Martin Center has not been able to obtain the self-audit results.)
In April 2021, as previously mentioned, the state passed the Excellent Public Schools Act of 2021, which mandates that literacy instruction be based on the science of reading. That law is a modification of an earlier literacy effort, “Read to Achieve,” that aims for statewide reading proficiency by the third grade.
Concluding her remarks, Murphy stated, “And yet here we are today, five years later, listening to another group of consultants tell us that the crown jewel of North Carolina … has one college of education that is strong, five [that are] good, and nine that need improvement
