
High school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials - dankohn1
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/04/05/these-high-school-journalists-investigated-a-new-principals-credentials-days-later-she-resigned/
======
nkurz
I don't know how common falsified credentials are in school administration,
but I'll mention a parallel experience that was a formative part of my
upbringing.

While I was in high school, my father taught at a small private college in
Wisconsin, where he was on the hiring committee for the new college president.
After being hired, the chosen candidate's behavior was surprisingly erratic,
prompting my my father to continue researching his background.

After a bit of digging, he found that the new college president had falsified
almost his entire resume. Thinking he had solid proof of this, and not being
politically savvy, my father presented his evidence to the other faculty who
had been on the hiring committee.

To his surprise, he (rather than the fraudster) was promptly fired from his
supposedly tenured position for "gross insubordination". Shortly thereafter,
the "fake" college president pocketed the proceeds from remortgaging the
college dorms, drove his college provided little-red-sports-car out of town,
and was never heard from again.

Embittered by the lack of backing from his purported colleagues, my father
never returned to academia, and instead turned to odd jobs and house painting.
Not long after, the college lost its accreditation, and went out of business:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Senario_College](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Senario_College).

~~~
jrs235
This is a story about a teacher near where I live who only got outted for a
fake degree when he ran for a school board. And from stories I have heard from
his students, he got the fake doctorate degree because he wanted to be called
doctor. In fact if students in high school called him Mr. Kulas he would
correct them (sometimes chew them out) that he is to be referred to as Dr.
Kulas.

Use imcognito mode to open this link to avoid possible pay wall:
[http://lacrossetribune.com/news/ex-candidate-cited-
degrees-f...](http://lacrossetribune.com/news/ex-candidate-cited-degrees-from-
nonexistent-school/article_0b208f22-d275-56fb-bf82-aba8760324c8.html)

~~~
pavel_lishin
We had a high school teacher who demanded that we address them as Dr. Whozits
on the first day, and would correct us.

They learned that you can demand respect all you want, but if you actually
want to _get_ respect, you have to _earn_ it from the people you're expecting
it from.

~~~
Cyph0n
He earned that title, and he was your teacher (a superior), so I don't
understand why you were annoyed. Most importantly, it was the first day! Think
of an interview for example: would it be polite to address your interviewer
using his/her first name? No, unless the interviewer gives you permission to
do so.

Edit: It seems like a lot of HN users have a severe aversion to authority, so
I guess I've learned something new today :P

~~~
throwaway729
The respect goes both ways.

I call people with doctoral degrees "Dr." unless I'm invited otherwise or
we're in a non-professional setting. Doctoral degrees usually aren't mere
pieces of paper; going out of one's way to diminish the work and sacrifice
involved is kind of rude.

But I also think it's kind of snooty and ill-mannered to explicitly _demand_
to be called Dr.

Like with table manners. It's rude to not be decent to other people at the
table. But equally rude to snap at another guest for eating with his mouth
open.

This example is kind of an in-between on the teacher's part, because
socialization is part of education. Only parent knows whether the teacher was
motivated by socializing skills or ego.

 _> Edit: It seems like a lot of HN users have a severe aversion to authority,
so I guess I've learned something new today_

As always, the aversion is slightly more nuanced than just authority. You'll
find lots of respect for certain other positions of authority (eg CEO). Also,
aversion to the hierarchy of schools is nothing unique to HN.

~~~
Cyph0n
Oh yes, I agree completely. But OP's scenario involved a school teacher on
his/her first day teaching the class, and so I felt that OP was overreacting.
Obviously, demanding that random people call you Dr. is absolutely rude.

Well, it's news to me! I never noticed this thinking before, probably because
it's not a common topic of discussion on HN.

------
pitaa
And she would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those meddling
kids!

------
kelvin0
I applaud the budding journalists persistence, and certainly having someone
falsify their credentials is a really terrible start into such an important
position.

However, I must mention that I been in contact with so many really bad HS
staff (teachers, principals..) all with legitimate credentials, that I am
starting to wonder about their significance? A principal should probably have
some teaching experience, but seems to be like more of an MBA/business type of
background?

Also, let me clarify I was not one to get into trouble and had very good
grades in HS. I can really remember 2 really good teachers, and the rest ...
quite mediocre at best. I also dated a HS teacher (as an adult,much later on)
so I've seen firsthand the inner workings of teaching 'system'.

~~~
ryanmarsh
In the US I feel like the primary education system is simply childcare for the
working class. My experience with teacher quality was just like yours.

~~~
cwingrav
We don't pay them well so we get what we pay for. The exceptions are those
that love to teach and love students. You can't run an organization via
exceptions however. It's really a shame we don't value education more.

~~~
noxToken
> _It 's really a shame we don't value education more._

This might sound nit-picky but I think we all (Americans) value education as a
whole. We just don't care (as a whole) about education for _others outside of
our sphere_.

When you have the ability to move to better school system or to pay for
private school attendance, you have no need to improve public schools. Not all
public school systems are bad. I image that everyone can think of one
relatively close school that they can unequivocally call a good/great school
system where they expect most student to exceed by some set of positive
metrics

As long as the people who can fix it (no matter if its more staff, better pay,
better resources or whatever change necessary) can place their children into
C-Level Preparatory Academy, Dumpster Fire High School probably won't see much
improvement.

~~~
Arizhel
>This might sound nit-picky but I think we all (Americans) value education as
a whole.

That's a bunch of crap. If we (Americans) valued education as a whole, we
wouldn't vote for leaders who continually cut education budgets. It's very
simple: we as a society do not care about education. It's not a top political
issue ever, unlike abortion, defense spending, guns, and who uses what
bathroom. We keep school funding and administration at the local level because
we don't want "our money" going to "those kids" (i.e. poor kids) in some other
district, so we all end up with terrible schools and horribly inconsistent
results school-to-school. Public education in this country is completely
broken, and there's absolutely no political will to change it, and voters
don't make it an issue because they're more worried about Planned Parenthood
and terrorists.

~~~
areyousure
Some context in case anyone is curious:

Education is the third-biggest item of (combined) US government spending,
after healthcare and pensions. Defense is fourth. It accounts for roughly 15%
of total spending and 5% of GDP. I found this history of education spending
informative regarding "leaders who continually cut education budgets":
[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/education_spending)

Perhaps Politifact can be used as a barometer of "issues" during elections.
They have rated 954 statements about education, 415 about guns, 390 about the
military, 377 about terrorism, 316 about abortion, 64 about sexuality
(including "bathroom bills"), and 20 or so about Planned Parenthood. Even
statements about the federal budget in general (which include many of the
previous issues) only totaled 938 items.

------
lordnacho
It's time consuming to chase down credentials, especially as when you're
hiring someone, it always feels more likely that they aren't making it up.
After all, you have a great hiring process, right?

My father-in-law is a doctor, and he tells me there's been several occasions
where he's thought some colleague was really quite shockingly ill informed.
He's always been too timid to call the bluff, but he says it's happened a few
times. Also he's had the old trick of the certificate with the the cigarette
burn on the date attempted.

There's probably a lot of jobs outside of the more technical fields where
simply being a nice person who can read and write makes you indistinguishable
from someone with an education in that field.

Heck, I worked with someone with a mathematical PhD for years wondering how
he'd never heard of Banach-Tarsky. Not that it's a specifically useful or
necessary thing, just that you'd think a math-interested person would have
come across it. Or how it could be that he thought excel was a good platform
for quantitative finance. In the end I decided there were too many things that
surprised him, even if he did act interested when told about them. That's not
to say he didn't actually have the degree; but he certainly didn't have the
skills that are supposed to go with it.

~~~
scrummytim
MD here. Is your father-in-law suggesting that several doctors he works with
aren't legitimate physicians?

It seems a bit hard to believe. I've had to apply for medical licenses in 3
states, and it was a colossal pain the ass for each. Took 4 months the first
time; and I have a completely clean record. Getting hospital privileges takes
forever, too.

If fact, I think it should be easier, especially for those of us who did
medical school, residency, and exams in the US.

Best doctor that I know failed 2 of his USMLE exams.

~~~
timv
Not the US, but ...

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-07/doctors-identity-
alleg...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-07/doctors-identity-allegedly-
stolen-and-used-in-nsw-hospitals/8332812)

------
BrandonMarc
The articles I've found have all conveniently avoided answering the biggest
question: why didn't the "adults" running the school figure this out sooner?
ideally, before she was hired? That the students figured it out is proof it
was certainly possible to figure out.

~~~
notimetorelax
IMHO, two reasons:

\- Adults are not super humans and can make mistakes

\- and 17 year olds are as capable as adults.

In engineering people frequently ask - why nobody thought about it - well
because nobody did.

~~~
paulftw
Part 2 of this investigation should be "whose job it was to check new
principal's credentials and and how they profited from looking the other way"

Edit: was that person the only applicant? If not why did the process identify
them as the most suitable candidate?

~~~
blowski
If you're doing root cause analysis of a system failure, you're not looking to
blame an individual. If you find something malicious then, sure, deal with it.
But assume good faith in all parties from the outset and you're more likely to
succeed in fixing the problem.

~~~
trprog
That's no way to witch hunt.

------
gkop
This is the issue of the newspaper the kids published:
[https://issuu.com/emilysmith41/docs/march_17](https://issuu.com/emilysmith41/docs/march_17)

~~~
everybodyknows
There's a "Full screen" button at bottom-right of the image that improves
readability.

------
secfirstmd
This happen in my school in Ireland also - with false credentials.

This part of the story I really respect:

"Under Kansas law, high school journalists are protected from administrative
censorship. “The kids are treated as professionals,” Smith said. But with that
freedom came a major responsibility to get the story right, Smith said. It
also meant overcoming a natural hesitancy many students have to question
authority."

~~~
jawns
Unfortunately, not all U.S. states give students this right.

When I was co-editor of my high school's student newspaper, every issue was
subject to administrative review. Our principal literally read every issue
prior to publication and told us what could and couldn't be run.

~~~
ams6110
> When I was co-editor of my high school's student newspaper, every issue was
> subject to administrative review. Our principal literally read every issue
> prior to publication and told us what could and couldn't be run.

No different from any "real" newspaper.

~~~
ballenf
I worked on school papers high school through college. Administrative review
served a very useful purpose and kept the quality of the papers higher. I
respected every administrator I dealt with.

They have a much harder job than it might appear at first blush -- even the
slightest hint of repressing a valid story turns a very harsh spotlight on
them.

------
bane
Turns out, for U.S. institutions, and a little information on the subject,
it's pretty easy to get educational verification on candidate's claims. Many
companies with well run hiring operations just use this service as a matter of
course.

[https://nscverifications.org/](https://nscverifications.org/)

[http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/](http://www.studentclearinghouse.org/)

------
losteverything
My experience with young people is they think nothing of googling someone.

Example. 25yr old always G Earth the presons address, searches other sites,FB,
etc As ROUTINE. New male client comes in she openly tells coworkers about her
results.

~~~
derrickdirge
My experience with old people is they take a shocking amount of time to
consider googling something or they have me google it for them.

~~~
losteverything
I would never had thought a normal, well reared person would Google anybody
just because they can. I think the net-natives think nothing of it and
probably dont think it's wrong.

My comment demonstrated my discovery that I am not surprised it was from a
young person.

~~~
magic_beans
You haven't explained why you think it's wrong to Google someone. Note: not
everyone you encounter is a "normal, well-reared" person. Googling someone is
a good way to weed out the less "well-reared".

~~~
losteverything
Hmm. Googling a person is nosey. Nosey is not desireable. Nosey is not
acceptable behavior I had passed on to me and I passed it on to all my
children.

Google lets a nosey person be nosey in private and anonymously. It is still
not desireable.

Young people ( and some older ones) Google everything and think it's all the
same. That was my point. Nobody my age tells me or my peers "Hay, I just found
out our new manager is divorced and has 3 kids,and used to work for
botuniverse.com."

I would directly ask that person "why on earth did you want to find that
out!?!?"

Perhaps this is a generational think....

~~~
derrickdirge
Honestly I don't see how it's any different than a prospective employer
running a background check on me, which has been a relatively common practice
since before google achieved ubiquity.

Do you find that gauche as well?

------
charlieflowers
This is simply excellent. What a great story. I'm surprised no one has just
stated that yet.

Excellent.

~~~
sebleon
More comments like these are needed here!

~~~
sebleon
Welp this got downvoted, I guess HN doesn't look kindly at promoting
positivity here?!

~~~
splawn
First "hn rule" of the voting system... use it. (Its a good way of promoting
positivity)

Second "hn rule" of the voting system... don't needlessly talk about it.

~~~
sebleon
Are these rules posted somewhere? Overall, HN has some really interesting
content and insight, mixed in with hateful negativity - seems like talking
about the rules would be good, if we wanted to cut out the negative bits

~~~
splawn
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
sebleon
> Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and
> it makes boring reading.

lol

------
wheelerwj
This just in, there have been a surprising number of resignations from Faculty
members all across the nation. In unrelated news, student journalist have
begun investigating administrators credentials as projects for their school
papers.

Seriously, this is remarkable. That kids today have the power to effect this
level of change is nothing short of incredible.

------
LoSboccacc
> for one, when they researched Corllins University, the private university
> where Robertson said she got her master’s and doctorate degrees years ago,
> the website didn’t work.

what an amateur - this is how you do it
[http://bigbusinessjournal.com/](http://bigbusinessjournal.com/)

~~~
Insanity
I had no idea what to expect from that link but I'm happy I clicked it :D

------
rubyfan
"And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling
kids"

------
itchyjunk
Great read though the title felt a little click baity.

Are credentials not verified when hiring someone? (especially for a public
school) or was this a result of the board being lazy? Because if credentials
are never verified, this might be hinting at a bigger problem.

~~~
IIAOPSW
My high school physics teacher got fired middle of the year. Turned out he
wasn't at all licensed to teach and may or may not have actually finished
college. He got all the way to tenure before anyone noticed. The guy was a
wonderful teacher and knew his topic insanely well. Other students hated him
cause he actually held students to a standard. Dude ran a convenience store
out of his class room to fund our robotics team. He convinced me to re-enroll
in the AP Physics B class under the promise that I wouldn't have to show up
and instead would study AP Physics C (calculus) with him during his prep time.
I was then bribed into this non-existent class with pirated software (thus
getting me into programming). He did all of this so that there would be enough
students enrolled in the AP Physics B class. For the record I got a perfect
score on my exam. The man broke every rule in the book and our lives were
better for it.

In conclusion, yes it happens. Yes you can be anti-rule anti-authority and
still be successful and non-edgy. Fuck da police.

~~~
helthanatos
That's not at all where I thought you were going with that. Some rule breakers
are good others are bad. Some only break certain rules. I'm confused as to why
he didn't finish college online or something when they found out? I've seen
teachers be emergency certified in similar circumstances.

~~~
IIAOPSW
>Some rule breakers are good others are bad.

True. Maybe I just idolized this guy cause he was both smart and stuck it to
the man.

>I'm confused as to why he didn't finish college online or something when they
found out?

I don't know what the rules are on that. Even if it were possible by this time
he already tried to forge documents and otherwise lie his way through. Even
before the fraud the man didn't really have to many allies in administration.

Also the district didn't even have the balls to tell us (the students) why our
teacher disappeared one day. I had to learn it through another teacher in a
private conversation outside the school.

Really just screw public school in general. The whole place was 95% waste of
time followed by a "congratulatory" piece of paper.

~~~
teslabox
> Really just screw public school in general. The whole place was 95% waste of
> time followed by a "congratulatory" piece of paper.

John Taylor Gatto (and John Holt, and many others) say "wasting time" is the
whole point of compulsory education.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_Gatto#Main_thesis)

"Against School: How Public Education Criples our Kids, and Why" \-
[http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm](http://www.wesjones.com/gatto1.htm)

Archive.org should have the complete text of "The Underground History of
American Education", which was formerly posted in its entirety at
[http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com](http://www.JohnTaylorGatto.com)

Also search for "I quit, I think", and ... "The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher"...
several copies of these essays are scattered around the internet.

Edit: favorite'd your earlier comment, as I like how your teacher was good at
teaching physics in spite of not having a congratulatory paper from a "higher
education" establishment.

~~~
IIAOPSW
Public schools serve one primary purpose. They free up women to work in the
labour market. It turns out that having every kid attended to one-on-one by
their mother was a terribly inefficient system compared to just shoving them
all in a room and letting one person look after ~20. The fact that any sort of
education happens is just a nice add-on after the fact. School also does a
fantastic job of preparing you to submit to the arbitrary demands of authority
figures. Today its the teacher, tomorrow its the cop.

Society is a well oiled machine from cradle to college to job to marriage to
suburban home to grave. Sadly I'm too much of a fan of indoor plumbing to
consider the alternative. We're all just cogs in the machine.

~~~
mschuster91
Nice narrative, and especially the "bend and break the kids to conform with
mainstream" rings a bell.

Yet I don't believe the major driving force is to free up women as laborers -
schools have been existing way before women had the right to work or vote.

In my opinion schools and universities rather serve to breed out worker drones
and the curriculums are based on corporate needs, not society's. And this has,
especially in the last two decades, been visible in the EU with the Bologna
reform. Classes with no direct economical advantage (arts!) are falling way
behind classes in the STEM field.

~~~
daemin
Schools were around before washing machines. So just because a woman didn't
have a job at an office or other place of employment, she did have a lot of
work to do around the home.

~~~
and0
Robert Caro's first LBJ book has a great (harrowing) passage on how hard it
was in rural Texas for mothers, who often didn't have electricity up until the
30's. It was backbreaking, constant labor to keep everything in working order
and preserve enough food for winter.

~~~
daemin
Sounds like people don't realise how much leisure time we have in our current
lives (Myself included). People used to work over 40 hours a week just making
sure they could survive through the winter months.

------
panzagl
This isn't doing much to dispel my feeling that the entire field of Human
Resources is a farce.

------
maxerickson
I've had a conversation with a well credentialed school principal that had,
uh, lost track of the concept of the multiplication table.

------
neap24
Great journalism by the students. What I fear just as much as unaccredited
"diploma mill" universities are the accredited ones that hand out education
degrees just as easily. It seems like anyone can pay for an education masters
(or PhD) these days.

------
herbst
I love stories like this. Look into 'Gerd postel' if you like that stuff. He
imposted as director of a medical clinic for years and is very outspoken about
it. Narcissism at its best

------
snackai
This is how journalism should work. Not like the Washpo, acting as Jeff Bezos
Anti-Trump propaganda machine. Don't get me wrong here, this is not a Trump
fan writing, but I can't stand the biased bs media publishes these days.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
A story that comes to a conclusion you dislike is not necessarily propaganda.
Nobody is immune from legitimate criticism.

