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Education June 12, 2008 Qualifications of some D.C. special ed teachers called into question An inspection by the U.S. Department of Education revealed that "D.C. school administrators can’t verify that their special education teachers are certified to serve the city’s most vulnerable and costliest student population," reports Dena Levitz of The Washington Examiner. The State Superintendent's Office has listed some special education teachers as qualified despite not having proper training in the specialty. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 23, 2008 Aged and worn tires compromise school bus safety An investigative report by Josh Bernstein of KNXV-Phoenix revealed that tires on school buses serving six area districts had major damage — chunks of rubber missing, splitting treads — yet the buses were still in use. Despite claims that tires are changed twice per school year, some buses had tires that were over eight years old. Arizona's minimum safety requirements for school buses do not address the age of tires. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 19, 2008 District's textbook procurement procedures plagued with problems An investigation by David Andreatta, of the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, N.Y.), examined the textbook procurement procedure of the Rochester School District and found a wide range of problems and waste. Issues range from nearly 20,000 book going undistributed eight months into the school year to $1.4 million in secondary school books being lost by both schools and students. Another approximately 70,000 textbooks were discarded despite still being useful for classroom instruction. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Diversity fund lacks oversight KSTP-Minneapolis investigated Minnesota's School District Integration Revenue, a fund intended to enhance diversity in schools across the state. "Experts say that money has been budgeted with no clear purpose." A line-by-line evaluation of one district's budget revealed questionable spending, such as charges for food and candy amounting to over $24,000 per month. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Education alternatives for disruptive students raise questions An investigation by Jim Parsons of WTAE-Pittsburgh "exposed a system that allows disruptive students to get the same diploma as other children, even though they only have to put in half the number of hours." Many of the schools attended by these troubled students are run by private nonprofits that do not require certification for their teachers. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 14, 2008 Schools promote students despite widespread failure After a 10-month investigtion, The Arizona Daily Star reports that many students in Tucson-area school districts are being socially promoted and not earning the grades they deserve. "In the 2006-07 school year alone, nine in 10 students were moved to the next grade level, but data show that nearly a third of them failed basic courses in English, math, science or social studies." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 28, 2008 Contaminated drinking water found in some LA public schools A three-month investigation by Joel Grover of KNBC-Los Angeles found lead levels in drinking water that exceeded EPA safety limits at several area public schools. Contaminated fountains were found at nine of the 30 schools tested. An internal report obtained by the network showed that the district had known about the problem for 18 years. In some cases, it was found that employees falsified records to indicate that drinking water was safe. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 07, 2008 North Carolina selects university leaders in secret An investigation by Corey G. Johnson of the Fayetteville Observer finds that North Carolina is the only state in the nation that selects the top leaders of all its public universities in secret. The Observer surveyed every state university system and more than 50 individual universities in the U.S. and analyzed approximately 113 responses for the story. At least two state legislators, including the head of a subcommittee that reviews university matters, have agreed to look into tweaking the state's open meetings law to allow for disclosure - in response to the Observer's study. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 05, 2008 State falls behind in routine fire safety inspection of schools Despite laws requiring regular fire safety inspection of the state's schools, an investigation by KNXV-TV (Phoenix) revealed that the Office of the Arizona State Fire Marshal have failed to complete the routine inspections. "A review of records for 200 schools in Maricopa County revealed more than 70 schools that have not been inspected for two or more years. We also found more than 30 schools with inspection reports indicating the facilities were not recommended for licensing at the time." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 10, 2008 Lucrative market exists for military exam answers Alan Wirzbicki and Kevin Baron of The Boston Globe exposed a lucrative black market that exists for professional certification exams. The Globe found that "pirated answers to hundreds of professional qualifying exams, in fields ranging from school-bus driving to medical technicians, are openly available, sometimes for as little as $4 each, from a thriving network of cheating websites." Some websites that offer these cheating aids are trying to avoid lawsuits by referring to their services as "study guides." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post October 19, 2007 Illinois lags in tracking teachers' misconduct Scott Reeder, writing for Quad-CitiesOnline.com, found that Illinois ranked 49th in a nationwide analysis of disciplinary actions against teachers. The state has no system in place to investigate or flag teachers accused of misconduct. To determine how Illinois compares to other states, Small Newspaper Group obtained information on 20,000 cases of teacher licensure discipline from all 50 state departments of education. The newspaper group then built a computer database to analyze it." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post October 16, 2007 Discipline system for teachers, staff flawed in Ohio schools The Columbus Dispatch delves into Ohio's flawed system of disciplining and tracking teachers, coaches, aides, counselors and administrators. The Web site for The ABCs of Betrayal includes asearchable database of Ohio educators disciplined since 2000. The 10-month investigation found educators remained in the classroom despite misconduct such as theft, assault and abuse of children. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 25, 2007 Credit card promotions profitable for two Iowa universities Clark Kauffman of the Des Moines Register reported in a two-part series that Iowa's two largest public universities are aggressively marketing credit cards to their students as part of an arrangement that generates millions of dollars for the schools' privately run alumni organizations. Records obtained by the Register showed that while the schools and their alumni have kept secret the details of their arrangement with Bank of America, they have given the bank access to mailing addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses of students, parents and people who buy tickets to football and basketball games. One of the schools has used coaches and student athletes to promote the cards, promising the biggest spending cardholders lunches with football players and private, 90-minute Q&A sessions with coaches. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 03, 2007 Contributions call school board president's ethics into question James Pressley, school board president in Pleasantville, N.J., sought money from community businesses who were seeking contracts from the school board. John Froojian, of the Press of Atlantic City, reports that money was solicited for the James A. Pressley Scholarship and Community Youth Build Foundation, although neither the IRS nor the New Jersey Consumer Affairs Division have record of the registration of such a charity. Of nine businesses approached by Pressley, eight had no-bid contract proposals before the school board. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 26, 2007 Abuses at Texas state schools go unpunished A Dallas Morning News investigation into disciplinary records of employees at state schools for the mentally retarded " found hundreds of cases of abuse at the hands of those charged with caring for the mentally retarded – everything from extreme physical violence to flagrant neglect." Yet records are not kept regarding criminal charges filed as a result of abuse. Emily Ramshaw reports that while many reports of abuse find their way to county DAs, very few are considered serious enough to prosecute. "Little fear of criminal punishment, combined with low-paid staffers who receive only cursory training, appear to create an environment in which abuse can thrive, advocates say." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 25, 2007 Juvenile sex offenders pose problems to schools A report by Anna Song of KATU-Portland, Ore. reveals that juvenile sex offenders often go right back to school after being charged.. Due to their status as minors, school administrators cannot disseminate this information beyond the staff. The story exposes the inconsistency of local school policies when it comes to such offenders: Some schools tell all staff members, some tell just a few. Ultimately, it's up to the principal and can vary by school, not just by district. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 19, 2007 Cheating on standardized tests rampant in some Texas schools The Dallas Morning News worked with a Canadian professor and found that test scores of more than 50,000 students over two years show evidence of cheating. Joshua Benton and Holly K. Hacker report that their in-depth data analysis contradicts claims by the Texas Education Agency which said cheating was "extraordinarily rare and that the agency has done a good job of policing it." They found cheating concentrated in the two largest districts in Texas - Houston and Dallas - as well as in charter schools. The entire series can be viewed here. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 06, 2007 St. Louis-area school district faculty travel bills found to be exorbitant A St. Louis Post-Dispatch review of Riverview Gardens School District documents revealed a pattern of travel spending normally seen in districts twice its size. "Since 2003, Riverview has sent almost 600 teachers, staff members, principals, administrators and board members on more than 100 trips, to at least 60 cities, from Lake of the Ozarks to New York to San Francisco to Ottawa to Cape Town, South Africa." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 23, 2007 Special-ed missteps contribute to violence in Philadelphia schools A two-part investigation by Martha Woodall and Susan Snyder of The Philadelphia Inquirer, part of a continuing series on violence against teachers, revealed the lapses in the district’s handling of special education students who can become violent and disruptive in classes. As a group, special-education students are responsible for an inordinate number of assaults on teachers and other school staff. While just 14 percent of the city's school enrollment, they committed 43 percent of the 7,547 assaults on staff during the last five years, district statistics show - a fact that stuns many of those who work in the schools daily. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 21, 2007 Series a look at Tarrant County (TX) schools In its series "Measuring Up," the Fort Worth Star-Telegram looked at the area's public schools to see how they were performing. Using school test scores and other data, they identified key trends, including: which schools are doing better or worse than expected on state assessments; a large percentage of students requiring remedial help once in college; and that the best teachers are not working in the schools where their skills are needed most. Online databases allow you to look at the data, comparing information such as schools and student performance throughout the region. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 15, 2007 Investigation puts bus drivers' histories online Lafayette Parish in Louisiana placed the roughly 20,000 children who ride the school bus daily in the hands of drivers with multiple driving and criminal offenses, an investigation by The Daily Advertiser's Jason Brown and Claire Taylor found. "The investigation revealed that the school system lacks policies for handling bus drivers who speed, wreck, steal or drink while driving in their personal vehicles and buses." The Advertiser built and posted online a database that allows parents to search for their child's bus by driver name, bus number, or school. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 14, 2007 Teachers cheat on California achievement tests Teachers cheat to improve their students' scores on the high stakes achievement tests, a review of documents by the San Francisco Chronicle found. Although "schools admitted outright cheating in about two-thirds of the cases," cheating is likely more widespread than the numbers indicate, since the California Department of Education currently relies on schools to investigate possible cheating. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 11, 2007 Michigan schools face economic time bomb According to a report by Ron French of The Detroit News "Michigan's school retirement system is riddled with loopholes and slipshod policies costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and driving the state's public education system toward financial crisis." In the 2006-07 school year, the cost of retirement benefits per student was $1,015 — more than is spent on "books, buses, computer technology and building maintenance combined." Loopholes that qualify retirees for lifetime health coverage could alone cost the system $2 million a year. It's projected that $1 billion could be lost in a program that allows employees to purchase years of service in order to retire early. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 08, 2007 Violence increases in Milwaukee schools A four-part series by Sarah Carr of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel indicates that violence in the Milwaukee Public Schools system is "intensifying." The stories show that gun seizures have doubled, and a quarter of the 300 teachers attacked every year go on to file worker's compensation claims against the district. A review of daily police logs for the last six months shows that officers are called to the city's 11 largest high schools about twice daily on average. More than 120 teachers were assaulted by students or parents in schools last semester alone. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 23, 2007 Data links sports success and affluent booster clubs As school sports leaders prepare to discuss new rules regarding booster club spending, Eric D. Williams of The News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., used data analysis to help demonstrate how money influences a school's ability to produce winning teams and state champions. The newspaper surveyed state title winners from Class 3A and 4A schools from 2002 to 2006, totaling 100 champions. "The analysis ranked public schools by median household income of its neighborhoods using numbers from the 2000 U.S. Census, and the percentage of students on a federal free or reduced-priced meal program from a May 2006 survey taken by the state's Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction." Non-profit tax returns showed fundraising totals for clubs that raised more than $25,000. The investigation found that schools in the upper portion of the analysis, those in more-affluent communities, won nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of the state titles. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 18, 2007 Unethical deals in N.J. school district John Froonjian of The Press in Atlantic City, N.J., dug into insurance contracts in the Pleasantville school district to uncover a web of insider deals and millions wasted in a struggling district that gets two-thirds of its funding from the state. The Press found that in Pleasantville, school board contracts, political fundraising and private jobs are intertwined. The process has produced apparent conflicts of interest, possible violations of the state's pay-to-play law, defiance of election-finance laws and potential violations of the federal law designed to protect personal medical information. The Press investigation followed a successful lawsuit to gain access to minutes of the school board's executive sessions, many of which were missing or had never been recorded. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 17, 2007 Decreasing enrollment in Denver Public Schools Burt Hubbard and Nancy Mitchell of Rocky Mountain News found that about a fourth of school-age children ages 5 to 17 in Denver don't attend the city's public schools. Analyzing data from Denver Public Schools, suburban school districts, private schools and the U.S. Census Bureau, the study found that an estimated 15,700 students bypassed Denver Public Schools last year in favor of private or suburban schools that are seen as safer or academically superior. "In addition, about 4,600 Denver kids up to age 17 didn't go to school at all for reasons as varied as home schooling, dropping out or incarceration" The 20,300 potential students streaming away from DPS already cost the district more than $135 million a year in lost local and state funding. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 27, 2007 Charter Schools: Missing the Grade Digging through audits from more than 300 charter schools in Florida, Orlando Sentinel reporters Vicki McClure and Mary Shanklin showed the intertwined business dealings that allow school operators to make money on their publicly funded charters by leasing them buildings, loaning them money at interest rates as high as 21 percent and hiring relatives to work at the schools. While Florida never posted the audits for public consumption, the Sentinel put them online in a searchable format so parents could see the massive debt, operating losses at half of the schools, and dozens of related-party transactions. About 40 percent of the charter schools escaped report cards from the state education department, but the Sentinel compiled a database showing some of those ungraded schools were among the lowest-performing educational institutions in the state. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 19, 2007 Broken Trust In an investigative series by the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune staffers Matt Doig, Tiffany Lankes and editor Chris Davis expose an epidemic of misconduct in Florida schools. In the past ten years, more than 750 Florida teachers have been punished for misconduct toward students, and at least 150 are still teaching today. It's possible that the actual number of questionable teachers still working is much larger because 70 percent of cases reported to the state are dismissed as unfounded by state investigators who have little or no formal training. When cases do proceed, 90 percent end in settlement deals that keep teachers from having to admit guilt. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 15, 2007 Campus accidents increase as inspection rates fall Jeffery Brainard of The Chronicle of Higher Education discovered an increase in accidents on campuses as proper inspections have declined. "Serious accidents in which workers were killed or hospitalized have became more common on college campuses, according to a Chronicle analysis of federal safety-inspection records...nearly 200 significant campus incidents were cited by government officials between 1996 and early 2006, up from the 140 serious injuries in the decade before." Included with the article are data on inspections and violations, colleges and their workplace fines, and information on how the data was analyzed. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) workplace inspection data is available from the IRE and NICAR Database Library. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 14, 2007 Superintendent profits while district falters David Hunn of The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports on Riverview Garden School District superintendent, Henry P. Williams. Williams "directed at least $85,000 in extra payments to his retirement and insurance accounts," payments not included in his contract. The paper's investigation shows that these deposits started about four years ago. In addition to financial improprieties, the districted has faltered under his direction. Numerous teachers have resigned and academic standards have plummeted. In last year's state performance review, the district only passed in 3 of 12 categories. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 19, 2007 Oversight lax on school fire drill law Ben Jones of The (Appleton, Wis.) Post Crescent reports that area schools are failing to comply with a state law that requires they do monthly fire drills. A change in state law resulted in school no longer having to file annual fire drill reports with the Department of Commerce. Oversight now rests with the local fire departments. For the 2005-06 school year, only 60% of Wisconsin schools reported their drills to the state. About 35% of those reporting failed hold the mandated number of drills for the school year. Wisconsin school fire drill records can be reviewed on a database set up by the paper. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 01, 2007 Budget cuts threaten vulnerable students in Wisconsin A three-day series by Andy Hall of the Wisconsin State Journal looks at budget cuts in Wisconsin schools which threaten funding aimed to aid vulnerable students. Citing a lack of money, increasing numbers of Wisconsin schools are pulling out of a state program credited with boosting the scores of vulnerable poor and minority students. In an analysis of the effects of the state's school funding system, the paper found the first indications that class size is being sacrificed to balance budgets. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 18, 2006 Districts culture of cheating rampant for decades In a follow-up to an investigation by The Philadelphia Inquirer, reporters Melanie Burney and Frank Kummer found that the culture of cheating on standardized test in New Jersey's Camden school district dates back to the 1980s. Camden School Board President Philip E. Freeman "said recent internal investigations, including of allegations of grade changing in two high schools, had confirmed a 'culture inherent throughout the district that has been difficult to dissolve because it's been so deeply entrenched.'" Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 08, 2006 Financial aid staff destroy documents during fraud investigation Corey G. Johnson of The Daily Reflector in Greenville, N.C., reports that East Carolina University "employees destroyed numerous Office of Student Financial Aid records in apparent violation of university policy and federal requirements" during an audit and investigation at the school. It is not known what specific documents were destroyed or what impact the shredding had on the accuracy of the audit. The university has launched its own investigation into the matter. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 27, 2006 Holes in Dallas school district's screening process A Dallas Morning News investigation of the Dallas Independent School District's method of making criminal background checks on potential employees has found a system that still has holes and, at times, ignores district and state rules. The News' investigation found at least 80 current employees who have been convicted of felonies or received deferred adjudication probation on a felony charge in Dallas or surrounding counties. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 22, 2006 "Precious Cargo" revisited Following the recent school bus fatalities in Alabama, Phil Williams and the investigative team at WTVF-Nashville updated their extensive investigation into bus safety and the issue of seat belts on buses. Their findings remain timely a year after the first stories aired. The online package includes recent updates, extensive background documents and a 30-minute documentary. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 03, 2006 Academic assessment industry gets failing grade David Glovin and David Evans report on "Tests that Fail" for the December issue of Bloomberg Markets. Their story exposes egregious faults in the $2.8 billion academic assesment industry. Regularly, the largest testing companies make errors in grading and scoring exams - from mistakenly failing over 4,000 aspiring teachers on the national Praxis exam to sending out over 5000 incorrect SAT scores. "One reason for the testing foul-ups and their dire effects is that there's no federal oversight of the testing industry." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post October 31, 2006 MCCCD fraught with fraud In a four-part investigative series, Ryan Gabrielson of the East Valley (AZ) Tribune exposes rampant misconduct in the Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD), the largest junior college district in the US. The Tribune reviewed audits from the last five years which revealed rampant fraud - including theft of money and property, falsified enrollment records and nepotism. (See: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4) Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post October 16, 2006 At what cost? A look at CA community college football programs Brent Schrotenboer of The San Diego Union-Tribune looks at the cost of community college football programs in the state of California. There are 72 community college programs in the state of California versus 68 in the rest of the US. Some argue that they cost the state at the expense of academics. "For those that did provide football budgets, expenses exceeded revenue by an average of about $70,000 per year. If that average held for all 72 schools, it would put the cost to the state in excess of $5 million a year." While the football programs continue to be subsidized by state funds, the same schools are having to rely on part-time faculty "who get paid less and are classified as temporary." Advocates argue that the football programs actually make money for the schools because "each full-time student equivalent brings in about $4,000 to cover the cost of his or her education...A football team of 100 could bring a community college $400,000 in public subsidies, mostly from local property taxes and the state general fund. " Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post October 09, 2006 Security lax in Philly schools In response to the latest spate of school violence, reporters at The Philadelphia Inquirer decided to investigate the safey of local schools only to find that it lax. "In spite of rules aimed at limiting public access, reporters who fanned out on a single day walked into more than a dozen schools unannounced and without being challenged." Without state or federal regulations on school safety, decisions are left up to individual districts. As a result, safety policies vary widely leaving many schools vulnerable. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 27, 2006 Dallas school credit card abuse includes misuse of federal grant funds In a follow-up to an earlier story on credit card abuse within the Dallas Independent School District, Kent Fischer and Molly Motley Blythe of The Dallas Morning News report that the money used to pay for many of the questionable purchases came from federal grants. "The Dallas Independent School District, already battered by a spate of financial scandals, could now face federal scrutiny for its spending of grant money. Public records show that educators used district credit cards to buy thousands of items of questionable educational value, spending money awarded to help educate the district's neediest kids." Approximately $80,000 of grant money meant for the education of underprivileged kids went to purchases that clearly violated federal regulations. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 01, 2006 Student data from financial aid forms shared with FBI Jonathan D. Glater of The New York Times reports that, as part of post-9/11 counterterrorism efforts, that Federal Education Department shared personal information obtained on student loan applications with the FBI. "Under the program, called Project Strikeback, the Education Department received names from the F.B.I. and checked them against its student aid database, forwarding information...Neither agency would say whether any investigations resulted." This story was broken by Laura McGann, a graduate student at the Medill School of Journalism "as part of a reporting project that focused on national security and civil liberties." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 16, 2006 "Adult interference" inflates NJ test scores The Philadelphia Inquirer's Frank Kummer and Melanie Burney expose the findings of a New Jersey Department of Education report on irregular test scores in the region. While avoiding the use of the word cheating, the report found that "adult interference" was the likely culprit of unusually high test scores in the Camden area. The Department of Education's investigation was launched after the Inquirer challanged the validity of unusually high scores in February of this year. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 11, 2006 Black students leaving Birmingham (Ala.) schools Jeff Hansen and Marie Leech of The Birmingham News report on black flight from Birmingham's public schools and its impact on suburban school districts. In the past five years, Birmingham schools have lost 20 percent of their students. Nine of every 10 of those 7,300 children who left the city were black. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 11, 2006 Dallas school district credit card abuse Kent Fischer, Tawnell D. Hobbs and Molly Motley of the Dallas Morning News analyzed local school district credit card transactions to find that "only a fraction of purchase receipts are scrutinized, and thousands of purchases run afoul of DISD policy and state purchasing laws." Among the $20 million spent each year by district employees with credit cards were purchases for "a $200 blanket and pillow set from The Land of Nod, $1,700 in electric scooters, $200 in moisturizer from Bath and Body Works, and a $24.95 charge to an online dating service, Americansingles.com." Millions have also been spent at restaurants and on insentive gifts. One administrator - who is no longer with the district - spent over $1,500 on bullet-shaped flasks engraved with the school logo defending his purchase by saying "the flasks were to get teachers thinking about "Biting the Bullet," to crack down on discipline problems in the coming year." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 27, 2006 Schools pay for new boss' travel Bill Dedman and Michael Brindley of The (Nashua, N.H.) Telegraph studied Nashua's city credit card records and found that "school Superintendent Julia Earl has spent public money to travel out of state at least seven times in her first nine months on the job, including five trips to her home state of Texas." The total cost was more than $8,000. The Telegraph also found that the superintendent owes $147,000 to the Internal Revenue Service, $8,000 to the county for back property taxes, and $2,400 to her homeowners association. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Psychologist embellishes credentials, personal past Ruth Teichroeb of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer studied university job records and found that Terry Tafoya, known across North America as a pre-eminent American Indian psychologist and a sought-after speaker for continuing education at schools such as Harvard University, "has scripted his own life, embellishing his academic credentials and past." The tribe he claims to be a member of says he is not enrolled with them. A speakers' bureau that books his appearances "recommends Tafoya as an expert on mental health and substance abuse issues — apparently unaware that Tafoya was charged in January with drunken driving after he smashed into two cars in his Capitol Hill neighborhood." While Tafoya's resume claims he earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology at the University of Washington in 1985, verifying his academic credentials is almost impossible. "There's no record of his Ph.D. in the 1985 commencement book" and "Unlike most doctoral graduates, he has no dissertation in the university library." Tafoya appears at up to 100 events a year — most of them funded at least in part by public dollars. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 05, 2006 Some Minn. schools doing well at teaching poor students Megan Boldt, MaryJo Sylwester, Meggen Lindsay and Doug Belden of St. Paul Pioneer Press analyzed three years of test scores from all 731 Minnesota elementary schools and found that 13 high-poverty schools were "doing better than predicted and seem to have found a way to overcome education's biggest challenge — teaching high numbers of poor students well." Read about how they reported the story. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 25, 2006 School districts don't know who drives the buses Karen Eschbacher of The (Quincy, Mass.) Patriot Ledger found that most school districts on the South Shore hire private contractors to provide bus service for students. "Several South Shore communities fail to run background checks on school bus drivers, and others can't even produce the names of people allowed behind the wheel." "While state laws are supposed to ensure bus drivers can be trusted around kids, the arrest this week of a convicted sex offender whose job was to drive special needs students has sparked concern among parents and raised questions about whether enough is being done to keep children safe." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 12, 2006 N.J. funds schools that manage money poorly Jean Rimbach and Kathleen Carroll of The (Hackensack, N.J.) Record analyzed audits of more than 100 state-funded preschools in New Jersey's poorest communities, reviewed tax returns, financial documents and contracts and interviewed dozens of state and local officials, owners and teachers to show that seven years after New Jersey launched its landmark program for disadvantaged preschoolers — with $561 million budgeted this year alone — the state continues to send tax dollars to programs that have flagrantly misspent or wasted money. The four-month investigation found sloppy bookkeeping at virtually every school, inflated rents, six-figure salaries and $900,000 in personal loans while some schools shortchanged teachers' wages and benefits and uninterrupted funding for schools showing clear financial distress, such as tax liens, negative bank balances, lapsed insurance policies and failure to meet payroll. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 02, 2006 Taxpayers subsidize college athletics Mark Alesia of The Indianapolis Star finds that "athletic departments at taxpayer-funded universities nationwide receive more than $1 billion in student fees and general school funds and services." The investigation analyzed the 2004-05 athletic budgets of 164 of the nation's 215 biggest public schools. The Star compiled and put online what is says is the "most detailed, publicly available database of college athletic department financial information ever assembled." The data comes from forms required by the NCAA for the 2004-05 school year that the paper obtained through freedom of information requests. Matt Moore, Mark Nichols, Chris Phillips, Ole Morten Orset, Ben Thomas, Jimmy Trodglen and Kandra Branam helped compile the data. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 01, 2006 Students often call police about peers' parties Brian Charlton and Don Jordan of The State News at Michigan State University analyzed noise and party violations from 2004 and 2005, including 1,025 noise, 41 unlawful party and two nuisance party violations, and found student neighborhoods were saturated with violations. The most ticketed areas were student apartment complexes, a finding that surprised police who thought most complaints would come from where student neighborhoods adjoined areas where more permanent residents lived. "Most of the noise citations are given out after someone calls police with a complaint. There were more than 1,600 complaints in both 2004 and 2005 — three times more than the number of citations handed out." The investigation used Access to find the noisiest apartment complex, apartment, street, block, weekend, day of the week, time of the day, month of the year. They also found the police officers who issued the most tickets. The story includes an interactive map of violations and a PDF of the data. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 17, 2006 Lines blurred in professors' taxpayer-funded research Matt Reed and John McCarthy of Florida Today examined university records to show that every day in Florida, state university professors work as consultants, expert witnesses and researchers-for-hire, earning thousands in fees. Most often, those faculty members work in their roles as public employees, sponsored by grants from corporations, local governments or trade groups. "But roughly one out of four professors also work side jobs as consultants or other specialists, pocketing extra annual income of $4,500 to more than $12,000, depending on their disciplines." The investigation found the work has gone uncharted for years. The newspaper found dozens of examples of research — economic-impact reports, in particular — commissioned by trade groups or special interests to help lobbying efforts. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 17, 2006 Violence spikes in Chicago high schools Rosalind Rossi, Mark J. Konkol and Art Golab of the Chicago Sun-Times investigated Chicago's public high schools that are troubled by incidents of violence. "Wells, Hyde Park and Clemente are among eight high schools that each received more than 150 students from the attendance areas of troubled schools now tapped for closure and eventual rebirth." Since they began admitting those students in fall 2004, all eight schools have posted an increase in reported violence that is at least twice as high as the average for similar high schools systemwide. The investigation found the number of reported violent incidents per month climbed from nearly three in the 2003-04 school year to almost 10 last year. When sizable numbers of students come from different neighborhoods and cross gang boundaries, it can be a catalyst for more violence. Across the nation, urban school districts are grappling with trying to fix ailing high schools. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 28, 2006 Prep players enroll in questionable schools Pete Thamel, with contributions from Thayer Evans, Jack Begg and Sandra Jamison, of The New York Times found more than a dozen institutions claiming to be prep schools, some of which closed soon after opening. "All or most of the students were highly regarded basketball players. These athletes were trying to raise their grades to compensate for poor College Board scores or trying to gain attention from major-college coaches." The paper " found that at least 200 players had enrolled at such places in the past 10 years and that dozens had gone on to play at N.C.A.A. Division I universities like Mississippi State, George Washington, Georgetown and Texas-El Paso." Some of these institutions recently joined to form the National Elite Athletic Association, a conference seeking a shoe contract and a television deal. Its teams sometimes travel thousands of miles to play in tournaments that often attract more college coaches than fans. Those coaches will pay $100 for booklets of information about the players. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Oilman's donation invested in his fund Stephanie Strom of The New York Times investigated Boone Pickens, the Texas oilman turned investor, to show the $165 million that he gave to a tiny charity set up to benefit the golf program at Oklahoma State University was invested in a hedge fund controlled by Pickens' BP Capital Management. The gift, which helped Pickens get a tax deduction, propelled him into the ranks of the nation's top philanthropists last year. "By giving the money before 2005 expired, Mr. Pickens was able to take advantage of a provision in Hurricane Katrina relief legislation that allowed him a deduction for a charitable gift equal to 100 percent of his adjusted gross income, double the normal limit of 50 percent." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 14, 2006 School district loans are unreasonable burden on taxpayers Jeffrey Gaunt and Emily Krone of the Daily Herald , outside Chicago, analyzed 206 suburban school district loans to show many taxpayers repay those loans at rates higher than they would on their homes. The investigation found that, despite federal measures that keep government rates low, the district agreed that taxpayers will pay back $6.03 billion for the $3.34 billion borrowed. "In the most costly example, taxpayers will repay $3.09 per dollar — or three times the amount borrowed." The Daily Herald analysis revealed that many districts agreed to interest rates higher than available, got cash bonuses from their lender for doing so and many agreed to pay compounded interest rates -sometimes on the higher rates. Also see the complete analysis and series Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 30, 2006 Kinko's deal costly for Dallas schools Kent Fischer, Pete Slover and Tawnell D. Hobbs of the The Dallas Morning News used district records to show that a plan by Dallas schools to outsource copying and printing to industry giant Kinko's, started to slash copying and printing expenses by 21 percent, has in fact quadrupled expenses. "Across the entire Dallas Independent School District, copying and printing costs more than doubled. In 2003, the district spent $5.87 million; by 2005 it was spending $12.82 million, according to records obtained by The Dallas Morning News. " The investigation also found the contract obliges schools to lease equipment from FedEx/Kinko's, so hundreds of printers the district already owned sit in warehouses, wrapped in plastic. Some school budgets are breaking under the cost of operating new equipment leased through the program. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post University leader serves on 10 boards Eleanor Yang of the The San Diego Union-Tribune used calendar records obtained under the California Public Records Act to show that UC San Diego Chancellor, Marye Anne Fox, has served as a director for 10 corporations and nonprofit organizations, while running the university for the past year and a half. Fox spent more than 180 hours attending board meetings — many of them on the East Coast — in the past 12 months. "For all of her outside positions, Fox, 58, an organic chemist, receives compensation that rivals her university salary of $359,000. " In the past year, she received cash and stock worth at least $339,260 from her board memberships, according to corporate annual reports, proxy statements and tax returns from the nonprofit organizations. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 24, 2006 Loopholes put school bus drivers with violations on roads Brad Branan of the Tucson Citizen used court records to show that Arizona school bus drivers with criminal records or multiple moving violations are escaping state regulatory enforcement and putting children and other motorists at risk. The investigation found that drivers with criminal records or multiple traffic violations are among the most accident prone at Tucson-area school districts. "A Vail Unified School District driver — one of two school bus drivers to transport students while under the influence of drugs or alcohol last school year — was state certified despite numerous traffic violations and a license suspension." The investigation found a number of loopholes in the state system for licensing and certifying school bus drivers including that a school bus driver has to commit two DUIs or other major traffic offenses in a personal vehicle to automatically lose his bus license and that the Arizona Department of Public Safety doesn't check for criminal backgrounds after a driver is certified. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 11, 2006 College boosters wield powerful influence Mike Fish of ESPN.com examines the role of the college booster, finding "It's a love-hate relationship that binds a college and its boosters. They are often the first ones pointed to when recruiting violations surface. And the first ones called upon when facilities need an upgrade. With their money comes their two cents. Some call it influence. Others say it's meddling." The series looks at Phil Knight's relationship with University of Oregon; Oklahoma State University benefactor T. Boone Pickens; Joe Malugen's support of Troy University's football team; Tulane's athletes as ambassadors for the storm-ravaged university; and mandatory donations tied to college ticket sales. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 12, 2005 Boys trail girls in Wash. tests Eric Stevick and Scott North of the The (Everett, Wash.) Herald used state education testing data to show that at 95 percent of Washington’s high schools, the percentage of boys who passed the writing portion of the WASL lags behind girls. "Boys across Washington are trailing girls in key areas of a crucial test that ultimately will determine who gets a high school diploma." The analysis also showed that on the WASL's reading section, boys' test scores from last spring trail girls' scores at 85 percent of high schools. The newspaper negotiated access to individual WASL results for more than 76,000 10th-grade students statewide. The analysis found the gender gap is wide at many schools, with as many as 40 percent more 10th-grade boys than girls failing the writing exam. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 06, 2005 Thousands of serious crimes reported in schools Jonathan Marino of The Washington Examiner looked into crime in public schools in Montgomery County, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C. He found "internal reports, dozens of court records, and interviews with educators, parents and law enforcement officials tell troubling stories of abuse & mdash; and reveal hundreds of cases where some principals failed to follow up on serious incidents." The internal reports were obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request. They revealed that "From August 2002 to May 2005, the school system documented nearly 3,000 serious incidents, including allegations of death threats, gang violence, bullying and rape." (Editor's Note: For more about crime and violence in schools, see the November/December issues of The IRE Journal and Uplink.) Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 02, 2005 Correspondence school offers speedy academic makeover Pete Thamel and Duff Wilson of The New York Times used academic transcripts and documents obtained through a freedom of information request to show that University High, a correspondence school which has no classes and no educational accreditation, offered students little more than a speedy academic makeover. "Athletes who graduated from University High acknowledged that they learned little there, but were grateful that it enabled them to qualify for college scholarships. " The man who founded University High School and owned it until last year, Stanley J. Simmons, served 10 months in a federal prison camp from 1989 to 1990 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud for his involvement with a college diploma mill in Arizona. Among the activities Simmons acknowledged in court documents were awarding degrees without academic achievement and awarding degrees based on studies he was unqualified to evaluate. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Report looks at colleges with highest violent crime rates ABC News used data reported by the country's universities and analyzed reports of campus crime to determine which colleges had the highest reported violent crime rates. The analysis divided the schools into four categories — largest to smallest and were available from 2002 and 2003. "In the smallest category, schools with 2,100 students or fewer, Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, reported the highest violent crime rate, with 29 robberies and aggravated assaults in 2002 alone." The report found that forcible sexual assaults was the most common type of violent crime on campuses throughout the country. Among large schools, those with between 4,400 and 11,000 students, Texas Southern University in Houston topped the list, the only university on the list in a major city. (Editor's note: Other reporters can do similar stories using the same campus crime data. Contact the IRE and NICAR Database Library for more information: 573-884-7711 or jeff@ire.org.) Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 28, 2005 Students misuse low-income housing Lee Rood of The Des Moines Register found scores of students are paying little or nothing to live in low-income projects in college towns in every region. Loopholes enable students — including scholarship athletes who already receive housing money — easily qualify for apartments in the Section 8 program. "Last year, during a probe into students' use of Section 8 at Pheasant Ridge Apartments in Iowa City, the newspaper also located students who used the housing assistance in Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. " Under the housing department's current rules, student financial aid does not count as income which gives virtually any full-time student, not claimed as a dependent on a parent's tax return, a good shot at qualifying. If the student does not work, taxpayers pay all of the rent. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 22, 2005 Calif. system's additional pay offsets student fee hike Tanya Schevitz and Todd Wallack of the San Francisco Chronicle examine how much the University of California system really pays its administrators. "In addition to salaries and overtime, payroll records obtained by The Chronicle show that employees received a total of $871 million in bonuses, administrative stipends, relocation packages and other forms of cash compensation last fiscal year. That was more than enough to cover the 79 percent hike in student fees that UC has imposed over the past few years." The project includes a database of the system's highest paid employees. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 15, 2005 Car stipends guzzling cash Tawnell Hobbs and Kent Fischer of The Dallas Morning News reviewed district records to show that more than 2,300 school district employees are getting car stipends this year, at a total cost of nearly $3.7 million. This despite the fact that their job description does not include travel. "In a year when DISD cut some elementary school counselors and gave teachers small raises while trying to close a $28 million budget deficit, the $3,684,798 for car allowances has escaped the ax. " According to calculations, dozens would have to drive more than 950 miles a month to justify the size of their stipends, using DISD's reimbursement rate of 35 cents a mile. Car allowance recipients, like all DISD employees, also get reimbursed for mileage when they travel outside the district. DISD paid $404,000 in mileage reimbursements in 2004-05 in addition to the amount it spent on car allowances. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 13, 2005 Lucrative perks for school administrators Bill Bowman and Paul D'Ambrosio of Gannett New Jersey newspapers navigated the details of school district contracts to show that "in districts around the state, it is not uncommon for boards of education to grant tens of thousands of dollars in extra pay to their chief administrators through complex contract deals that keep the true cost of compensation from the taxpayers. Generous benefits packages include free use of district cars or lucrative car allowances, thousands of dollars in tax-deferred annuities and money for unused vacation and sick days." The perks vary from district to district, with one administrator receiving 55 percent more than his base pay in bonuses and other payments. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 30, 2005 Judging school performance Sanjay Bhatt of The Seattle Times used achievement and growth data from Seattle Public Schools to examine "high-performing" schools. Bhatt explains: "I used Excel's pivot table feature to do a neat 3 x 3 table that gave readers new insight on looking at test scores. I triangulated two different types of data — achievement and growth. The achievement data shows the percentage of students who passed the state's high-stakes test. The growth data shows the average student made high, normal or low growth in a year. What you see when you triangulate is that there are lots of low-achieving schools (with disproportionately high numbers of poor children) whose staff accelerate students' learning by more than a year's worth of progress. There are also high-achieving schools whose students make less than a year's worth of progress." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 26, 2005 Little oversight of profitable charter school The Philadelphia Inquirer's Connie Langland and Dale Mezzacappa report on a charter school's manager "who has turned Chester Community Charter School into a profitable, expanding business in the heart of the virtually bankrupt school district." Vahan H. Gureghian's Charter School Management Inc. has a 20-year contract with the school's board of trustees that both have refused to make public. The county has paid the company about $10 million since 1999 for management, with a large percent of that going toward Gureghian's management fee. The agency charged with overseeing the school's finances "says it has been too preoccupied with the district's own fiscal woes — now being investigated by the state attorney general — to even ask for basic documents from Chester Community. The Inquirer's examination of the school's finances was based on state data and financial reports and six years of federal tax filings ending in 2003-04, the most recent year available." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 18, 2005 20 percent of fired teachers accused of sex crimes Pamela Hamilton of the Associated Press used a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain records showing that "one in five educators sanctioned by the state for bad behavior in South Carolina in the past three years had been accused of sexual misconduct such as molesting or having sex with students or other children." Nearly 300 teachers have been disciplined during that time span. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 15, 2005 Most schools fail spending requirement Dion Lefler of The Wichita Eagle used Census data to show that a new Kansas requirement that school districts spend 65 percent of their money in the classroom will require a lot of changes: "An Eagle computer-assisted analysis of 2003 Census data found that only 30 of the 302 school districts in Kansas met the 65 percent standard, under the definitions used by the U.S. Department of Education. Wichita, the state's largest district, has one of the lowest classroom spending percentages in the state and compared to districts of similar size across the country. At 56.1 percent, Wichita is No. 276 on the list of 302 Kansas school districts." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 05, 2005 'Highly qualified' teachers don't always equal high student scores Amy L. Kovac and Jaci Smith of New Jersey's Herald-News used state education data to show that in Passaic County, having a "highly qualified" teacher doesn't always mean that students will do better on standardized tests. "The largest disparity was in Passaic's Lincoln Middle School. About 71 percent of eighth-graders there failed to achieve proficiency on their state exam; 89.2 percent of their classes were taught by teachers who meet the federal definition of 'highly qualified.' At The Learning Center in Passaic, 96 percent of fourth-graders scored at or above proficient on their standardized test; 60.5 percent of classes in the school were taught by 'highly qualified' teachers." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 27, 2005 Nice neighborhood ruined by state program Dunstan McNichol at The (Newark) Star-Ledger writes about how a state program to build new schools and real-estate speculators have taken a once stable neighborhood and turned it into a haven for squatters and drug dealers. Frustrated residents said they were offered too little for their houses and now they can't get a similar house nearby. Real estate speculators swooped in, bought up some houses and sold them to the state at high profits. And now, the program that was supposed to build a high school on the block is running out of money and it's uncertain if or when the school will be built. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 25, 2005 Lack of inspection data raises concerns for Utah school safety Nate Carlisle and Jessica Ravitz The Salt Lake Tribune report on the state of fire inspections in public schools, following a fire that destroyed Wasatch Junior High School. The school was old and did not have modern fire safety features. "Yet state records show the last time inspectors examined the school was four years ago." State records show that some Utah schools have no record of fire inspections since the 1980s. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 21, 2005 State, university employees' salaries swell Jane Stancill and David Raynor of The (Raleigh/Durham) News & Observer analyzed state payroll data to find that "there are already more than 2,200 state and University of North Carolina system employees who are paid more than $100,000 in state money a year; more than two-thirds of them work at the universities." Pay for university employees has arisen as an issue now that UNC system is searching for a new president. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 19, 2005 School administrators paid big during yearlong leaves Megan Twohey of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel used university documents to show that "the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has paid four former administrators more than $600,000 in taxpayer dollars for yearlong leaves granted after their resignations." The college does not track what officials granted such leaves do during that time, when typically they are preparing to resume teaching or research. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 18, 2005 Company builds silo within 300 feet of school Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette investigates a coal company, which has built and begun to build silos outside the companies permit area, within 300 feet of a school. The Gazette used color overlays of hard-copy mine maps produced by a local blueprint shop, so that maps dating back to 1982 could be easily compared to more recent digital mine maps. The paper followed up on Sunday, with a piece on the maps and data used in the investigation, and how complaints were ignored and boundary advances missed. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 12, 2005 Paper finds inaccuracies in after-school claims Paul Tosto of the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports on discrepancies the paper found in a report the state published claiming that Minnesota has more young children taking care of themselves after school than any other state in the country. They found that the "commission did not have statistics showing Minnesota with the nation's highest percentage of teens home alone every afternoon," and "the commission did not have scientific research backing up the statistic that 'about 50 percent' of young Minnesotans weren't in any structured after-school programs." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post School district loses big by investing locally Joel Rutchick of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer used local school financial records to show that "the Cleveland Municipal School District has lost out on as much as $14 million in potential investment income over the last three years by investing most of its idle cash through local banks - which have paid lower interest rates than those available elsewhere." The switch to the local banks apparently happened without competitive bids, a normal industry practice. Income from the investments "has lagged well behind that of Cuyahoga County and other urban school districts - such as Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo - all of which invested well within the safety parameters outlined by Ohio law." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 11, 2005 High benefit payouts hurt Oregon schools Betsy Hammond of The (Portland) Oregonian analyzed state education data to find that "for each teacher, secretary, principal, janitor and other worker, Oregon schools paid an average of $18,300 for health insurance and retirement pay in 2002-03. That was 55 percent more than schools across the nation." Matching the national rate of benefits would save about $500 million a year. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 08, 2005 Analysis shows improvement in schools Krista J. Stockman of The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette used state education test data to compare results since the fall of 2000, finding that "the majority of Indiana schools have more students passing standardized tests." The paper analyzed scores for third, sixth, eighth and 10th grades, because those were the only grades tested in both 2000 and 2004. "Although many schools are still below the required standard, students in the lowest-performing schools have had the greatest improvement on the state's standardized test, ISTEP+, between the fall of 2000 and the fall of 2004. The majority of low-performing schools in 2000 saw improvement four years later at third, sixth, eighth and 10th grades." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 07, 2005 State's teacher salaries outpace national average Maria Sacchetti of The Boston Globe used state education records to show that "average teacher pay in Massachusetts jumped 37 percent during the last decade, to $53,529 last year." That's a larger increase than teachers nationwide, and Boston schools pay an average teacher salary of $69,022. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 28, 2005 Youth charity fails to deliver on promise Collins Conner and Bridget Hall Grumet of The St. Petersburg Times investigated the Florida Youth Conservation Corps, which receives a state no-bid contract to help maintain highway rights of way in exchange for providing jobs and scholarships to its young employees. "FYCC said 46 trainees got scholarships from 1999 to 2003, but none came out of FYCC's pocket. Instead - unbeknownst to state leaders who supported the program - FYCC asked Americorps to provide them. Americorps is a national work-study program funded by federal tax dollars." Although the FYCC at first said it would provide access to its spending, it later closed its books to the paper, despite the fact that all of its funding comes from government sources. The paper also found that the FYCC "sent its top staff - including St. Petersburg City Council member Jay Lasita - on all-expenses-paid trips to the Dominican Republic where FYCC sponsors a baseball team." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 22, 2005 School crime numbers higher than reported Liz Chandler, Peter Smolowitz, Melissa Manware and CAR specialist Adam Bell from The Charlotte Observer report on their findings that more crime in being committed in Charlotte schools than is being reported by the school district. The investigation found "1,473 crimes reported to police at schools, 631 of them violent or threatening." Compare that to "12,681 suspensions of students for violent or threatening acts. That includes 11,378 for "aggressive physical or verbal actions," ranging from verbal confrontations to serious assaults." An Observer investigation found that "CMS relies heavily on suspensions, which soared to a record 52,648 in 2004." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 21, 2005 Hate crimes rise in Los Angeles school district Naush Boghossian and Lisa M. Sodders of the Los Angeles Daily News use data from the Los Angeles Unified School District police to investigate an increase in hate crimes in the district. "Hate crimes in Los Angeles' public schools have surged more than 300 percent over the past decade..." They found that almost all of the reported hate crimes were racially motivated. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 20, 2005 School fails to submit project warnings Dave Altimari and Grace E. Merritt of The Hartford Courant obtained records showing that "at least four University of Connecticut officials were aware of problems found in a 1999 audit of a $1 billion construction program but not disclosed to state legislators. Most of those problems were never fixed, and the school failed in subsequent years to submit details of the critical report to lawmakers, who voted in 2003 to approve an additional $1.3 billion to UConn for more building projects." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 17, 2005 Many school bus drivers have bad records Cynthia Kopkowski of The Palm Beach Post, with assistance from William M. Hartnett and researchers Krista Pegnetter and Angelica Cortez, reviewed school bus accident data and motor vehicle records for 130 drivers to find that "nine drivers have been charged with crimes within the past 10 years or within several years of being hired. One current driver was charged with two counts of homicide and convicted of manslaughter in both cases. She was hired within five years of leaving prison. Although 10 of the drivers reviewed have clean motor vehicle records dating back to 1995, the remaining 120 accrued 190 citations within the past decade." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post School police accused of profiling David Tarrant and Paula Lavigne of The Dallas Morning News investigated allegations of racial profiling by campus police at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, finding that "police search minorities more often than Anglos after traffic stops." In addition, there have been complaints about pedestrian stops, which campus police do not keep records on. "In 2004, blacks made up 34 percent of all stops by campus police but were six times more likely to be searched following a stop than whites. Hispanics made up 14 percent of all stops but were nearly five times more likely to be searched after a stop than Anglos." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Minorities face tough discipline Melissa Jenco of the Daily Herald analyzed Illinois education data to show that "racial disparities in discipline are not just a suburban trend. Statewide, during the 2002-03 school year, the expulsion and suspension rate for black students was three times higher than for white students. There were similar disparities for Latino students, too." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 16, 2005 Voucher system shows benefits, failures after 15 years Alan J. Borsuk, Sarah Carr and Leonard Sykes Jr. of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel investigate 15 years of vouchers in Milwaukee in a seven-part series. They found that "...56% of the students enrolled at Catholic elementary schools in the city of Milwaukee participate in choice." They also discovered that it's tougher to assess the quality of a voucher school than an open one. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 15, 2005 Alternative education fails some students The Associated Press reviewed alternative education programs in West Virginia, finding that "some children removed from class for discipline problems receive as little as two hours of instruction a week because West Virginia has no time standards for alternative education." More than 6,000 students throughout the state were enrolled in alternative programs during the last school year. In some schools, that consists of in-school suspension. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 07, 2005 Stipend boosts school official's pay Rosalind Rossi of the Chicago Sun-Times, with assistance from Art Golub and Dave McKinney, used Illinois state records to find that "the highest-paid public school employee in the state last year was the No. 2 person — the man in charge of finance — at a one-school district in north suburban Lincolnshire." James Hintz took home more than $300,000 in part because of an arrangement that paid him a six-figure "stipend" for health insurance that could be used for anything. The stipend also helps to boost Hintz's pension, which is based on his compensation during his final years of employment. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Schools fail to report all crime An investigation by the Charlotte Observer has found that a lot more violent and threatening behavior takes place in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools than officials disclose in the state's public report on crime. Observer reporters Lisa Hammersly Munn, Liz Chandler, Melissa Manware and Peter Smolowitz, along with database reporter Adam Bell, used school and police records and databases to reveal thousands of incidents of crime, violence and threatening acts that the state doesn't require for its report and that aren't disclosed to parents. Also, the newspaper found that CMS failed to disclose some crimes the state report requires. The investigation includes a downloadable school violence report and school violence charts. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 03, 2005 More students attending four-year colleges Rich Cholodofsky of the Pittsburgh Tribune Review reports on findings that more of Pennsylvania's graduating high school students are going to four-year colleges. "Within the past five school years, entering the work force, attending technical training or joining the military have fallen behind college as graduates' first option after high school, according to a Tribune-Review analysis of postgraduation reports from the 1998-99 and 2003-04 classes. " Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 01, 2005 Sexual harassment rarely reported on Oregon campuses Alan Gustafson and Shawn Day of the Salem, Ore., Statesman Journal analyze Oregon University System's handling of sexual harassment. They found that the system lacks "data on the extent to which sexual harassment is happening on Oregon campuses." The university system also fails to inform students on the proper way to file a complaint. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 24, 2005 Large endowments lead to heavy spending Justin Pope of the Associated Press used federal data and other documents to show that "forty-seven U.S. colleges and universities now have endowments of $1 billion or more, compared to 17 a decade ago." Along with rising endowments, many of these schools have also increased tuition: "Despite tripling its wealth over the last decade, the average billionaire college has nearly doubled its price. Tuition and fees at the average private billionaire college hit $29,002 in 2004; at public universities in the group, it cost $7,230 to attend the typical flagship campus." The AP also published an explainer on its methods for the piece. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 19, 2005 Fund-raising costs average at state college Lynn Campbell, Erin Jordan and Madelaine Jerousek of The Des Moines Register analyzed fund-raising costs by state universities, finding that "foundations at ISU and the University of Iowa are about average in the amount they spend on salaries, travel and other overhead to raise money for their universities." The two schools spend about 11 or 12 cents per dollar on fundraising costs compared to other Big Ten and Big 12 colleges. The University of Northern Iowa spends about 16 cents per dollar raised. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 13, 2005 State education formula flaws found Betsy Hammond of The Oregonian analyzed state school spending data to find that "Oregon took nearly $200 million last year from taxpayers in Washington and Multnomah counties and shipped it to schools in poorer parts of the state." Most students live in districts that spend close to the state average of $7,500 per student, but some rural districts in Eastern Oregon receive subsidies that push their per-pupil spending over $10,000. "Oregon's formula does not account for differences in cost of living from one community to another. Districts that can pay lower salaries can hire more teachers and provide more programs." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Athletic department purchased banned supplements Danny Robbins of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram used the Texas Public Information Act to show that "the Texas A&M University and University of Texas at Austin athletic departments have routinely purchased tens of thousands of dollars worth of dietary supplements labeled as containing ingredients that make them impermissible for distribution to student-athletes under National Collegiate Athletic Association rules." The two universities have spent about $120,000 during the past four years on such supplements. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 05, 2005 Top schools not necessarily producing best scores Mary B. Pasciak and Andrew Bailey of The Buffalo News analyzed fourth-grade standardized test scores from the area to find that "top performing schools - those that get the most from their students regardless of family income - often are the ones teaching students who have the least ... These top schools didn't necessarily have the best raw test scores, although some did. But when adjusted for poverty, their scores were all well above what they would be expected to achieve given the economic background of their pupils." The Buffalo News also found that schools spending the most money are not necessarily producing the best students. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 04, 2005 Head Start execs spend lots on trips, gifts Susan Vinella of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reviewed spending records from Ohio's largest Head Start agency to find "executives and board members spending tens of thousands on meals, trips and gifts. Many of the expenses were paid with government money that the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland receives for its annual budget, which tops $50 million." Trips to Puerto Rico and Hawaii were among the expenses detailed, as were gifts from Tiffany & Co. worth $1,300. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 19, 2005 Foundation administrators highly compensated Erin Jordan of the Des Moines Register obtained salary records of foundation employees at Iowa's three public universities. They found on average the employees made less than the national average, but the administrators were far above the average salary with "... U of I Foundation President Michael New topping out at $250,000 a year." Despite the high pay for administrators, the foundations are bringing in lots of money for student scholarships, classroom equipment and more resources for the universities. "The U of I Foundation, with a payroll of about $8 million, had 144 full-time employees. The foundation brought in about $100.5 million in fiscal 2004." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 13, 2005 School accountability reports flawed David Olinger and Jeffrey A. Roberts of The Denver Post examined reports of violent incidents in Colorado schools, finding that "disclosures of school violence vary wildly from one district to another. Some schools report every punch thrown on the playground. Others did not include assaults that police classified as felonies." The state requires districts to report certain incidents, but the guidelines lead some officials to report only those that cause severe injuries. "How accountable are the accountability reports? To accept their reliability, you must believe that in the last school year: Thirteen Colorado grade schools had more assaults and fights than any high school in Denver. A rural high school in Rifle witnessed more assaults than 25 high schools in Denver and Aurora. The most violent school in Colorado is a middle school in the suburban community of Fountain." A graphic shows some of the incidents that didn't make the state's report. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 31, 2005 Police failing to notify schools about sex offenders Ofelia Casillas of the Chicago Tribune investigated juvenile sex offenders in schools, specifically looking into school knowledge of the sex offender(s) in their school. They found that "some principals were not told that young sex offenders had enrolled in their schools, because the state system designed to notify them is mired in confusion." They found more disturbing data when looking into what types of crimes the juvenile sex offenders had committed. "Of the juveniles registered, 41 percent were found guilty of aggravated or criminal sexual assault, and 33 percent committed aggravated criminal sexual abuse" Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 21, 2005 Wealthy schools benefit more from construction money Steve Chambers and Robert Gebeloff of The (Newark) Star-Ledger analyzed state school construction data to find that "New Jersey's wealthiest districts have been far more successful qualifying for state money than middle-class or blue-collar ones. And with two-thirds of the state money already spent or committed, affluent districts have landed 24 percent more construction funding per pupil than other districts." The state's first-come, first-served method for distributing the money "left many poor and middle-class districts in the lurch." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 14, 2005 Flaws found in Head Start program Susan Vinella of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer used state reports to show that "Ohio's largest Head Start agency has repeatedly failed to enroll the number of children it has been paid to serve and has erroneously reported children eligible for the program." The paper also found that top officials at the Council for Economic Opportunities in Greater Cleveland are well-paid despite the program's failures in meeting federal requirements. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Special ed students pack troubled schools In a story produced by Beth Fertig and edited by John Keefe of WNYC-New York, school enrollment data was used to compare special needs enrollment data for the more violent schools compared to the lesser violent schools. Using freedom of information laws, WNYC obtained fall enrollment data for the 278 academic high schools that enroll more than a quarter of a million students. They found that "while special ed kids make up 12 percent of the high school population citywide, they make up 17 percent of students at violent schools. And they're 18 percent at schools the state says are failing." The story includes an in-depth analysis of Special Education and English Language Learners, as well as supplying the radio version of the story. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 02, 2005 Poor districts failing despite recent education reforms Mc Nelly Torres from the San Antonio Express-News investigated the progress of a Texas public school reform legislation dubbed "Robin Hood". She focused on the Edgewood School District, where the high school has an hispanic population of 97 percent. She found that the "total revenue per student was $8,729 last year, compared with $4,315 in 1994." A vast improvement for the district, however, the school keeps failing from constant changes in leadership, a divided school board and other problems that generally plague a poor school district. Enrollment has also dropped, due to the diminishing population in the district. A spreadsheet that shows the school district expenditures and a slideshow on how the Edgewood school district is shrinking are also provided. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 01, 2005 New schools planned on contaminated sites Jason Method and James W. Prado Roberts of the Asbury Park Press looked at New Jersey's $6 billion school construction program and found that the state authority had purchased at least 22 environmentally contaminated or possibly contaminated sites, including one radioactive Superfund site and another historic steel cable plant full of lead, beryllium, arsenic and other poisons. Environmentalists questioned whether the sites could ever be considered fully safe.
(Editor's note: For useful tips on reporting similar stories, see the
latest IRE Beat Book, "Covering Pollution: An
Investigative Reporter's Guide.")
February 25, 2005 Teacher pay rising faster than inflation Kurt Rogahn of The (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) Gazette found that teacher pay "is increasing at rates better than inflation, despite warnings from the state's leading teacher organization that Iowa's average teacher pay hasn't kept pace with inflation." One researcher says the numbers show pay has gone up quite a bit, though the averages say it hasn't. "A Gazette analysis shows that though average teacher pay rose 16 percent between 1996-97 and this school year in the two Technology Corridor counties, base salaries for beginning teachers rose an average of 26 percent." Inflation over the same period was 21 percent. Rogahn points out that most news stories focus on average pay, a measure that can be misleading. (Extra! Extra! readers get special access to the story for one month by entering username "ire" and password "sherlock8" — both without the quotes.) Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Administrative spending grows while student spending dwindles Vicki McClure and Tania deLuzuriaga of The Orlando Sentinel used audit records of local charter schools to find that "Imagine Schools Inc., operator of 10 schools in Central Florida, spent as much as 50 percent less per student on instruction last year but about two to six times more on administration than other public schools in Osceola and Lake counties, where most of the students who attend area charters live." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 16, 2005 Cost overruns deplete constuction funds Dunstan McNichol of The (Newark) Star-Ledger analyzed data from New Jersey's School Construction Corporation since 2002, finding that "the six urban projects under the SCC have cost, on average, 45 percent more than 19 schools built without the agency's oversight during the same period." One-fifth of the spending is due to massive cost overruns and change orders on repairs. The SCC's chief, Jack Spencer, said urban schools cost more to build and that "numbers are like little children; you can make them say anything you want them to say." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 14, 2005 N. Texas high school athletes using steriods Gregg Jones and Gary Jacobson of The Dallas Morning News found that steroids in north Texas high schools are "readily available and commonly used." In a four-month investigation, "The News interviewed more than 100 current and former high school students, coaches and parents about steroids in high schools." They found students buy the drugs from "friends, classmates and sometimes varsity athletes" and coaches rarely confront players or parents when they suspect steroid use. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 10, 2005 Superintendents pay outpaces teachers pay Reid R. Frazier of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review analyzed salary data from six Western Pennsylvania counties to find that "school superintendents' salaries have increased at twice the pace of classroom teachers' salaries over the past five years." School district officials said that finding top candidates for the superintendent jobs was increasingly difficult. "The average teacher salary rose from $48,357 in 1999-2000 to $51,804 in 2003-04. For superintendents, average pay climbed from $96,409 to $109,938 in the same period." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 07, 2005 School aid declining in Ohio Doug Oplinger and Dennis J. Willard of the Akron Beacon Journal used state data to show that spending in some Ohio school districts has declined in the past two years after five years of increases. "Data obtained from the Ohio Department of Education show that in the 2003-04 school year, one in three districts had fewer inflation-adjusted dollars to spend per pupil than in 2001-02. That counts state and local money plus the small share that comes from the federal government." Smaller revenues combined with increasing enrollment is raising the prospect of higher local taxes to pay for schools. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 03, 2005 College aspirations rise, dropout rate steady for low-income families Greg Toppo and Anthony DeBarros of USA Today analyzed data from two surveys by the Department of Education, finding that messages urging teenagers to go to college have had an impact: "In 1990, 59% of 10th-graders with educational aspirations expected to get a four-year college degree or higher; by 2002, nearly 80% said the same." That expectation didn't always turn into reality, however. "The number of bachelor's degrees earned annually rose by 18% from 1990 to 2002. But while graduation rates rose at elite colleges, they dropped - sometimes sharply - at many others, especially public colleges." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 01, 2005 Recruiting expenditures high at Ind. universities Mark Alesia of The Indianapolis Star used public records requests to track what Indiana colleges spend to recruit top high school football players. A single weekend at Indiana University in December 2003 cost nearly $50,000 for 22 recruits and eight parents. "In all, IU spent $314,120 on football recruiting in the 2003-04 fiscal year. Purdue University spent $299,943." The paper tracked dinners, travel and even security by off-duty police officers. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 31, 2005 Minority of students given majority of suspensions The Charlotte Observer reporters Peter Smolowitz and Adam Bell pried data out of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District to highlight the district's problems with repeat troublemakers: Some 450 students were suspended more than 10 times last year, one child was suspended a whopping 31 times and some kids missed a third of the school year because of suspensions. The district had put out its own analysis of the data, which shed little light on the complex issue. The Observer detailed the trends as well as delved into how educators try to handle misbehaving students while ensuring well-behaved kids can learn without disruption. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 27, 2005 Colo. football appears exempt from cutbacks Kevin Vaughan and Todd Hartman of the Rocky Mountain News examined University of Colorado spending records and found that while the basketball program was cutting its budget, "the football team was spending $34,922 to give every player an electronic organizer as a memento for playing in the EV1.Net Houston Bowl." At the same time, "men's basketball coach Ricardo Patton was cutting back on the use of chartered airplanes - which saved money but meant that his players missed all their classes last week as they navigated the schedules of commercial air carriers." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 26, 2005 Confidential information available via Web at Harvard J. Hale Russell and Elisabeth S. Theodore of The Harvard Crimson revealed that "the confidential drug purchase histories of many Harvard students and employees have been available for months to any internet user, as have the e-mail addresses of high-profile undergraduates whose contact information the University legally must conceal." With the cooperation of a Harvard student, the paper was able to generate a list of prescription drugs purchased by the student simply by typing in the student's Harvard ID number and birthdate, information widely available to any Internet user. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 18, 2005 School funding estimates overstated Duane Schrag of the Salina Journal used Kansas education data to show that a district judge's estimate of $1 billion to improve the quality of education was far off the mark. "An analysis by the Salina Journal suggests that the actual cost of implementing the controversial study's recommendations in the 2003-04 school year would have been $493 million, less than half the figure widely accepted today." Using formulas developed by an outside firm, the paper combined enrollment figures with spending estimates to reach its conclusion. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 10, 2005 Local governments avoid bond bids Thousands of municipal bond issuers in the United States -- schools, cities, public agencies and states -- have permitted investment banks to sell their municipal bonds without vying for the business, writes David Dietz of Bloomberg Markets magazine. These "negotiated sales," have in the past 25 years gradually replaced the century-old tradition of competitive bidding according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 05, 2005 Superintendents' pay outpaces teachers' pay Amy Hetzner of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analyzed state data to find that "pay for most school superintendents in metropolitan Milwaukee has risen faster than average teacher salaries in their districts over the last decade, despite a state law that links pay for the two." A Wisconsin law says that superintendents be given a 3.8 percent raise or the same increase given to teachers in the previous year. "Since the law was enacted in 1993, the Legislature has approved enough loopholes that the law can be largely ignored. There also is apparently no oversight other than local school boards and their voters." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 04, 2005 Teacher turnover highest in poor areas Seattle Times' reporter Sanjay Bhatt documents disparities in teacher turnover in Seattle's public schools. He found that chronic teacher turnover ranged between 7 percent and 35 percent annually among elementary schools, and was highest in the city's poorest areas. Bhatt obtained employee data from Seattle Public Schools under a public records request and worked with a university graduate student who had done her own analysis of teacher turnover using data from Washington state's Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. Bhatt used SPSS and ArcGIS for the story. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 03, 2005 Poor districts get inexperienced teachers Kerrie Frisinger of the Newport News, Va., Daily Press used local data to show that "Hampton and Suffolk, which have some of the highest percentages of black students and students receiving free or reduced-price lunches, also have more inexperienced teachers than other school districts." Hampton pays starting teachers up to $2,000 less than other Virginia districts, but experts said that reputation often was a bigger factor in a school district's ability to retain teachers. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 22, 2004 Cleveland students advance despite test scores Ebony Reed and Thomas Gaumer of The (Cleveland, Ohio) Plain Dealer analyzed state education data to find that "more than 95 percent of Cleveland fourth- and sixth-graders were promoted at the end of last school year, even though better than half the students in those grades failed state reading or math exams." Promotion rates varied among schools and grades, but "the gap between promotion rates and test scores is even more pronounced for black and Hispanic students, who fail the tests more often than their white classmates." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 20, 2004 Data shows suspicious gains in test scores Holly Hacker and Joshua Benton of The Dallas Morning News turned a story about one school's alleged cheating on standardized tests into a piece about cheating across the state. She used regression analysis to show some suspicious improvements among historically low-performing schools, including a "desperately impoverished school where the fourth-graders have trouble adding and subtracting - but nearly all the fifth-graders got perfect scores on the math portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills." The Morning News also reports that the Texas Education Agency doesn't use their own data to perform a similar analysis. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 17, 2004 College apparel still made in sweatshops Matthew Kauffman and Lisa Chedekel of The Hartford Courant find that college-licensed apparel is produced in sweatshop conditions, despite pledges made by academic leaders five years ago. "But today, the $20 T-shirts and $40 sweat shirts that bear the logos of UConn and other major universities are sewn under conditions that are as dismal as those that prompted the pledges — and rapidly getting worse." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 16, 2004 Iowa employee travel costs on increase Jonathan Roos of the Des Moines Register analyzed spending on travel by Iowa government employees, finding that "spending on state employee travel, after dropping during a round of belt-tightening, is again on the rise despite continued tight budgets." The state spent $41 million on travel during fiscal 2004, and more than 500 employees racked up at least $10,000 in travel costs. Athletic recruiting by state university coaches was a significant factor: "Sixteen of the 20 state employees with the biggest travel tabs came from the university ranks. Seven were coaches. Four were professors. Three were administrators." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 15, 2004 Poor schools get teachers who failed Chris Davis and Matthew Doig of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune find that a third of Florida teachers failed the teaching certification test at least once; that schools in poor neighborhoods and those with a high number of minority students get teachers who failed the test more often, and those teachers scored lower on every section of the test. The series includes a sidebar detailing what data the paper used and its methodology. There is also a story about the state's reluctance to release public information. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 08, 2004 Questionable expenses uncovered in N.Y. school district Karla Schuster, Eden Laikin and Theresa Vargas of Newsday, with assistance from Stacey Altherr and Richard Dalton, obtained computerized spending records for Long Island's 125 school districts, finding that spending in Hempstead often exceeded similarly-sized districts: "While Hempstead students were served spoiled food and attended class in crumbling buildings, the school district was spending millions of dollars on expenses that had little direct benefit for children, such as professional travel, temp agencies, catering, cell phones and consultants." Since July 1, 1999, the Hempstead district has spent hundreds of thousands on travel, catering and temporary labor, among other items. "The district's expenses for bottled water totaled about $315,000 between July 1999 and June 2004, an average of about $63,000-a-year -- more than 22 times the combined annual average of all the other districts analyzed." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 07, 2004 Iowa schools face heat on standards Madelaine Jerousek of The Des Moines Register compiled records on the academic performance of Iowa high school graduates, finding that " one in 10 college freshmen who graduated from Iowa's high schools failed to muster at least a D average at the state's three public universities last school year." About 5 percent of the nearly 7,000 students who graduated from Iowa public high schools in 2003 and enrolled at a state university took remedial math courses covering material they should have learned in high school. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 23, 2004 High school violence going unreported Chris Halsne of KIRO-Seattle used records kept by schools to find that violent incidents in high schools are not being reported to the police. In five Tacoma high schools that KIRO looked at, "there were 468 students disciplined for fights, 180 assaults and 123 violent threats" yet police were called just 13 times for fights, 95 times for assaults and 29 times for threatening behavior. "District policy mandates police get called whenever a student gets assaulted or hurt in a fight, but that doesn't usually happen." KIRO reviewed every police incident report associated with Tacoma high schools. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 12, 2004 School's scores might be result of cheating Joshua Benton and Holly K. Hacker of The Dallas Morning News used Texas reading test scores to show that the top third-grade school was an unlikely champion: "Wilmer Elementary — a perennial underachiever in a district many consider the state's worst — beat out the scores of 3,212 other elementary schools. But substantial evidence, including a Dallas Morning News data analysis, indicates that cheating may be behind that success." The school's high scores for third-graders were not repeated in higher grade levels: "On the fourth-grade reading test, Wilmer's students finished in the bottom 20 percent of the state. In fifth grade, scores were also well below the state average. The amazing scores came only in the one grade where poor test scores have severe consequences — and, according to cheating experts, educators have a greater incentive to fudge." The paper's coverage prompted a review by state officials, who ultimately decided to take over the school district's operations. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 09, 2004 Inspectors find criticial violations in schools Dateline NBC followed local food inspectors as they inspected schools across the country and tracked critical violations, following up on a piece aired in the spring. They concluded that many of their findings - food items being stored at incorrect temperatures, mice droppings and flies in food prep areas, dirty dishes - were oftentimes not the exception, but the rule. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 23, 2004 University land affects county tax base Dave Gershman of The Ann Arbor News used county real estate records to show that the University of Michigan "has purchased more than 40 properties since 1990, taking a total of about 316 acres off the tax rolls." But the school has also sold off other land that has contributed to the county's tax base. "Since 1990, U-M has acquired 45 properties that reduced local tax collections by about $1,572,281 ... The tax loss from those purchases, however, was less than the taxes gained after U-M sold seven properties, which were taxed at a collective $3,526,969 last year." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 17, 2004 Australian schools profit from land sales Bruce McDougall and Kelvin Bissett of Australia's Daily Telegraph used records released under the Freedom of Information law to find that "scores of public schools are making millions of dollars selling off part of their grounds and using the cash to bankroll new halls, canteens and libraries." The paper found more than 80 transactions that range from the sale of an entire school to smaller lots of unused land. "Sales of land and other property assets on education sites have topped $80 million over the last two years." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 16, 2004 Pay for teachers varies widely Ignazio Messina of The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade analyzed teacher salaries in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan, finding that "wide ranges between salaries paid beginning teachers as well as experienced teachers. In general, the more rural an area, the lower the salary — even though some rural districts have larger student populations than a higher-paying suburban Toledo district." Ohio ranks 15th in the nation in average teacher salary, but beginning teachers make much less than their new counterparts in other parts of the country. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 01, 2004 Schools lose money to utility overbilling Jennifer Toomer-Cook of The Deseret News asked Utah school districts and power companies to track billing processes, finding that "utility companies are inaccurately billing public schools by hundreds of thousands of dollars a year — taxpayer money that likely would be lost if schools didn't hunt it down." The error rates range from 1.6 percent of bills to 9.4 percent, mostly in favor of the school districts. "Granite District's McLeod keeps memorabilia of more than $100,000 in utility reimbursements: copies of a $62,491.60 check from Granger Hunter Improvement District; $27,687 and $22,189 from Utah Power, and others." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 27, 2004 School bond program suffers from poor management Jennifer Autrey of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram investigated the local school district's bond program, finding that "many individual projects were saddled with additional costs or were significantly late. Although the bond program had some successes, it was undermined by ineptitude, mismanagement, waste and abuse." At least $1.5 million in projects was abandoned at a handful of schools visited by the paper, and two planned elementary schools were scrapped. "For a long time, though, trustees did not realize how far things had gone wrong. The district didn't have the right people in the right places to watch the work and follow the spending. The wake-up call came just weeks ago when trustees learned that an expected $9 million bond surplus was all but gone." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 23, 2004 Calif. lax in regulation of vocational schools Michael Louie, Laila Weir and Lisa P. White, graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, writing in The Sacramento Bee, found that oversight of California's vocational and technical schools is lax: "An examination of bureau operations reveals a passive consumer-protection agency that does little to monitor schools," including not following up on complaints and not checking whether schools meet minimum standards. "A computer analysis of the 1,177 complaints to the bureau during the past two fiscal years shows computer schools generated the most complaints, followed by cosmetology and health care schools. Of the complaints, 521 alleged deficiencies in educational quality, 293 claimed false advertising and other types of fraud, and 289 alleged failure to make proper refunds. A state audit in 2000 concluded that staff routinely marked complaint files closed after simply notifying schools about the allegations." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 11, 2004 School officials cut programs but spend thousands on travel Mc Nelly Torres of the San Antonio Express-News found that while school administrators have limited each grade to one field trip per year to save money, "the board did not slash its own travel." The trustees and top administrators, meanwhile, have considered eliminating computer and online programs offered to students. "Since 1999, trustees and top administrators have spent almost $72,800 on convention trips and car rentals." The story includes a spreadsheet showing each trip. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 05, 2004 School leaders earning outside money Scott Parks of The Dallas Morning News writes about school superintendents who moonlight or consult for companies, some of which have contracts with their school districts. The paper found "that trustees in at least 22 of Texas's 30 largest school districts have agreed to put consulting clauses into their superintendent's employment contract." The leader of Dallas' school district has earned "tens of thousands of dollars in consulting fees while simultaneously billing the district for more than $700,000 in legal fees" and one Houston-area superintendent is a paid consultant for an energy conservation company that contracts with her district. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 28, 2004 Day cares with poor ratings still get five stars Eric Frazier of The Charlotte Observer analyzed state data on child care facilities, finding that "more than 100 received the highest number of stars — five — despite subpar quality ratings." The paper used more than 6,000 evaluations of day care providers since 1999. "The evaluators found that the care offered to most preschoolers and school-age children is good. However, the care of infants and toddlers younger than 30 months falls below developmentally appropriate standards." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 13, 2004 Black students more likely to have inexperienced teachers Allison L. Bruce of The (Charleston, S.C.) Post and Courier analyzed state education data to show that "a black child enrolled in a rural or urban school in the Lowcountry is less likely to receive an education equal to his white, suburban peers because his teacher will have less experience or education." The paper used average teacher salaries, the percentage of instructors with advanced degrees and other factors in its study. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 06, 2004 Schools spend thousands at store owned by official’s brother Ryan Gabrielson of The Monitor in McAllen, Texas, reviewed Pharr-San Juan-Alamo School District spending records to find that Superintendent Arturo Guajardo co-owns a building housing a hardware supply firm that does business with the Texas school district. The supply store is run by Guajardo's brother and tax records released by the superintendent show that he is a co-owner of the business, too, although he maintains that's not true. The year after Guajardo became the building's co-owner, the district's purchases from the store jumped from $3,373 to $20,376. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 23, 2004 Wealthy schools win championships Erik Brady and MaryJo Sylwester of USA Today built a database of high school sports champions in 27 states, finding that "public schools in the wealthiest neighborhoods win state team championships at more than twice the rate of schools in the least wealthy neighborhoods." The analysis included 5 "core" sports for boys and 5 for girls and used championships between January 1999 and December 2003 for all divisions. Using Census data, the paper ranked the schools using the 2003 median income based on school district boundaries, as well as the percentage of students receiving free or reduced-price lunches. "Only in Rhode Island did schools in the least wealthy neighborhoods win state championships at a greater rate than in wealthy ones, USA Today found. Louisiana, Vermont and Alabama were the only states where schools from the least wealthy areas won almost as many state championships as the schools in wealthy ones." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 28, 2004 Tax incentives don't stop companies from laying off workers Arthur Kane of The Denver Post writes about a Colorado program that offers property tax breaks to attract businesses and has the state reimburse school districts for lost revenue. "A quarter of the companies that made agreements with school districts closed or laid off employees while receiving the rebate or soon after it stopped ... Nearly half of the 10 companies that received the most money have laid off employees or closed the plant." State officials defended the program, which is projected to cost about $24 million by 2007. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Wichita schools spend more on support Dion Lefler of The Wichita Eagle used Census data to show that Kansas' five largest school districts spend about the same amount of money on classroom instruction as do other similarly-sized districts, but they spend more on support services. "The Wichita school district ranked 17th out of 34 — right in the middle — in per-pupil spending among comparable size districts. But Wichita ranked 29th out of the 34 in the percentage spent on instruction. It was No. 6 on the list in spending for support services." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 26, 2004 Contracts contribute to teacher layoffs James Walsh and Ron Nixon of the Star Tribune analyzed Minnesota teachers' contracts to find that the agreements, "with automatic raises based on education and experience and job security based on seniority — contribute to layoffs. Because districts have to lay off their least experienced teachers first — and those teachers cost much less — schools end up cutting even more teachers to balance their budgets." Even as statewide enrollment figures drop in recent years, school districts have been paying teachers more, and cutting budgets to pay for those raises. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 25, 2004 Atlanta schools need $14 million a year for computer network Paul Donsky and Ken Foskett of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution investigate Atlanta schools' use of money from a national program designed to help poor children tap into the Internet, finding that "with virtually no limit on spending, Atlanta since 1998 has built one of the country's most lavish computer networks for schoolchildren. Now, Atlanta says it needs $14 million a year — three times the district's textbook budget — just to run and maintain the network. And much of the promised benefit to students has yet to materialize." The high-speed network at a single elementary school cost the district $1 million — about $2,150 per student — and uses more routing equipment for one school than New Orleans' entire school network. The program, called E-rate, has been cited previously for abuses and waste. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 21, 2004 At least 75 Calif. teachers helped students on state tests Erika Hayasaki of the Los Angeles Times used California's Public Records Act to obtain documents showing that "more than 200 California teachers have been investigated for allegedly helping students on state exams, and at least 75 of those cases have been proved." Most teachers received reprimands or warnings, but a handful have been fired or quit their positions. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 18, 2004 Jump to Division I could cost school Jeff Kolpack of the Forum studied North Dakota State's planned jump to Division I athletics, finding that "the NDSU sports budget for next year could hit $7.7 million — or nearly the outer limits of what a consulting group said the university can afford. That's $1.7 million more than NDSU will spend on sports this academic year." The paper used school records to compare its budget to those of other colleges heading to D-I, including South Dakota State and Northern Colorado. "Compared with the eight established schools in the Big Sky Conference, NDSU's budget would rank third highest behind the University of Montana, at $9 million, and Montana State, at $ 8 million — both of which struggle with financial problems." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 13, 2004 Illinois' black children still at disadvantage in schools Diane Rado, Darnell Little and Grace Aduroja of the Chicago Tribune studied the impact of school integration on Illinois children, finding that 50 years after Brown vs. Board of Education, many black students remain in an inferior education system. "A black child is about 40 times more likely than a white child to attend one of Illinois' worst-of-the-worst 'academic watch' schools. A child at a majority black school is about six times more likely to be taught by teachers without full certification than at a white school." The paper used test scores, school spending and other indicators for its analysis. "Complicating matters in Illinois is a school finance system that creates stunning inequities between affluent areas that can afford to pour money into local schools and impoverished districts that can't. The state relies on local communities to pump up school spending because only a limited share of state funds is devoted to public education." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 04, 2004 Average of 33% of Mich. State grades is at least 3.5 Eric Morath of The State News, the campus newspaper at Michigan State University, analyzed grade data from the fall 2003 semester to show that "in 33 percent of courses, the average grade was a 3.5 or higher. In fact, in 31 classes, every grade was a 4.0." The paper only used classes that had at least 20 students enrolled for its story, which was accompanied by lists of the 200 highest class GPAs and the 200 lowest. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 26, 2004 Calendars reveal chancellors' priorities John Frank of The Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina used the chancellor's weekly calendars obtained through records requests to determine "the number of times Chancellor James Moeser met with certain groups or spent his time on certain issues." The 950 appointments in the calendars were entered into spreadsheets and categorized to help indicate how Moeser prioritizes his time. Frank acknowledges "the data is imperfect because Moeser's calendar changes often" but this "analysis is the first day-by-day look at what issues and officials get the most attention from UNC's chancellor." The calendars showed the chancellor spends the majority of his time on fund-raising activities. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 21, 2004 Mismanagement led to tripling of arena's price Bill Heltzel and Bill Schackner of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reviewed state and university records to find out why the price tag for the University of Pittsburgh's new on-campus basketball arena ballooned from $35 million to $119 million. "One explanation is that officials nearly doubled the size of the building. But the Post-Gazette's research also revealed a project beset by indecision, squandered work, miscalculations and hidden costs." Speeding up the construction work in time to meet a 2002 commencement deadline also contributed to the cost. The two-part series resulted from two years of reporting and requests under Pennsylvania's Open Records Law. Also included is the university's response to the paper's inquiries. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 19, 2004 Ky. schools in danger of not meeting tougher NCAA rules Brian Bennett of The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal analyzed graduation rates of athletes at University of Louisville, University of Kentucky and Indiana University in advance of tougher new NCAA standards expected to be passed later this month. Bennett finds that "the UK football team ranks in the bottom 5 percent of Division I-A in graduating players" and the University of Kentucky men's basketball team "has not listed a graduate in nine of its past 13 annual reports to the NCAA." Indiana has a graduation rate of 72 percent in football for the past four classes. The Courier-Journal looked at NCAA graduation reports as well as including transfer students and those who graduated after more than six years, two factors not included in the NCAA reports. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 01, 2004 IRE awards three medals An astonishing story of brutal war crimes by The (Toledo, Ohio) Blade and a book on the American tax system by David Cay Johnston took top honors in the 2003 IRE Awards. In addition, the Freedom of Information Award went to a team from the (Sioux Falls, S.D.) Argus Leader for exposing a massive secret pardons program rife with questions and conflicts for the governor. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 26, 2004 University shares information with credit card company Roger McCoy of WBNS-Columbus, Ohio, and Alice Thomas of The Columbus Dispatch report that "Ohio State University and the OSU Alumni Association are supplying the world's largest independent credit-card company with information on contacting more than 400,000 students, employees and alumni." The school gets $1.3 million a year for the information, according to a redacted version of the contract with MBNA, but none of the students contacted by the station knew about the deal or their right to opt-out of the information sharing. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post March 10, 2004 Colo. school ranks high in crime categories Burt Hubbard at the Rocky Mountain News analyzed campus crime data and found that the "University of Colorado at Boulder, voted the top party school in the U.S. last year, had the third highest incidence of alcohol and drug violations among large universities nationally." The data shows that in 2002 the university referred 2,410 students for alcohol violations and 393 for drug violations, or almost nine referrals for every 100 students. Hubbard used Campus Crime Statistics available from IRE and NICAR that includes 19 tables of crime data reported to the U.S. Department of Education by campus police and local law enforcement. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Richer schools would benefit from Mass. plan Anand Vaishnav and Bill Dedman of The Boston Globe used Massachusetts school test results to find that a "scholarship proposal that Gov. Mitt Romney is touting to help working-class families would give the edge to richer school districts." The program selects recipients solely on the basis of their scores on the MCAS exam, administered to high school juniors. "The districts with the largest share of winners under Romney's proposal are overwhelmingly affluent, suburban, and white, according to the Globe's review of MCAS scores for this year's junior class." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 23, 2004 Cincinnati kindergartners face suspension, expulsion Jennifer Mrozowski and John Byczkowski of The Cincinnati Enquirer reviewed school disciplinary records to find that Cincinnati schools expel more students than any district in the state. Some of Cincinnati's students are getting into trouble at a young age: "More than 200 times last year, Greater Cincinnati kindergartners were expelled or suspended from school for at least one day." Cincinnati and Dayton-area school were the only ones in Ohio to expel kindergartners during the last school year. "Behavior problems, fighting and violence are the main reasons that schools discipline the youngest kids. But children also are being punished for stealing and trashing school property, pulling fire alarms and bringing weapons to class." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Ore. class size largest in a generation Betsy Hammond of The Oregonian reports that reductions in teachers have boosted Oregon's class sizes to "the largest in a generation. The exception is Multnomah County, where voters approved a county income tax. Those schools added teachers and reduced class sizes this year. Outside Multnomah, 70 percent of the state's school districts eliminated teaching positions after the 2002-03 school year, the newspaper analysis found. That gave Oregon a ratio of 20.2 students for every teacher — 30 percent more students than the national average." Due to variations in assignments, the 20.2:1 ratio usually translates into an average class size of 25 to 28 students. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post School cafeterias cited for health violations Kristen King of The Virginian-Pilot analyzed data from recent health inspections of school cafeterias, finding that "nearly half of the public school cafeterias in South Hampton Roads were cited for at least one critical violation on their most recent health inspection." Schools in Suffolk had the highest percentage of critical violations — 67 percent — while one Virginia Beach middle school earned five critical violations alone. Just 11 percent of schools in the area had perfect scores. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 18, 2004 Colleges spend money on athletics that would have gone to academics In a joint venture, MaryJo Sylwester of USA Today and Tom Witosky of The Des Moines Register published an examination of college athletics finances. The story found: "Average athletic budgets rose at a pace more than double the increases in average university spending at Division I schools between 1995 and 2001. Athletic revenues are not keeping pace, so schools have increasingly used money that would normally be spent on academics, and have tapped student athletic fees paid by all full-time students. Sidebars look at how Tennessee is dealing with a state mandate to reduce the amount of taxpayer money used for athletics; how one school, Northern Iowa, is content and successful not competing in the so-called arms race; and how Florida A&M is caught between its desire to move up to the more lucrative Division 1-A and the financial reality of the price tag for that move." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post February 02, 2004 Educators tried to manipulate standards used in ranking Sarah Schmidt of CanWest News Services used documents obtained under British Columbia's Freedom of Information Act to show that "senior administrators at the University of British Columbia embarked on a deliberate campaign to manipulate course enrollments to improve the school's standing in the influential Maclean's university ranking," even though some professors warned that such moves could actually hurt students. Despite the efforts, the university repeated its fifth-place performance in the magazine's 2003 national rankings. "Many schools, including UBC, place great weight on their standing in Maclean's annual university ranking; a strong showing is often used in promotional and fundraising campaigns. At UBC, it meant senior administrators asked department heads to split some large classes into smaller ones. In other cases, they pressured professors to adopt class sizes established by Maclean's." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 20, 2004 Standards lax for substitute teachers Mary Shanklin and Denise-Marie Balona of the Orlando Sentinel have a two-part series on substitute teachers in Central Florida, finding that "students with substitutes for at least four weeks scored lower on reading tests than their peers in the same school," and poor-performing school often get the least-educated subs. About 2,000 substitute teachers work each day in the area's schools, and many "earn no more than convenience-store clerks." Florida is one of 22 states that require that subs have only a high-school equivalency degree. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 15, 2004 NE Fla. schools still paddle students Cynthia L. Garza of The Florida Times-Union reports that Northeast Florida schools still engage in corporal punishment of students, which must be reported to the state. Using state data, she found that "the region's largest school system, Duval County, leads the state in its overall use of corporal punishment during the past 10 years, paddling students more than 15,000 times during that time." That's at odd with Florida's largest school districts, in the southeast of the state, who haven't used such tactics in the past five years. Paddling or spanking is clustered in a small number of schools in Duval: "Last year alone, the 1,300 paddlings that took place in Duval County schools happened in about a fourth of all its schools, with one school -- Northwestern Middle School -- using it 474 times alone." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post January 12, 2004 Principals cash in on unused sick days Rosalind Rossi and Art Golab of the Chicago Sun-Times analyzed Illinois education salary data to find that some Chicago school principals earned the most money in the state last year due to a provision that permits them to convert up to 315 sick days into cash upon retirement. "Chicago's sick-day benefit — won by the Chicago Teachers Union but shared by principals — amounts to a unique 'double-dip' not available in the Chicago suburbs, New York City or Los Angeles." The unused sick days can be used to boost pay and, to a lesser extent, to increase length of service, which can boost the value of a pension. "I wish we had that,'' said Mike O'Sullivan, president of the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 18, 2003 Less of a racial learning gap in Philly schools than suburbs Connie Langland and Alletta Emeno of The Philadelphia Inquirer used federal data released under the No Child Left Behind Act to show that in Pennsylvania, "the racial learning divide exists in 84 percent of the 204 suburban schools with minority students. This achievement gap, with black and Latino students falling behind white students, persists even in such high-performing districts as Abington, Lower Merion, Downingtown, West Chester, Tredyffrin-Easttown and Wallingford-Swarthmore." Taken as a whole, Philadelphia schools have less of a gap than their suburban counterparts. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 17, 2003 Number of children disciplined for fighting on the rise Eric J.S. Townsend of the Cecil (Md.) Whig analyzed county school data to find that "nearly one out of seven Cecil students received at least one suspension during 2002-2003. A large majority come from secondary schools, notably the sixth through 10th grades." The school system ranked sixth in the state for the highest percentage of students suspended. Suspensions for fighting tripled in elementary schools, while alcohol and tobacco-related suspensions dropped at the high school level. "Cecil County isn't alone in its upward trends. State statistics indicate a growing number of Maryland school children, at younger ages, get sent home each year because of fighting and insubordination." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 16, 2003 Beginning teachers placed in poorest schools in Tacoma area David Wickert of The (Tacoma, Wash.,) News Tribune used a Washington state database of personnel to examine the levels of experience for teachers in the Tacoma area. "The elementary schools with the highest poverty rates in the Tacoma, Auburn, Clover Park, Federal Way and Kent school districts have a higher proportion of beginning teachers than the lowest-poverty schools in the same districts." The newspaper's research echoes similar analyses in other parts of the nation. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 15, 2003 159 Wash. coaches fired or reprimanded for sexual misconduct Christine Willmsen and Maureen O'Hagan of The Seattle Times conducted a year-long investigation of girls' sports coaches, finding that in the past 10 years, "159 coaches in Washington have been fired or reprimanded for sexual misconduct ranging from harassment to rape. Nearly all were male coaches victimizing girls. At least 98 of these coaches continued to coach or teach." The paper sought records from Washington state school districts, one of which sought to prevent disclosure of files by collaborating with the teachers union. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Inconsistent rules allow doctors with questionable education to practice Andrew Julien and Jack Dolan of The Hartford Courant continue their series of investigations into the medical profession, finding that "nearly 900 doctors practicing across the country are graduates of schools banned in states including California and Texas because of questionable educational standards." Uneven state standards allow these doctors to work in the U.S. after attending foreign medical schools "that would be hard-pressed to win accreditation on U.S. soil." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 12, 2003 Worst schools in Baltimore get uncertified teachers Mike Bowler of The (Baltimore) Sun analyzed the credentials and school assignments of Baltimore area teachers, finding that hundreds "lack basic state certification, and they're employed disproportionately in the worst-performing schools." The paper found 239 teachers labeled as "conditional" by Maryland working in the 25 elementary schools with the lowest test scores — all of them in Baltimore. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 08, 2003 Seattle school guide shows lagging grad rates Jolayne Houtz, Linda Shaw and Justin Mayo of The Seattle Times report that "in the Seattle area, just 73 percent of students in the class of 2002 graduated on time." As part of the paper's 2003 School Guide, the Times used a method created by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research to estimate the graduation rates for Seattle-area public high schools. "Washington state officials have set a goal to meet the new federal law: 85 percent of high-school students will graduate on time by 2014. Most schools have a long way to go. In The Times' analysis, only seven high schools in the Seattle area meet the 85 percent goal today." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 05, 2003 School district settles lawsuits quietly Josh Funk of The Wichita Eagle requested information from the city's school district about lawsuit settlements, finding that the district "has settled 11 lawsuits worth more than $1 million total since 1999, handling all but two outside the public's view." Even though the district requires school board approval of expenditures totaling more than $10,000, the school board wasn't always informed of the settlements. "The board voted publicly on only two of the settlements. Five of the remaining nine settlements weren't voted on even though they involved expenditures of more than $10,000." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 04, 2003 Records show $1.6 million in unreported expenses for new home Janet Miller of The Ann Arbor News reviewed more than 2,000 pages of university spending records obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act to find that "Eastern Michigan University spent at least $5.1 million to build, furnish and landscape a new home for its president, a figure that is $1.6 million more than publicly disclosed." School officials repeatedly said the project cost $3.5 million, but the paper "found expenses, including $860,500 in landscaping on the site and a $76,000 commercial kitchen, that were billed to campus accounts other than the house. The added expenses never were explicitly approved by the regents." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post December 03, 2003 Test scores raise doubts about Houston's education claims Diana Jean Schemo and Ford Fessenden of The New York Times revisit the Texas "education miracle" in Houston, where school officials boasted of higher test scores and academic profiency. "An examination of the performance of students in Houston by The New York Times raises serious doubts about the magnitude of those gains. Scores on a national exam that Houston students took alongside the Texas exam from 1999 to 2002 showed much smaller gains and falling scores in high school reading." The paper analyzed test scores on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills and the Stanford Achievement Test to reach its conclusions. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 18, 2003 Scholarship program does more for wealthier students Andrea Jones, Matt Kempner and Maurice Tamman of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution used state education data to show that a college scholarship program targeted at poorer Georgia students has ended up benefiting the well-off more. Of the 100,000 students attending Georgia's colleges and universities, "HOPE scholars are disproportionately middle- and upper-class" and many would have attended college anyway. The paper also found that "HOPE also has led many students to take easier classes, drop tough courses and take longer to graduate." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 14, 2003 School investigations cost billions Matthew I. Pinzur of The Miami Herald reviewed internal investigations of school district employees in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, finding that it cost more than $2.7 million for such probes during the 2002-03 school year. The districts "mounted serious investigations of nearly 170 employees during the 2002-03 school year. Most of them were teachers, who received full pay and benefits while they did low-level clerical jobs." The average length of an investigation was 170 days in Miami-Dade and 150 days in Broward. One former principal accused of mismanaging school money answered parents' phone calls for nearly two years, earning a total of $147,300. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post November 12, 2003 Wealthiest colleges get more financial aid Greg Winter of The New York Times studied federal education data to find that the "federal government typically gives the wealthiest private universities, which often serve the smallest percentage of low-income students, significantly more financial aid money than their struggling counterparts with much greater shares of poor students." The story says that while it follows that schools with higher costs might be expected to get a larger share of federal assistance, that doesn't always happen. "Even some of the beneficiaries of the imbalance concede that it is not entirely rational, and say they would consent to shedding a few dollars for the sake of parity." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post October 30, 2003 Football revenue supports other prep sports Using school budget and booster club records, Florida Today reporters Alan Snel and John A. Torres discover just how much football means to high schools in Brevard County: "Ticket sales and other revenue from football games have raised nearly $7 out of every $10 schools can spend on prep sports in Brevard, records show." In addition, public money alone represents less than 10 percent of what is spent on high school sports, with booster clubs and other fundraising providing the bulk of the money. "The picture that emerges is a system that spends little public money yet receives much in return. High school sports, an American tradition, prevent kids from dropping out while rallying community support for local schools, experts and educators said." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post October 21, 2003 Private lenders endangering federal student loan program Megan Barnett, Julian E. Barnes and Danielle Knight of U.S. News & World Report find that many colleges and universities are abandoning the U.S. Department of Education's direct-loan program in favor of deals with private lenders that promise profits to the academic institution. "In all, 62 colleges and universities have dropped out of the Education Department's direct-loan program since 2000, and the list is growing." In the process, the U.S. Treasury is losing out on as much as $250 million a year. The story details how the private lenders went about "undercutting the direct-loan program and wooing away big schools like Michigan State." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 26, 2003 Virtual schools would cost state real money S.V. Date and Kimberly Miller of the Palm Beach Post assess the financial impact of a proposal to offer vouchers to students attending Florida's "virtual schools" — Internet-only programs that could appeal to current home-schooled students. Since the state doesn't pay anything for home-schooled children, each one that opted for the computer-based curriculum "would cost the state an extra $4,800 to enroll in virtual school — nearly equaling the savings from seven children who leave traditional 'brick-and-mortar' schools to take the voucher." The Post also reports on the two men who dominate the distribution of donations used to pay for vouchers. The state is investigating the voucher program based on the paper's reporting. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 15, 2003 Discipline reports vary widely among Austin schools Kathy Blackwell of the Austin American-Statesman analyzed five years of high school discipline data for the Austin district to find that "in the past two years, fights and assaults have increased at most of the high schools. Districtwide, reported incidents have increased 33 percent." Comparisons are difficult because the figures change dramatically from campus to campus and because each school can determine its own response to all but a handful of serious incidents. "Campus officials report only incidents that lead to in-school suspension, suspension, removal to the Alternative Learning Center or expulsion. If the violations result in punishment such as detention, a parent-teacher conference or Saturday school, officials don't record them." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post September 08, 2003 Detroit area school officials spend freely L.L. Brasier of the Detroit Free Pressreviewed expense records of the Oakland (Mich.) Intermediate School District and "found a freewheeling environment with few controls over spending on travel, meals and gifts in a district that serves special education and vocational students." The records show that board members and employees spent taxpayer money on travel around the world and on items ranging from a vacuum cleaner and crystal to sight-seeing tours and golf. Meanwhile, "some special-needs students were put on waiting lists for services." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 25, 2003 Air Force Academy players come through prep school Dan Wolken of The (Colorado Springs) Gazette has the story of the Air Force Academy's prep school, a pipeline of athletes for the Academy's football team. "About 42 percent of the prep school’s students during the past 20 years were recruited athletes, a majority of them football players." More than 60 percent of those football players received appointments to the Academy. More than half of the current team's starting players are from the prep school, which does not market its players to other colleges. "Taxpayers pay almost the entire bill for students at the prep school and the academy, meaning tuition, room and board. One year at the prep school costs taxpayers $30,000 per student." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 22, 2003 Records show link between officials, agency Robert Gammon of The Oakland Tribune used public records to show that a California agency tasked with advising the Oakland school district on its finances instead played a key role in placing itself in charge of the struggling school system. "The records show top officials from the Bakersfield-based County Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team (FCMAT) called Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, the office of state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, and then-Compton schools chief Randy Ward at least 40 times each in the months before the takeover. By contrast, FCMAT officials made no calls to the Oakland school leaders they were appointed to advise on how to solve the district's financial problems." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 18, 2003 Fire drills go by the wayside in central Florida schools Mary Shanklin of the Orlando Sentinel reviewed school records to find that "during the past school year, more than a third of 162 Orange County public schools failed to perform the minimum fire drills required by the district." Eighteen schools missed more than one scheduled drill, while three others "skipped mandatory drills during the school year but held them during the summer months when most students were gone." The district has been criticized recently for flaws in its fire-safety program. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 11, 2003 Less qualified teachers assigned to poorer schools Joshua Benton of the Dallas Morning News used state education data to find that "schools serving large numbers of poor and minority students have fewer experienced teachers and fewer who are certified in the subjects they teach," a common national problem. Texas uses teacher experience and certification records to compile a Teacher Preparation Index rating from 1 to 10 for schools. "Schools whose student bodies are more than 90 percent white have an average TPI of 6.3. For schools that are almost entirely Hispanic, that average was 4.6. For blacks, the number was 3.4 percent." The paper made a searchable database of teacher certification available on its Web site (free registration required for both). Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post August 01, 2003 Problems turn up in no-bid contract Dan Keating of The Washington Post uncovered a D.C. public schools contractor who "was paid more than $240,000 in 18 months for work at four District schools for which the same employee handled purchasing. The money was charged on school credit cards intended for incidental purchases." The story uses invoices and billing records to show that some charges appeared to be inflated; other invoices were simply missing. The contractor -- who worked for a business that landed the contract through a no-bid award -- and five school employees were suspended from their jobs in response to the paper's inquiries. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 30, 2003 Gap in law makes fondling more serious than statutory rape Dorren Klausnitzer of The Tennessean compiled state education records showing that teachers accused of statutory rape face lesser penalties than those charged with fondling a student. "That difference is a huge gap in the Tennessee penal code, a gap that was a factor in almost 40% of the known cases in Middle Tennessee involving sexual abuse between teachers and teens." Tennessee and 22 other states have "no laws that specifically address those in a position of trust engaging in sex with students." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 22, 2003 Condition of Cleveland's children compared to Third World Joan Mazzolini and Dave Davis of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer report that Cleveland's children face tougher times than kids in many other large cities, based on an analysis of "quality of life" factors. "In some city neighborhoods, The Plain Dealer found, 30 to 40 infants are dying for every 1,000 who are born -- rates that rival those of Guatemala, Guyana and Romania. And nearly half the city's children live in housing that is run down or old, putting them at risk for lead poisoning, injuries and potent asthma triggers like cockroaches and rats." Social experts compared the paper's finding to third world conditions. Cleveland wasn't alone in the findings; "Ohio as a whole is falling behind the rest of the nation when it comes to protecting children." The paper analyzed more than a million records for the report. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 18, 2003 Athletic directors' salaries, bonuses rival those of CEOs Brian Bennett of The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal used state open-records laws to obtain the contracts of 57 public university athletic directors from seven Division I conferences to find that more than a dozen earn at least $300,000 a year, while the average salary for ADs in the six largest conferences is $268,000. "Many athletic directors' contracts include performance and longevity clauses that can increase the total potential package anywhere from a few thousand dollars to several hundred thousand dollars. And this does not include other perks that have become nearly standard, such as the free use of one or more cars, memberships in private country clubs and supplemental life insurance." Kentucky's AD has the fourth-highest guaranteed salary among his peers, which does not include private schools such as Duke University or Notre Dame who are not subject to public records laws. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 17, 2003 Powerful alumni involved in campus land deal Dan Popkey of The Idaho Statesman spent more than four months investigating a land deal involving the University of Idaho, finding that "a cadre of powerful University of Idaho alumni, including Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, skirted the state's bidding process as they pursued a campus across the road from Boise State University." The paper found that the university "used political clout and bidding specifications tailored for the university to win the bid to build a six-story office, classroom and lab building on the east edge of downtown Boise." Construction of the first phase of the project, the Idaho Water Center, will cost taxpayers $139 million over the next 40 years. When asked to suggest a term other than "rigged" to describe the process, Kempthorne replied: "Weighted. W-E-I-G-H-T-E-D." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 10, 2003 Little link between struggling states, higher tuition Thomas Hargrove and Jessica Wehrman of Scripps Howard News Service combined federal education statistics on public college tuition with budget figures from all 50 states to see if tuition hikes were being caused by states' fiscal woes. In short, they weren't. "A statistical analysis by Scripps Howard News Service found there is little relationship - and in some cases, none at all - between how state government has been affected by the weak economy and how much it has raised college tuition in recent years." More than 550 public colleges and universities were included in the review, which found that "tuition increases were actually highest (averaging 18.0 percent and 16.2 percent) among the two groups of states suffering only moderate economic stress." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 09, 2003 Florida school scores may have different meanings Matthew Waite of the St. Petersburg Times analyzed a database of Florida's Comprehensive Assessement Test scores to show that the grades assigned to schools by the state can mean different things. "To the confusion of parents who rely on the school's grade to determine its quality, an A school can mean different things in Florida. It can be a school where many students get high marks on standardized tests, or it can be a school ... where the scores are improving but still relatively low." Nearly half of all schools got A grades on this year's FCATs, and hundreds relied on improvements rather than high grades alone to get their score. Gov. Jeb Bush told the paper it may be time to "consider raising the bar a bit" in response. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post July 01, 2003 Girls gaining in high school sports Erik Brady and MaryJo Sylwester of USA Today examined data on girls' participation in high school athletics, finding that "the percentage of girls who play varsity sports continues on a slow rise at the same time the percentage for boys is flat." Nearly half of high school boys play varsity sports, but that figure has remained constant for about ten years, while female participation has slowly risen to near 33 percent. Girls have made their largest percentage increases in sports that traditionally have fielded all-boys teams, such as ice hockey, wrestling and football, but also have posted gains in lacrosse, crew and soccer. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 30, 2003 Four med schools produce high rates of troubled docs Jack Dolan and Andrew Julien of The Hartford Courant analyzed medical disciplinary records to find four medical schools that "produce troubled doctors at about 10 times the rate of the best schools." The four -- the Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Mexico, Howard University in Washington, Manila Central University in the Philippines and Meharry Medical College in Nashville -- have yielded "more than 600 doctors cited by licensing boards for negligence, incompetence, sexual assault, drug abuse, fraud or other problems." Other stories in the series address the struggles of schools that primarily serve African-American students and how lower academic standards have lured some students unable to gain a medical degree in the United States. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 26, 2003 Small private college carries high debt Jeffrey Kosseff of The Oregonian analyzed the financial status of Lewis & Clark College and nine other private schools to find that the "private Southwest Portland college carries a small endowment and relatively high debt load." Lewis & Clark relies less on tuition for its revenues than do similar schools, which could hurt it in the long-term, the paper says. "Of the 10 colleges, Lewis & Clark had the highest ratio of liabilities to assets -- 1-to-3 compared with the median of about 1-to-5." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 23, 2003 School district covered up sloppy construction Debbie Cenziper and Jason Grotto of The Miami Herald analyzed data from Miami-Dade's school construction program to find the school district "has routinely covered the signs of sloppy and incomplete construction by demanding that its own maintenance force fix sweeping deficiencies in new schools, diverting crucial dollars from aging campuses waiting for repairs and upgrades." Since 1988, maintenance crews have put in the equivalent of "81 years of around-the-clock work on campuses with new walls, roofs, plumbing, paint, equipment." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 20, 2003 Air Force Academy board ignored charges of assaults Elizabeth Aguilera, David Migoya and Allison Sherry of The Denver Post used 25 years' worth of meeting minutes from an Air Force Academy review board to find that the academy's top officials "didn't always tell the board the true extent of sexual misconduct at the school," and attendance at board meetings was sporadic, with some members never showing up. "Instead, members focused on routine business such as dormitory renovations, cadet pay raises, student grades and the school's honor code -- even though new scandals were reported in the media." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Teachers' sick days add up in Massachusetts Reporters from the Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co.'s four daily newspapers obtained teacher attendance records from 17 school districts north of Boston and analyzed the habits of 6,600 teachers. They found that the "average North of Boston teacher spent more than two weeks away from class during the 2001-02 school year, or 11.4 school days." One teacher took 43 sick days over two school years, including two to care for the family dog. The data was analyzed by David Joyner, projects editor of The Eagle-Tribune Co. newspapers, and Shawn Boburg of The Eagle-Tribune, with the assistance of Grace Rubenstein of The Eagle-Tribune. Here's how they did it. Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co.'s series get reaction. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post June 02, 2003 Attendance key to student success Michele Kurtz and Bill Dedman of The Boston Globe have a two-part series based on an analysis of state testing results for Boston's class of 2003. The key to passage, they found, is attendance: "the faithful student, the student a teacher has a chance to reach, almost always makes it -- no matter her race or class or even native language." More than 9 of 10 students who progress with their class over time "have passed both the English and math portions of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System test. And when those steadily advancing students also attend class at least nine days out of 10 -- meaning they don't miss more than 18 school days, or roughly a month of school, a year -- their passing rate climbs to 94 percent." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Money matters in Texas high school sports Damien Pierce and Jeff Claassen of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram looked at the disparity in athletic results between rich and poor Texas schools, finding that "schools from the state's most affluent communities have begun to dominate University Interscholastic League athletic competitions, giving children from wealthy suburbs a leg up when it comes to painting championship years on the town water tower and winning athletic scholarships." The paper's analysis found that household income, not tax revenues, best predicts athletic success. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post More money doesn't mean better test scores Jason Method of the Asbury Park Press analyzed the results of a 1990 New Jersey Supreme Court decision that provided billions for poorer school districts to find that the extra money "made little difference in students' scores on eighth- and 11th-grade standardized tests in those school systems." Even worse, "until last year, the state didn't even keep track of how well the billions it was investing were spent -- or even if students benefited educationally from the extra money, the Press found." The paper's story retraces the court case, the money that followed and test results from thousands of students. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 30, 2003 Fires can go undetected in Orlando-area schools Mary Shanklin and Mark Schlueb of the Orlando Sentinel report that with school soon to be out for the summer, the risk of undetected fires jumps in local schools: "None of Orange County's public schools has a montoring system for after-hours fire alarms." Local schools have suffered "more than 70 fires since 2000, causing nearly $926,000 in damage. Many of them were arsons, almost all of them unsolved." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post School district standards vary for bus drivers in Indiana Ron Shawgo of The (Fort Wayne, Ind.) Journal-Gazette analyzed state data on Indiana's 21,000 current and former school bus drivers to show that "more than half have at least one traffic violation on their records. One out of 10 has five or more." Several hundred have drug- or alcohol-related charges on their driving records, while some of the offenses are even more bizarre: "24 drivers improperly passed a school bus at some time in their past," and four of them did it after becoming bus drivers themselves. "Unlike some states that set hiring standards for school bus drivers, Indiana allows school officials to use their own comfort level when deciding what constitutes a bad driving record." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 28, 2003 Program failing to diversify university Erik Rodriguez and Sharon Jayson of the Austin American-Statesman studied the effects of Texas' top 10 percent law, in which the top students from state high schools gain admission to the University of Texas, and found that entrance exam scores had fallen "and the measure has failed to substantially improve ethnic diversity on campus," one of its goals when it replaced UT's affirmative action policy. "Students accepted to UT-Austin under the law are making lower SAT scores, while scores for all other students have climbed significantly. And a deluge of top 10-qualified applicants from predominantly white areas appears to offset a growing number of minority students recruited by admissions officials." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post Data shows inequality among school districts Brad Heath of The Detroit News analyzed federal education data to track the impact of Michigan's Proposal A, a 1994 initiative that aimed to narrow the gaps between rich and poor school districts. But the paper's review of money spent on teachers and textbooks "sh ows districts remain divided into haves and have-nots. That means that what a child's education is worth still depends mostly on where they live." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 23, 2003 Student's FOI request reveals patterns in grading Jeremy Crider, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, submitted a public records request seeking information about grades at the school. The result, published and broadcast on VCU Insight, is that "over the past three years, the percentage of A's given out has remained fairly steady. Between 33-34% of all grades awarded every semester were A's. On the flip side, about 15-16% were D's & F's. However, there are fairly dramatic differences between the various colleges and schools at the university and definitely among individual instructors." The project is similar to one done by The Virginian-Pilot earlier this year. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 21, 2003 Teachers union leader's expenses examined Manny Garcia and Joe Mozingo of The Miami Herald obtained almost two years' worth of records detailing the expenses of Miami-Dade teachers union chief Pat Tornillo. The damage: "the union paid credit-card charges totaling at least $350,000 between September 2000 and this March, with little or no scrutiny." The expenditures included stays at opulent hotels, tailored Hong Kong suits and a pair of python-print pajamas for Tornillo and his wife, Donna. "Many of the expenditures, UTD records show, came at a time when teachers were fighting for raises, facing pay cuts or trying to avoid layoffs." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post May 02, 2003 Bills for state contract apparently altered Eddie Curran of the Mobile Register has been looking into the University of Alabama's contracts with a Montgomery advertising agency that appears to have pocketed federal money by altering bills submitted to the university. "As a result, the university -- chosen by the Alabama Department of Transportation to oversee the federally funded contract -- reimbursed the higher sums to Kim & Co. And each time, the one-woman firm owned by former Montgomery television reporter Kim Davis pocketed the $2,137.50, records show." Last year, the state ordered the agency to refund $122,339 it had overbilled on two other contracts. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 30, 2003 Schools fail to report student misconduct accurately The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-Atlanta have a joint investigation about how Gwinnett County school officials underreported student misconduct in state reports. "Other school systems, including Atlanta Public Schools, also underreported disciplinary incidents, but Gwinnett's figures were the most misleading, painting a picture of schools where children rarely fight, steal or menace a classmate." The information is used, in part, to evaluate school safety and can factor in a child's ability to transfer from an unsafe school. Other school districts also underreported or failed to submit any data at all, writes D. Aileen Dodd, but Gwinnett, which maintains its own in-house database, "is the state's only school system whose numbers appear grossly erroneous in relation to its student population." Database editor David Milliron did the data analysis for the story, which has already prompted a state investigation. Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 28, 2003 Chris Davis and Matthew Doig of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune examine the Florida School Recognition Program, the centerpiece of state officials' plan to make schools more accountable. But the money spent by the schools to further the goals was hardly tracked. "Throughout its existence, the program that was designed to hold schools accountable for student performance has had little accountability of its own." A 14-month investigation found that "schools have spent enough recognition money on pizza parties, lawn mowers and other unlawful purchases to hire six teachers in every school district or buy 9,000 laptop computers." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post University's credit card charges raise questions The Kansas City Star spent five years seeking access to audits of the University of Missouri system's credit cards, and reporters Kevin Murphy and Shashank Bengali detail how auditors have routinely found questionable purchases and sought reimbursements. Some $75 million was charged to university procurement cards last year, and spot checks by auditors in eight departments resulted in "$124,000 in transactions that lacked receipts or did not comply with spending policies. Although the systemwide effect cannot be determined, that sample could indicate that more than $3 million in charges would raise questions." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post April 21, 2003 Nearly 2,000 Nevada government employees in $100,000 club Dave Berns of the Las Vegas Review-Journal reviewed state payroll records to find that 1,857 Nevada state, county and local employees earned at least $100,000 in 2002. The last time the paper did a similar survey, in 1997, it found 489 workers in the $100,000 club. "The state system of higher education employed the largest share of six-figure wage earners at 552, with 13 of the state's top 25 moneymakers teaching at Nevada's only medical school." Direct LINK to This Extra! Extra! Post See older postings. |
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