Crib some notes on all things educational in San Diego, from the latest and greatest classroom innovations to scuffles on the school board, from school lunches to the teachers union.
Reporter Emily Alpert hits the books, dials the decision makers and navigates the bureaucracy so you don't have to, keeping you posted throughout each day on the education beat. Contact her atemily.alpert@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5665 and follow her on Twitter:twitter.com/emilyschoolsyou.
The Sweetwater Scandal Roundup
If you haven't been reading some of the watchdog coverage from the Union-Tribune of the Sweetwater Union High School District, take some time and give it a read. It's a good example of how persistent reporting and public records tell us important things about what government is up to:
• Today the U-T broke the news that public relations consultant Scott Alevy charged Sweetwater for time he spent running a gala for a nonprofit that he leads.
The paper previously found problems with Alevy's billing, too. It talked to people Alevy had billed the district for meeting with, only to have them say they didn't remember meeting with him or remembered the meetings differently than he did. The school district hired a former U.S. attorney to probe the billings.
• Superintendent Jesus Gandara has a meals allowance, but was still racking upthousands of dollars in meals on a school district credit card. The school district decided to cancel the credit card after the news broke.
New York's attorney general is investigating Bridgepoint Education, the San Diego-based for-profit company, the New York Times reported Thursday. Bridgepoint is one of five for-profit higher education companies targeted by Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. From the Times:
Mr. Schneiderman is looking into whether the schools and their recruiters misrepresent their success in finding students jobs, the quality of instruction, the cost of attending, and the program's accreditation, among other things. Such activities could constitute deceptive trade practices or fraud.
We've reported on Bridgepoint's remarkable ability to attract profits and controversyfor its business practices. The company or its colleges in Iowa and Colorado have faced inquiries from the U.S. Department of Education and Iowa's attorney general and was the subject of a U.S. Senate hearing.
Update: Bridgepoint confirmed the investigation in a filing with the federal Securities and Exchanges Commission, Reuters is reporting. It said the attorney general requested documents and information since March 2005, and the company intends to comply with the request.
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Please contact Emily Alpert directly at emily.alpert@voiceofsandiego.org or 619.550.5665 and follow her on Twitter: twitter.com/emilyschoolsyou.
There was one big question that stuck in my mind after we found out that San Diego Unified had corrected grades for more than a dozen students at the Met, a small high school wracked by a long saga over whether it had improperly changed grades.
Because the school district undertook three different investigations that took nearly two years, most of the impacted students had already graduated.
Area Superintendent Mike Price, who oversees the Met, said the grade corrections didn't cause a big change in students' grade point averages. But whether the difference is big or small, what does a college do if a student gets in with one set of grades and then later finds out that the grades aren't correct?
I posed the question to the University of California, San Diego and San Diego State University. (Just to be clear, I don't know if any of the Met students whose grades were corrected went to those specific schools, but I wanted to know how, theoretically, the colleges would handle this kind of situation.)