In more than a decade as a New York City public-school teacher, Michelle Broady has seen many of the district’s problems firsthand: rundown buildings, overcrowded classrooms, and shortages of even the most basic supplies. Since she began teaching fifth grade in 1994, she has often had to buy her own chalk, printer cartridges, and “fancy things” like glitter and glue. “How are the students supposed to learn to read without their own reading textbook?” she asks. Broady blames the city schools’ perennial budget woes–which are matched by equally dismal test scores and dropout rates. “Science labs, art, music, and after-school programs have been cut–and sometimes classroom computers don’t work,” she says. “That doesn’t sound like a basic education.” Read the rest of this entry »

When the Pennsylvania attorney general’s office sued a self-described online university last month for allegedly selling fake diplomas–including an M.B.A. it conferred upon an investigator’s house cat–Allen Ezell wasn’t a bit surprised. For 25 years, Ezell, founder and chief of the FBI’s diploma mill task force, pursued fraudsters who sell fake academic credentials using anonymous mailboxes, website hoaxes, and spam. The retired agent’s new book, Degree Mills: The Billion-Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over a Million Fake Diplomas (Prometheus Books, $ 19), coauthored by John Bear, a former FBI consultant, offers a glimpse into the world of education fraud and the Sisyphean task agents face when trying to put forgers out of business. Read the rest of this entry »