Fraud Case Against For-Profit Kaplan in the Works; Fewer “Dropout Factory” High Schools

Ben Wilcox, former dean of Kaplan who’s on trial for allegedly sending threatening messages from company computers, is planning a lawsuit of his own against the for-profit college. Wilcox says that officials have “framed him to undermine his allegations of widespread misconduct” at the company. The misconduct he refers to includes accusations of widespread grade inflation, misleading prospective students, falsifying documents to obtain accreditation, and illegally enrolling employees to receive federal funds.  Before announcing his plans to file a whistle-blower lawsuit, he retracted previous statements that he “falsely confessed” to the FBI out of chivalry, he says, to protect his future wife from interrogation about company fraud. [The Chronicle of Higher Education]

Dismal nationwide graduation rates have made plenty of headlines, but the rate of graduation in the country is on the rise. America’s Promise Alliance, a non-profit group founded by former Secretary of State Colin Powell, released a report that showed a 3 percent increase in graduation rates—from 72 percent in 2002 to 75 percent in 2008. But the graduation rate increase is far from an overall trend.  While some states such as New York and Tennessee experienced a significant increase, three states—Arizona, Nevada and Utah—experienced a significant drop in their graduation rates. [New York Times]

In addition to the release of the America’s Promise Alliance report, the Washington-based policy firm that initially galvanized American elected officials with a 2006 report on the crisis of “dropout factory” high schools in the U.S. now says that many states have revitalized or closed such schools.  Civic Enterprise released a new report entitled “Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic” surveying the efforts of states to increase their graduation rates by keeping students engaged in classrooms. The study reported that the number of dropout factories decreased from 2001’s 2,007 schools to 1,764 in 2008, the year of the latest available data on state-by-state graduation rates. The decrease, however, is misleading, since 700 new schools have been classified as “dropout factories,” detracting from the news of a 216 school decrease and the 900 former dropout factories that turned themselves around. [Education Week]

George Castro, a man with an undetermined connection to Columbia University, is accused of nabbing nearly $5 million from the university via its electronic payment system.  After discovering the disappearance in funds, university officials filed a claim with the state District Attorney’s office whose investigators say that Castro reportedly told them the money “just appeared in his account” when they arrived at his home. [The Columbia Spectator]

Derrick Haynes is a journalism intern at Campus Progress.

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