Sunday, November 16, 2008

Public School Atrocity of the Week

From Friday's Dallas Morning News:
Years after being advised by a state agency to stop, the Dallas Independent School District continued to provide foreign citizens with fake Social Security numbers to get them on the payroll quickly.

Some of the numbers were real Social Security numbers already assigned to people elsewhere. And in some cases, the state's educator certification office unknowingly used the bogus numbers to run criminal background checks on the new hires, most of whom were brought in to teach bilingual classes. . .

The investigative report, obtained by The News through a records request, found "that the inappropriate procedure of assigning false SSNs has been systemic for several years" within DISD's alternative certification program, which prepares new teachers for state certification when they don't have traditional credentials.

A call Thursday to DISD's alternative certification office was not returned. In recent years, DISD has hired people from various countries, including Mexico and Spain, to deal with a shortage of bilingual teachers.

The fake numbers were assigned as a stopgap to expedite the hiring process, the report says. The numbers were supposed to serve as temporary identification numbers until employees received real Social Security numbers. Once employees got the real numbers, they were supposed to tell district officials so the fake ones could be replaced.
There's a word for this--fraud. And did you note liberal love for bilingualism turns teaching certificates into "traditional credentials." Unsurprisingly, some of those foreign teachers couldn't speak English! Relativism: Is there nothing it can't do?

(via The Corner, Ed Morrissey)

3 comments:

Assistant Village Idiot said...

People will increasingly school their kids in some combination of home, online, and a la carte private classes. The public schools aren't going away anytime soon, but their share of the educational hours will drop year by year.

@nooil4pacifists said...

This is way out of my expertise, but alternatives to public school require either money and/or time. I don't see many parents with a surplus of either, and thus question the erosion of public school market share.

Anonymous said...

aaaaaaaaaaaaaugggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!1!!!!!

(former public school teacher)

;o/