A Kansas high school principal resigned after students at the school investigated her educational background.

One student newspaper team ta a Kansas high school is getting praise for doing the digging and facing adversity to find out that the new principal their school had just hired wasn't all she said she was.

Student reporters and editors from the Pittsburgh High School in Southeastern Kansas decided to research the newly hired school principal, Amy Robertson, and were finding some discrepancies and questions about her educational background. Her resume stated that she attended the private Corllins University for her masters and doctorate degrees, but the school's website didn't work. The students began a weeks-long investigation and when they looked into the university itself, they discovered that Corllins University wasn't accredited by the U.S.Department of Education. They also found articles stating that the school was a diploma mill, where people can go and purchase degrees for a fee.

Newspaper adviser Emily Smith told The Washington Post,

“Everybody kept telling them, ‘stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong.' They were at a loss that something that was so easy for them to see was waiting to be noticed by adults."

The six students on the team also looked at the Better Business Bureau and saw that the BBB didn't have a physical address for the University and the school wasn't accredited by the BBB. The students even had a phone conference with Robertson to discuss their findings. The students reported that in this meeting Robertson gave them "incomplete answers, conflicting dates and inconsistencies in her responses." They published their article and findings last Friday.

After the article was published, the school had an emergency faculty meeting and the superintendent told staff that Robertson was also unable to produce a transcript of her undergraduate degree from the University of Tulsa. Due to all of these facts coming to light, the superintendent Destry Brown told the media that "Amy Robertson felt it was in the best interest of the district to resign her position."

When the Kansas City Star spoke to Amy Robertson, she told them:

"The current status of Corllins University is not relevant because when I received my MA in 1994 and my PhD in 2010, there was no issue,' she told the Star. All three of my degrees have been authenticated by the US government. I have no comment in response to the questions posed by PHS students regarding my credentials because their concerns are not based on facts."

Read more about this at the Kansas City Star.

 

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