You Just Can't Keep A Crooked Charter School Down

Remember Dr Ted Morris Jr., BA, MA, PhD, and MSW, and his Greater Works Charter School?

Remember how the charter application was pulled back after Morris was revealed as a con man who lied about his degrees and his work experience?

Well, the school's back - and it's going to be bigger than ever:

The former trustees of Greater Works Charter School are applying again to open a charter school in Rochester, this time under a different name and without their disgraced 22-year-old leader.

Greater Works was approved by the state to open in 2015-16 before it was revealed that its lead applicant, 22-year-old Ted Morris Jr., had fabricated most of his academic and professional experience.

Morris resigned, and the remaining trustees withdrew their application. The New York State Education Department, which failed to catch the lies in the first place, later instituted new safeguards to verify applicants' credentials.

The remaining trustees, led by Keuka College education professor Peter Kozik, said at the time that they planned to re-submit their application without Morris, and they started that process in January with a formal letter of intent. The name of the venture has been changed to ROC Charter School.

The vision of the prospective school is somewhat different — for instance, the school would eventually serve grades 7-12 rather than just 9-12.

The letter of intent acknowledges the problems with Greater Works, but Kozik said the Morris affair, while unexpected, did not throw the remaining trustees far off their path.

"We didn't lose much momentum at all," he said. "There was really no sense of our progress being slowed."

Oh, goodie - the trustees didn't lose much momentum despite having worked with a con artist front man they met on the Internet to open a charter school with little-to-no financial backing from anybody but the state tax coffers.

And if approved by NYSED and the Board of Regents, they'll be ready for the charter school boom Governor Cuomo plans for his second term.

Good times in the charter world!

Nothing can keep a crooked charter school down.

Will Merryl Tisch's New NYSED Teacher Arbitrators Do Same Job NYSED Did With "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. Vetting?

In the middle of a Daily News editorial approving of the Cuomo/Tisch plan to "toughen" teacher evaluations and so-called accountability measures comes this:

In conjunction with this evaluation overhaul, the governor and Legislature must finally fix the tangled process for severing the worst teachers from the payroll.

The machinery is Soviet in its efficiency. In New York City, the average length of hearing time required to render a decision on terminating a teacher is a slothlike 190 days.

Tisch and Berlin urge replacing union-approved contractor arbitrators with a new cadre of state employees “who will be held accountable for strict adherence” to timelines written in law.

Right - just the way the merry men and women in reform at NYSED held themselves accountable when they handed over a charter school to a con artist who lied about his work experience and credentials.

Oh, no - wait.

No one was held accountable for that mess.

Regents Chancellor Tisch blamed SED.

The head of the charter division at NYSED went into hiding and refused to respond to queries from the press over the "Dr" Ted matter.

NYSED Commissioner King slunk out of Albany without ever addressing how "Dr" Ted got a charter school.

And the lieutenant governor at the time made excuses for "Dr" Ted and refused to push for any accountability for SED or the Regents.

That's an extraordinary amount of accountability from the state educrats who Tisch now wants to replace contractor arbitrators for teacher hearings.

Oh, no - wait.

They completely passed the buck on accountability.

I'm sure they'll be more accountable in that process though.

Yeah, right.

Who knows - "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. might end as an arbitrator.

Wouldn't that be a perfect emblem of accountability for the educrats at NYSED and the Board of regents?

Regents Chancellor Tisch Looks To Turn Page On The "Dr" Ted Morris Mess By Smacking De Blasio Over Charter Renewals

As we know from past experience with the "Dr" Ted Morris mess, literally anybody can get a charter school here in New York State.

So it's interesting when we see Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the rest of her merry men and women on the Board of Regents publicly smack Bill de Blasio and Carmen Farina over charter school renewals:

The Board of Regents refused Monday to issue renewals to six under-performing New York City charter schools and asked Chancellor Carmen Fariña to Albany to explain why the city bothered to send up their applications.

The city had asked the Regents to extend two charters through June 2017 and four others through June 2018, instead of the typical five-year period.

But the Regents questioned whether the schools, which fell below the average on state tests last year, could ever make the grade.

“I wouldn’t vote to keep most of these school open,” said Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, according to a Chalkbeat report.

Fariña was invited to the next Regents meeting in January to explain why the city backed the schools.

Make no mistake, Tisch and the Regents want to look "tough" on charters as Cuomo and the Regents prepare their "aggressive" charter expansion agenda for the next legislative session, so it's not hard to get cynical over Tisch's public smack down of Farina and De Blasio over these six charter renewals.

I dunno why De Blasio decided to renew the charters, although NY reporter Lindsey Crist raised a good point:

@NYDNBenChapman @perdidostschool @GDeckernews @joshgreenman I'm serious! They said they wouldn't close schools for low performance right now
— Lindsey Christ (@LindseyChrist) December 15, 2014

@NYDNBenChapman @perdidostschool @GDeckernews @joshgreenman Or is this just what "a moratorium on school closures" looks like?
— Lindsey Christ (@LindseyChrist) December 15, 2014

I had a little more cynical take:

@LindseyChrist @NYDNBenChapman @GDeckernews @joshgreenman How much of this is fallout from de Blasio's loss to Eva?
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) December 15, 2014

@LindseyChrist @NYDNBenChapman @GDeckernews @joshgreenman I bet they remember $5 mil in anti-BdB ads, plummeting polls
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) December 15, 2014

@LindseyChrist @NYDNBenChapman @GDeckernews @joshgreenman Are they overcompensating the other way now?
— realitybasededucator (@perdidostschool) December 15, 2014

In any case, I think you cannot underestimate the cynicism of Merryl Tisch here.

It's not a mistake that she publicly admonishes Farina and de Blasio over these renewals in the weeks after NYSED and the Regents handed a con man a charter school in Rochester.

Nothing like getting "tough" in the latest battle to make the memory of a former one go away. 

Daily News Hawks Merryl Tisch As Part "15 For 2015" List, But Carol Burris' Assessment Much More Accurate

It's so interesting to see the selective writing of the functionaries for the oligarchy at the Daily News when it comes to Merryl Tisch.

They have a "15 For 2015" fluff piece out today that promotes the usual neo-liberal claptrap you get from the Zuckerman Daily News -and Regents Chancellor Tisch is on that list:

MERRYL TISCH
Mayor de Blasio has often accused his predecessor, Mike Bloomberg, of hastily abandoning failing schools in favor and closing and reopening them as clusters of new, small schools.

Although the evidence shows that the smaller schools have well served their students, de Blasio has done his own quick abandonment — of the reform strategy.

He and schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña say they will turn around 96 struggling campuses with new money and services, firing staff only as a last resort.

But state Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch is unlikely to let the experiment play out — and with good reason: The schools "have failed for generations now," she says.

She has the power to effectively order them closed if de Blasio and Fariña fail to sufficiently overhaul teaching staffs.

Meantime, Tisch will be at the center of negotiations to toughen teacher evaluations, with Gov. Cuomo breathing down her neck.

She'll continue to champion the worthy Common Core standards, which remain under siege across the state. In 2015, they will get weakened for good — or be cemented in classrooms from Brooklyn to Buffalo.

All that is after she finds a likeminded state education commissioner to replace the outgoing John King. Josh Greenman

What's missing from Josh Greenman's paean to Tisch?

Lots of stuff, including the awful Common Core implementation (which Governor Cuomo himself criticized, calling it "chaos") and Tisch's refusal to take responsibility for handing over a charter school to a con man named "Dr" Ted Morris Jr.

Carol Burris had a much more accurate assessment of Merryl Tisch at The Answer Sheet.

Here it is, in full:

The hallmark of a corporate reformer is an undying belief that numerical measures of accountability are the primary lever of school change. New York State Schools Chancellor, Merryl Tisch, is just such a reformer — a true believer in “what gets measured gets done.” From school, teacher and principal evaluation systems, measurement by the numbers distinguishes the focus of Tisch’s school reforms.

In describing her rollout of Common Core testing, Tisch said, “we jump into the deep end,” using the royal “we” to obscure the fact that kids were taking the jump. She also rejected the notion that school and educator ratings be put on hold during the rollout, stating that “we cannot have the implementation of Common Core that is isolated from an accountability system.”

Despite the repeated use of “we,” Tisch has excluded herself, her state commissioner of education and her Board of Regents from the ratings. Accountability is for students, educators and schools, who have little to no input into the commanded change.

Although I do not suggest we subject Tisch to the silly number ratings given to teachers and principals, I do think it is fair to review New York student growth under her leadership. Tisch was selected as chancellor in the spring of 2009. Since 2010, New York’s graduation rate increased only 1.5 percent, which includes two years of no growth at all. In looking at graduation data, one will note that prior to 2010, state graduation rates were climbing, even as graduation standards (meaning the required passing of Regents exams), were increasing. In addition, the earning of the Regents Diploma with Advanced Designation, a consistent bar with no change in standards, has been flat since she became chancellor.

In 2009, the average New York SAT scores were 485 (reading), 502 (math), and 478 (writing). In 2014, they were nearly identical—488, 502, 478 —no improvement there to show.

Tisch “raised the bar” for Grade 3-8 proficiency in 2010, and in 2011 and 2012, there was little or no growth in student achievement. In 2013, the Common Core tests were given and proficiency rates dramatically dropped. Though the chancellor promised that scores would improve the second year of the Common Core tests, there were no improvements in English Language Arts scores and minimal improvement in math.

If teachers and principals are to be judged by score growth, what growth has the chancellor created after nearly six years at the helm? The whirling dervish of change in standards, tests, diploma requirements and accountability measures, has produced no discernible increase in student performance. Perhaps the hope is that if you change everything else, no one will notice that no progress has been made.

The fascination with holding teachers and schools accountable by the numbers has generated an endless (and expensive) stream of data from the New York State Education Department, which she oversees. One of the most recent measures was a report entitled “Where Are They Now?” described in an New York State Education Department slide show that makes claims about the percentages of New York public high school students who enroll in college.

In conjunction with this report, the state Education Department posted school by school figures, purporting to show how many graduates were attending college, with data that they claimed came directly from the National Student Clearinghouse.  The data are fraught with error and under-reporting of college enrollment, which I wrote about here. What I did not know when I wrote the blog was where the error originated. Since that time, I have received access to the database of my school’s graduates at the Clearinghouse level, and have determined that the vast majority of the under-reporting errors, (22 of 31 in a class of 261), were made in the generation of the State Education Department report. Meanwhile, Westchester and Rockland county districts are finding even greater rates of error than my school’s 12 percent, with some schools’ rates at over 20 percent.

What is remarkable is that the chancellor has yet to admit these errors, or even ask the department to take down the public reports, which can still be found here.

In the past month, other examples of serious error on the part of the New York State Education Department have come to light regarding charter school approval and regulation. Tisch has been part of a public campaign to increase charter schools, with the chancellor asserting, “I believe in opening them aggressively.”

Part of the aggressive campaign was the approval of the Greater Works Charter School by her Board of Regents. The leader of Greater Works was 22-year-old  Dr. Ted Morris, Jr. When it came to light that that his resume was a collection of lies and misrepresentations, Tisch not only deflected the blame but said that the charter school, whose board was recruited through Craig’s list, should still open. Following continued accounts in the press, New York State Education Department finally asked the charter to withdraw its application.

Leonie Haimson of Class Size Matters provides an excellent account of that and other New York charter scandals here. She concludes her blog by asking in reference to the State Education Department and Tisch, “where is the accountability for them?”

Given the current system of appointment, Merryl Tisch, who has wealth and deep political connections, will likely remain in power. She is married to billionaire James S. Tisch, the CEO of the Loews Corporation, and has been a friend since childhood of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who controls the appointments through the votes of the Assembly. The people of New York have no direct mechanism to have her removed.

In her oversized influence on the fate of public school children, Tisch is hardly alone. Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Walton family, Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg are but a few of the other billionaire reformers who have managed to bend public education to their will, while absolving themselves from any accountability for the damage their policies have wrought. They are socially buffered by surrounding themselves with like-minded individuals who are insulated from bad educational policies because their children and grandchildren attend private schools or sycophants who tell them only what they want to hear. Public school educators and parents are caricatured and dismissed as either self-interested or ignorant and misinformed.

Healthy democracies infuse accountability throughout the system–from the bottom to the top. We cannot afford a governance system where those who assume positions of power–whether elected or appointed–escape responsibility.

This year, six Regents are up for reappointment. Given the past year of discontent — during which the majority of New York voters have rejected the Common Core, high-stakes standardized testing and the evaluation of teachers by test scores, polls shows — it is time for the Democratic Assembly to be accountable to the public by appointing Regents who more closely reflect the views and experience of their constituents. If they are not willing to assume that responsibility, then the public should demand a direct voice either through Regent or State Commissioner election.

Amazing how Daily News editor Josh Greenman managed to ignore all of the points Burris raised + the "Dr" Ted fiasco.

Par for the course, though, at both the Daily News editorial board and in the corridors of power.

Accountability is for the little people, skirting accountability is for the powerful and the Daily News editorial pages are there to spread the neo-liberal claptrap and propaganda.

Board Of Regents Will Choose "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. To Replace Dr John King As NYSED Commissioner

How exciting - NYSED Commissioner Dr. John King is leaving his post for a job in the Obama administration and the Board of Regents have announced that he'll be replaced by con man "Dr" Ted J. Morris Jr., the fraud who lied about having a BA, an MA, a Ph.D and an MSW when he was the lead applicant for a charter school in Rochester, New York.

The Board of Regents and NYSED approved "Dr" Ted and his board of trustees (all of whom he had met on the Internet) for their Greater Works Charter School, but the application hit a snag when it was revealed Morris had lied about his credentials and work experience.

Dr Ted resigned from the board and the charter application was pulled back by the rest of the trustees after public criticism over the fraud by Morris forced NYSED to ask it be withdrawn.

Morris was disappointed at the time of his resignation from the Greater Works Charter School, but in the end he may go on to even greater things.

In a statement, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch stated that the full of Board of Regents will have to vote on "Dr" Ted at their next meeting, but she will be aggressively pushing Morris to replace King.

"We have had enough of the same old same old in public education," Tisch said in her statement, "which is why Reformy John King was such a breath of fresh air at NYSED.  We needed an NYSED Commissioner who had never taught in a public school, who despised public schools and public school teachers, who wanted to open charter schools all over the state and wanted to use NYSED as the power base to do just that. In short we wanted an NYSED Commissioner who was committed to destroying public education as we know it and making it into a private institution for the profit of the few."

Tisch went on to say that she thought King had been quite successful at destroying public schools in New York State but the job hadn't been completed.

"Alas, it's hard for any political functionary, no matter how successful he or she is, to destroy a public institution that's been around so long in just five years. That's why it's important that Dr King be followed by Dr Morris as NYSED Commissioner.  If anybody can destroy public schools in the same vein as Dr King, it's Dr Morris."

As for John King, he is failing upwards, heading to Washington to do for the nation's public schools what he did for New York's public schools - bring about chaos, plummeting test scores and charters, charters, charters...

Tisch said she wishes King well and only hopes he can find a decent school for his kids in D.C. that doesn't have the Common Core State Standards or CCSS testing in place.

"Kingsie is happy to push this stuff on everybody else's kids," Tisch told a reporter, "but he knows he can't very well have his own children attend a school with that stuff."

NYSED Charter School Director In Hiding Over "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. Charter Fiasco

Well, Dr Ted's charter school is no more:

Greater Works Charter School will no longer open in Rochester in 2015, part of the continuing fallout over lies in the resume of its 22-year-old founder. 

Ted Morris Jr. represented himself to the New York State Education Department as a precocious businessman and educational advisor with bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees earned mostly online. In fact, he has no college degrees and scant professional experience.  

He resigned Nov. 25, the day most of the misrepresentations came to light and just a week after the school gained approval from the state Board of Regents. At that point, both Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and Peter Kozik, who took over as the school's trustee chairman in Morris' wake, said the school would open as planned without him. 

But a NYSED spokesman said Monday that the department had asked the board of trustees to rescind its application, and the trustees complied in a letter dated Nov. 29. They are also asking the Board of Regents to take back its approval.

You'd think NYSED would take responsibility for this mess now that they've admitted there was a problem by asking the board of Greater Works to rescind the charter application.

But you'd be wrong about that:

In response to questions about how the charter was approved in the first place, given the holes in Morris' resume, NYSED spokesman Dennis Tompkins said: "We don't grant charters to individuals. We grant charters to boards based on the application." 

NYSED would not make Bill Clarke, its charter school office director, available for an on-the-record interview, and did not respond to specific questions about Greater Works, but spokesman Tom Dunn said the department is reviewing its charter school application process. 

That the charter school office director at NYSED is in hiding from the press says volumes here.

It's a shame the accountability people at NYSED don't like to be held accountable themselves.

But that's par for the course when it comes to the education reformers at NYSED - or education reformers in general.

Zephyr Teachout Publicizes Cuomo's Planned Giveaway Of Public Schools To His Hedge Fund Buddies

There's a news conference today:

At noon, Zephyr Teachout, former gubernatorial candidate; WFP NYS Director Bill Lipton; AQE Advocacy Director Zakiyah Ansari; public school parents, community leaders, and advocates “target hedge fund takeover of New York schools,” Tweed Courthouse, 52 Chambers St., Manhattan.

The Daily News has more:

Fordham law professor Zephyr Teachout is promising to remain a thorn in Gov. Cuomo's side -- the former gubernatorial challenger is re-joining forces with the Working Families Party Tuesday to fight Cuomo on charter schools, the Daily News has learned.

The WFP -- which picked Teachout as its candidate for governor before ditching her to endorse Cuomo in the Democratic primary last June -- is teaming up with its old ally to fight Cuomo's efforts to raise the state's cap on charter schools in a possible special session next week.

On Tuesday, they plan to release a report entitled “Corruption in Education: The Hedge Fund Takeover of New York's Schools."

Many of Cuomo's top donors are funding the charter school lobby, Teachout charges, singling out in the report Carl Icahn, Paul Tudor Jones and Dan Loeb for pouring "more than $10 million into state lobbying and election campaigns since the beginning of 2014, with electrifying results."

“I see Cuomo trying to pass policy in hasty, secretive ways,” she said in an interview. "Cuomo is trying to redefine education policy on the fly, in a one-week period after a seven-week campaign. I think it hasn't gone through the layer of public debate.”

Cuomo has already told us he wants to "break" the public school monopoly.

He has also told us he plans to see expansion of charters all across the state - that is one of the lasting legacies he thinks he can achieve.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said she wants to see "aggressive" expansion of charters in the state as well.

This comes after we learned that the Regents and the NYSED gave a charter school to a con man who lied about his education credentials, work experience and pretty much everything else on his application.

This also comes after an analysis of state audits of charters showed this:

New York State charter schools have made more than $28 million in questionable expenditures since 2002, according to a new review of previous audits of the publicly funded, privately run schools.

The Center for Popular Democracy’s analysis charter school audits found investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.


...


The state controller’s office and state Education Department have audited 62 of New York’s 248 charter schools, according to Serrette’s report. All told, Serrette’s group estimates wasteful spending at charters could cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year.

The most effective pushback against the planned charter cap increase is to continually point out the fraudulent activity engaged in by many charter operators and the lack of oversight being conducted by the state.

If "Dr" Ted Morris, professional con man, can get a charter school in this state, than anybody can get a charter school in this state.

And once a charter is in place, it takes an awful lot to get it closed, no matter how bad the financial mismanagement or fraud.

Raising or eliminating the charter cap will just bring more opportunities for the charter school criminals to steal money and resources from the public schools to line their own pockets.

Even when charters aren't engaging in out-and-out fraud, they're stealing from public schools.

Take Success Academies, for example.

We already see Eva Moskowitz spending millions on advertising and political lobbying (and paying herself over half a million a year to boot) even as she claims poverty when it comes to paying rent for her schools.

Imagine what will happen if the cap is increased or eliminated completely.

Say no to Cuomo and the cap increase.

Cuomo Wants APPR To Play Role In Hiring, Firing, Tenure Decisions

Behind a paywall at Capital NY, but State of Politics has this summery:

At a private Forbes magazine-sponsored discussion forum in June, Gov. Andrew Cuomo told an audience of wealthy philanthropists that state-mandated performance evaluations should be the basis for hiring, firing and tenure decisions.

No surprise that's what he told his hedge fundie and Wall Street criminal friends back in June.

With one lawsuit against APPR already working its way through the system and with more and more of the NYSED data under attack for large margins of error, it will be interesting to see how he argues APPR is sacrosanct.

But you can bet he will.

It's up to us to point out again and again that the data APPR is based on is suspect at best, phonied up or worse at worst.

The nonsense with "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. last week doesn't help the case of Cuomo or the state when they try and push themselves as the "adults" in the room simply looking to add much-needed accountability to the school system.

As we saw when the Regents and SED dodged blame for "Dr" Ted and Cuomo's outgoing lieutenant governor made excuses for "Dr" Ted's fraud, the system that really needs accountability is the one supposedly holding the rest of us accountable.

Audit Analysis Finds New York Charter School Sector Rife With Fraud

Ben Chapman in today's Daily News:

New York State charter schools have made more than $28 million in questionable expenditures since 2002, according to a new review of previous audits of the publicly funded, privately run schools.

The Center for Popular Democracy’s analysis charter school audits found investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.

Kyle Serrette, executive director of the progressive, Washington-based group, said the review of previously published audits showed the schools need greater oversight.

“We can’t afford to have a system that fails to cull the fraudulent charter operators from the honest ones,” said Serrette. “Establishing a charter school oversight system that prevents fraud, waste and mismanagement will attack the root cause of the problem.”

An oversight system for charter schools in New York State?

Ha, that's a laugh.

You can literally lie about everything other than your birth date on your application as head of a charter school and the New York State oversight entities (the Board of Regents and NYSED) won't catch you.

Even after your caught, no one at the oversight entities will take responsibility for giving charter approval to a fraudulent lead applicant - they'll instead try and pass the buck to one of the other entities.

The political establishment will make excuses for the fraudulent behavior, minimizing it is a "mistake" instead of the criminal behavior it is.

And the school will STILL open, despite it's birthing by a fraudster, so long as said fraudster "resigns" from the board of trustees.

Chapman's Daily News article comes at a sensitive time for charters because they are looking to increase or eliminate the charter cap in the spring but are having to live down the "Dr" Ted Morris Jr. fraud fiasco I referenced above as Exhibit A for why charters are a problem.

And now comes this:

The state controller’s office and state Education Department have audited 62 of New York’s 248 charter schools, according to Serrette’s report. All told, Serrette’s group estimates wasteful spending at charters could cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year.

Eighteen audits targeted charters in New York City, representing about 9% of the 197 charters in the five boroughs. Each audit found issues.

• A 2012 audit found Brooklyn Excelsior Charter School was paying $800,000 in excess annual fees to the management company that holds its building’s lease.
• A 2012 audit of Williamsburg Charter High School revealed school officials overbilled the city for operations and paid contractors for $200,800 in services that should have been provided by the school’s network.
• A 2007 audit of the Carl C. Icahn Charter School determined the Bronx school spent more than $1,288 on alcohol for staff parties and failed to account for another $102,857 in expenses.

And that's just what's been found with financial audits.

Imagine top to bottom investigation of charter practices, including state test scores (which are self-graded at high school charters), attrition rates and special education services.

There's a reason Eva Moskowitz sued to keep audits from happening at her charter chain (and won that suit, though that victory came before changes to the auditing procedures in last spring's state budget agreement.)

There's a reason why the charter school sector is in the game to sue the city and state comptrollers to limit the audits that were decreed legal and necessary by last year's budget agreement.

They don't want anybody looking into them because they understand the charter sector is a Wild, Wild West industry where pretty much anything goes.

If that isn't obvious after the "Dr" Ted J Morris Jr fraud fiasco, I don't know what it is.

But it's even more true after these the Center For Popular Democracy's audit analysis.

The key takeaway from Ben Chapman's DN story is:

Eighteen audits targeted charters in New York City, representing about 9% of the 197 charters in the five boroughs. Each audit found issue...investigators uncovered probable financial mismanagement in 95% of the schools they examined.

Not every charter was audited but every charter that was audited had issues.

What that says to me is, it's time to target every charter school for auditing.

And since neither oversight body at the state level (the Regents or the NYSED) managed to catch the fraud of "Dr" Ted J Morris Jr, the con man who claimed to have a BA, an MA, a Ph.D, and an MSW (he may not even have a high school diploma), the state and city comptrollers need to be the leads on these audits.

When the oversight bodies that are supposed to hold charters accountable don't care to do their jobs and make excuses for a lack of oversight when fraud is exposed via the news or blogosphere, it means those oversight entities should no longer have oversight responsibilities.

The aggressively pro-charter Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and the former charter school founder NYSED Commissioner John King are part of the problem with charters, not part of the solution.

Daily News Praises Merryl Tisch For School Closure Threats Even As She Fails To Take Responsibility For Ted Morris Fiasco

Daily News today:

New York’s top education official has sent a timely shot across the city’s bow — warning that school renewal plans unveiled by Mayor de Blasio may well fall short of the genuine accountability the state has every right to demand.

Cheers to Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch for clarifying that kids will never be rescued from failing schools if the worst teachers remain in their classrooms.

...

 In stepped Tisch, saying bluntly that “if we do not see movement with these lowest-performing schools in terms of their ability to retool their workforces by the spring” — that’s this spring — “we will move to close them.”

These schools, Tisch said correctly, “have failed for generations now.”

“It’s not just saying, ‘We’re gonna fix these schools,’ ” she said. “You’ve got to give the new principals and assistant principals the ability to hire the teachers that they want and fire the teachers that they don’t want.”

Ah, yes - Tisch is happy to tell Mayor de Blasio to close public schools and fire the teachers in those schools or she'll step in as a state entity and do it for him.

Meanwhile, she shirks blame for the "Dr." Ted Morris Jr. mess, passing the buck onto the local Regents and NYSED for the state's approval of a charter school with a lead applicant who lied about having a BA, an MA, a Ph.D, an MSW and starting three non-profits since he was ten years old.

Mercedes Schneider wrote a scathing post last night that exposes the lack of due diligence that the state did on this charter application and notes that both the Regents Chancellor and the current lieutenant governor, Robert Duffy, are making excuses for why Morris, the con man, got a charter.

She finishes her post with this:

For at least three years– 2012, 2013, and 2014– Morris has been misrepresenting himself to NYSED and, by extension, to Regents and the citizens of Rochester.

He clearly meant to do so.

Others found him out; otherwise, it is almost certain Morris would have continued in his lies.
Morris has been exposed– and with him both NYSED’s and Regents’ failure to properly investigate the charters they have approved.

Time to step up, Tisch:

At least ask to see evidence of NYSED’s having verified lead applicant credentials before stamping your “aggressive” approval.

The Daily News of course ignores the whole Morris fiasco because it doesn't play into their "Tisch is the adult in the room" frame for the closure threat story.

Tisch's refusal to take responsibility for the Morris fiasco, her passing the buck onto the local Regents and NYSED for handing a fraudster a charter school, shows she is NOT the adult in the room, that she only pushes her authority as chancellor when it suits her agenda.

As a pro-charter, anti-public school reformer, Tisch isn't interested in holding Ted Morris, Greater Works Charter School, NYSED, the local Regents, herself or the charter approval process accountable for the Morris mess.

She is, however, happy to hold Mayor de Blasio, Chancellor Farina and the teachers in NYC schools accountable for "improvement" of performance by spring or she's going to step in and force closure of some schools.

Apparently only unionized teachers and their schools are to be held accountable in Merryl Tisch's New York.

Charter School Shills Pass The Buck

We hear so much about holding teachers accountable these days.

Business leaders, politicians, members of the media, celebrities who have nothing to do with education or schools - they all want to talk about how teachers need to be held accountable for their performance, for their students' performances, for the performance of their schools, even for the economic performance of the nation as a whole.

We're often told that charter schools are just the thing to hold teachers and public schools accountable - in fact, Governor Andrew Cuomo told us this right before the election and Regents Chancellor Tisch stated something similar on the radio a couple of weeks ago.

That's why it was so ironic when the story broke this week that the New York Board of Regents and the New York State Education Department signed off on a charter school with a lead applicant who lied about his credentials and his work experience.

22-year old "Dr." Ted Morris Jr.. the lead applicant for the Greater Works Charter School in Rochester, claimed to have a BA, an MA, a Ph.D and an MSW as well as experience starting three non-profits.

All those claims turned out to be lies.

We still don't know if Morris has even a high school diploma - the online school Morris admitted attending after another lie he told about graduating from Rochester's School Without Walls was exposed as fraudulent still hasn't acknowledged whether Morris actually graduated from it or not.

In any case, this was the perfect "accountability moment" for the charter school movement, a great opportunity for both charter backers and the politicians and political functionaries who support them to show the rest of us that accountability isn't just for public schools and public school teachers, it's for charter schools and charter school staff too.

Instead the politicians and the political functionaries fell all over themselves to pass the buck - Regents Chancellor Tisch blamed NYSED and the local Regents who signed off on Dr. Ted's school application (Andrew Brown and Wade Norwood), the local Regents Brown and Norwood said the paperwork was all fine so how were they to know Morris was a fraud and no one at NYSED could be reached for comment.

Later former Rochester Mayor and current Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy called Dr. Ted's misrepresentation of his credentials and work history a "mistake," minimizing a fraudulent act that, if it were perpetrated by a teacher on her/his teaching application, would subject her/him to loss of job, loss of teaching license and possible legal action by the state.

This was the perfect opportunity for the accountability-meisters to show that accountability is not just for the public schools and public school teachers by taking a strong stand on the Morris fraud, and pull the approval from his Greater Works Charter School, which will continue to open despite the fiasco involving "Dr." Ted and his ever-changing credentials and work history.

At least they could have said, "You know, we're concerned that a guy who lied about his credentials and his work experience somehow got approval for a charter school and we're going to review that application again, as well as the board of trustees Morris got to sign on to it, and we're going to review our charter approval process overall to make sure that every application truly gets a rigorous vetting by NYSED."

But they did neither of those things.

Instead we were told that the Greater Works Charter School will still open, though the lead applicant is now an education professor from Keuka College, not "Dr." Ted (who resigned from the board after the Democrat and Chronicle exposed his lies), nothing was said about the charter approval process overall and all the people responsible for this mess - the local Regents, Regents Chancellor Tisch, NYSED and the Cuomo administration (in the figure of the outgoing lieutenant governor) did their best to pass the buck and make excuses for it all.

None of this is a surprise, of course.

For a long time now, it's been obvious that the charter school shills at the Regents, SED and in the corridors of power are not interested in holding the charter school sector accountable for anything.

As my friend Fake Merryl Tisch said when it was revealed NYSED was using data with a margin of error as high as 27% to grade schools for "college readiness":

Meh. Accountability is for the little people. And also the unionized people. @perdidostschool @Stoptesting15 @JohnKingNYSED
— Fake Merryl Tisch (@FakeMerrylTisch) November 23, 2014

Lt Governor Duffy Makes Excuses For Charter School Con Man "Dr" Ted Morris

We've already seen how nobody at the Board of Regents or the New York State Education Department wants to take responsibility for giving a charter school to a con man who lied about having a BA, an MA, a Ph.D, a MSW (yeah, that's a new one) and maybe even his high school diploma.

Now we get this doozy from Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy:

This man is young/made mistakes but can learn/succeed. Young charter school founder Ted Morris Jr. resigns http://t.co/oupYcSoZlZ via @DandC
— Robert Duffy (@LtGovDuffyNY) November 26, 2014

Lying about credentials and work experience on a state application for a charter school is a "mistake"?

What exactly, under this definition of "mistake," entails "fraud"?

Is cheating okay?

How about stealing?

It is amazing how much these pro-charter people are willing to forgive when it comes to charter schools and charter school folks.

It seems accountability is only for public schools and public school staff.

Like so much around the charter school/public school divide, there are two sets of rules here and the one for the charters is awfully forgiving.

Why Is "Dr" Ted Morris Jr's Charter School Still Taking Applications, Opening In September?

"Dr" Ted Morris Jr might have been exposed as a fraud lacking the Ph.D, MA, BA and (perhaps high school) degrees he claimed to have, but his Greater Works Charter School is STILL opening.

If you're in the market for a charter school for your child up in Rochester, the application link for Greater Works is here, along with the rundown for what the school will provide:

Greater Works Charter School is currently accepting applications for 9th grade students for the 2015-16 school year. The deadline for the receipt of student applications is April 1, 2015. Parents/families are encouraged to apply as soon as possible!

The mission of Greater Works Charter School is to prepare students to be self-sufficient citizens. GWCS will accomplish this mission by providing a high-quality education in a safe and supportive environment that provides students with the academic and technical skills necessary to earn a NYS Regents diploma and to succeed in college and today's workforce.

*At this time, a location for the school has not been announced.* We are working to finalize the selection of a building as soon as possible.

If you have any questions, please contact the school by phone at (585) 568-7833 or by e-mail at info@gwcharterschool.org

Now I don't know about you, but I have plenty of questions about the school, starting with how it is no one at the Regents or SED looked into the 22-year old "Dr" Ted and his credentials or the other board members he found on the Internet.

Next question I have is, why is this school STILL being opened after Morris was exposed as a fraud?

Justin Murphy at the Democrat and Chronicle reports no one in leadership is taking responsibility for giving a charter school to a con artist like "Dr" Ted.

Regents Chancellor Tisch deflected blame onto the local Regents and NYSED, NYSED couldn't be reached for comment because of a couple of inches of snow in Albany on Wednesday and the local Regents who gave the okay to Morris and his charter said "It's not our fault because Dr. Ted lied to us."

Ah, yes - accountability is for the little people.

In addition, NYSED said the charter school is going to open despite the Morris fiasco.

Another member of the board of trustees - which Morris reportedly found on Craigslist and LinkedIn - is going to take over as lead applicant for the charter school:

Peter Kozik, a Keuka College professor and fellow trustee will take over as lead applicant.

...

Kozik was circumspect about the situation and declined to say whether the revelations were new to the trustees but said they "took it under advisement" when they heard about them Tuesday.

The trustees still plan to open the school in fall 2015 as scheduled. Kozik said he discussed the issue with the state education department Tuesday and came away with the impression that the plan can go forward.

"The plan's outstanding; the board's outstanding," he said. ""Life can be difficult for sure. This is not the first parting I had. ... We need to move ahead and help educate the children of Rochester."

The board's outstanding?

These are the people Morris found on the Internet, so I'm sure they've all been held to the same rigorous examination of their credentials and appropriateness for the board as Morris was, which is to say no one's looked into them at all.

But even if all these people are on the up-and-up, what does it say about them that they all thought Morris was a swell guy to be the lead applicant for the charter?

These people either suspected (or knew) Morris was a huckster and didn't care enough to do anything about it or didn't know he was a fraud and huckster, in which case they don't have the judgment to be on the board of a school.

Either way, the board of trustees, including new lead applicant Kozik, are suspect at best.

As for the "outstanding plan" Kozik says is in place, it's full of the usual ed deform claptrap - extended time, emphasis on technology, endless professional development for teachers and other tenets of the 21st Century Ed Deform Movement.

Here is how the plan is described on the Greater Works Charter School website:

 A Focus on Self-Sufficiency – Preparing students to be self-sufficient citizens is at the core of GWCS’s mission. The founding group defines a self-sufficient citizen as an individual being college and career ready and needing no outside help in satisfying basic needs. It is our intent to create a safe and supportive atmosphere where students can earn a NYS Regents diploma, prepare for and succeed in college and today’s workforce, and thereby achieve self-sufficiency. Citizens that are self-sufficient are crucial to a thriving community. Being able to take care for one’s basic needs decreases unemployment rates, need for public assistance, and contributes to economic development. We believe that self-sufficiency also encompasses college and career readiness.

 Advisory - Each student will be assigned a teacher advisor who will work with them throughout their high school journey at GWCS. The teacher advisors will meet with their assigned students daily (Monday through Friday.) During the daily advisory period, students will work with their advisor to create goals, and review goals and progress made toward achieving those goals. Teacher advisors will be able to use the daily advisory period to offer motivation, feedback, and guidance to students.

Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) – Teacher advisors will work with each student to create an individual learning plan to guide instruction. This will allow teaching staff to build lessons that explore and strengthen each student’s skills, interests, and dreams. When students attend the summer bridge program (starting in Year 2, orientation will take place in Year 1 instead), they will take assessments and work with an advisor to create the ILP based on the number of credits needed for graduation, reading and math grade-level scores, and social/emotional needs. The ILPs will be living documents that students and teacher advisors refer to-, and update on a regular basis.

 Longer Instructional Time – GWCS will provide a longer school day (9:00am to 5:00pm) and school year (193 days, not including the summer bridge program for 9th and 10th grades which will be an additional 19 days) than traditional schools. 

Blended Learning – GWCS realizes that technology has the power to move education toward a student-centered model of learning where students can learn at their own pace to boost learning outcomes. A learning environment enhanced with technology allows for seamless targeted interventions and flexible groups, as well as real collaboration among students. Students at GWCS will take courses that are infused with technology and that are co-taught by our NYS certified and experienced teachers. Using the Odyssey Ware curriculum, which features an engaging, media-rich curriculum that sparks student interest with 3-D animation, video clips, audio files, and educational games; teachers will be able to provide a high-quality learning experience to students. As cited in the U.S. Department of Education’s recent “Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies” (Revised September 2010), “Students in online conditions performed modestly better, on average, than those learning the same material through traditional face-to-face instruction” (p. xiv) and, notably, “Instruction combining online and face-to-face elements had a larger advantage relative to purely face-to-face instruction than did purely online instruction” (p. xv). GWCS will incorporate blended learning as per the Commissioner’s policy on blended learning.

 Co-Teaching - Courses at GWCS will be co-taught by a content area teacher alongside a special education teacher or teaching assistant. Having two high-quality educators facilitate classroom instruction will allow them to connect with different student personalities. Co-teaching allows more opportunities for small group and one-to-one learning, and stronger modeling during lessons. The co-planning process encourages two teachers to bounce ideas off each other in order to deliver the strongest, most creative lessons. Co-taught courses are structured to meet the needs of all students and will allow an opportunity for reinforcing key points of a discussion through repetition or restatement. By employing this approach, students are able to benefit from the knowledge and skills of each professional as they master the key concepts (Robinson & Schaille 1995; Bess 2000).

Teaching Assistants (TAs) – GWCS will hire teaching assistants from local graduate colleges of education (such as Roberts Wesleyan College, University of Rochester, SUNY Brockport, Keuka College, St. John Fisher College, and Nazareth College, etc.) Teaching assistants will work with teachers to provide students with an engaging and supportive learning environment. Teaching assistants will support teachers in the Guided Learning Process and provide academic support to students as they progress through their coursework. Uncommon in high schools, teaching assistants at GWCS will provide students with additional academic support. TAs will provide instructional, behavioral, and organizational benefits to the GWCS model.

 Professional Learning Community (PLC) - GWCS will provide a professional learning community that supports GWCS’s instructional staff. In the first year, teachers will meet on a regular basis (8 a.m. – 9 a.m. daily on Monday-Friday and in the summer for two weeks) to receive teacher mentoring, professional development, and peer coaching. Teachers will also be able to use this time to create lesson plans with the support of other teachers, the Principal, and the Director of Curriculum and Instruction. A regular focus during these meeting times will be on the local and formative assessment of students as GWCS year progresses. GWCS will have strong instructional leadership which, though challenging, will advance teaching and learning for students and teachers alike. There will be weekly and quarterly professional development and yearly professional development (two weeks in August 2015 and for one week in July every year thereafter.) 

All that sounds swell, except that the school has raised little money of its own, so all of that is going to have to come off the public's dime - the building for the school (which they don't have yet), the staff willing to work the extended time and days and suffer the endless professional development, the TA's they say they want to hire from local colleges, the technology and the blended learning programs.

And of course it matters just who you hire to implement this stuff, which brings us back to the problem of the board and their judgment (or lack thereof) over Morris.

Who do they hire as school leader to get this thing going, particularly after the school has become tabloid fodder and will be Exhibit A in the battle in the spring when the charter school criminals look to have the charter cap eliminated completely?

I dunno about you, but I see nothing "outstanding" in that plan that isn't "outstanding" in a thousand other charter school "About Us" sections.

There's nothing unique about the plan other than it was partly put together by a con man who may be lacking his own high school diploma.

I get that Regents Chancellor Tisch, NYSED Commissioner King and their merry men and women in reform in Albany want to open lots of charters so that they can come up against the charter cap as soon as possible and get it increased or lifted completely.

What I don't get is, why are they so adamant about making sure Greater Works opens as planned?

Given that the lead applicant was a fraud, given that his "outstanding board" was found on Craigslist and LinkedIn, given that the "outstanding plan" is the same ed deform claptrap you see in thousands of other charter school plans, given that the school has raised only $10K and will have to rely completely on the public dime to run, given that the publicity around the school has been embarrassing to say the least and isn't going to get any better as charter opponents use Morris and his Greater Works Charter School fraud as a great reason why SED and the Regents shouldn't be given more charter slots, I'd think Tisch, King and the merry reformsters would just as soon want this story buried as soon as possible.

But it sounds like Greater Works Charter School is going forward and given what a sham it's been so far, it looks like it is going to continue to be the gift that keeps on giving for charter skeptics and opponents.

Remember "Dr" Ted and Greater Works!

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch Refuses To Be Held Accountable For Giving Con Artist Dr. Ted Morris Jr. A Charter School

As my friend on Twitter, Fake Merryl Tisch, likes to say in between swigs of Grey Goose, "Accountability is for the little people":

A day after 22-year-old charter school founder Ted Morris Jr. resigned precipitously after lies were discovered on his résumé, state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch deflected blame for the charter's approval and said the school, without its founder, should still open next fall.

Morris was the lead applicant for Greater Works Charter School, which got approval from the Board of Regents to open in 2015 as a high school with a particular reliance on technology.

He claimed to have accumulated a wall full of degrees, mostly from online schools, and served in leadership roles for various local organizations. One of those schools, Western Governors University, said he did not in fact get the bachelor's degree he claimed to have.

Another lie became apparent Wednesday: Morris also claimed to have master's and doctoral degrees from Concordia University Chicago, but a representative from that school said it had no record of him ever attending.

Those revelations led to an obvious question: why didn't the state Education Department and the Board of Regents catch the deception?

Tisch said the board only sees applications after they've been recommended by the state Education Department, suggesting it wasn't the members' normal responsibility to vet them for errors.

"When it comes to the board, it comes with an endorsement from (NYSED) and the local regents," she said. "What we hear is whether ... they've put together a sound application. There's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes, and I think people in (NYSED) need to address that with you."

Bill Clarke, the director of the NYSED charter school office, was not available for comment. A NYSED spokesman said no one else would be available either because of the snow descending on Albany.

Two of the state Regents are based in Rochester, Andrew Brown and Wade Norwood. In a statement released Tuesday before Morris' resignation, Brown said: "We rely on a considerable amount of data and information provided by applicants, along with conducting many in-person interviews before reaching a decision. If it were to turn out that we were deliberately provided misleading information by an applicant, that would of course call for further review of the issuance of the charter."

You're not surprised, right?

Tisch "deflects" blame onto the local Regents and NYSED, NYSED can't be reached for comment because of a couple of inches of snow and the local Regents who gave the okay say "It's not our fault because Dr. Ted lied to us."

In short, no one's at fault except Dr. Ted.

Let's imagine what these clowns would say if a public school hired a con man like Dr Ted to run the show.

Dr. Ted Has Left The Building

It took a little more than a day for Dr. Ted Morris Jr., charter school prodigy, to go to former charter school prodigy/current fraud:

Breaking: Ted Morris, he of suspicious resume, resigns from board of trustees of Greater Works Charter School. #ROC
— Justin Murphy (@CitizenMurphy) November 26, 2014

Morris submitted his resignation shortly after this story was published: http://t.co/nUwNTgo6rD #ROC
— Justin Murphy (@CitizenMurphy) November 26, 2014

Now comes the work of holding the Board of Regents accountable for giving approval to this fraud's charter school and using this fiasco as Exhibit A when Cuomo, King and Tisch look to raise or eliminate the charter cap in New York State.

If Dr Ted Morris Jr, huckster extraordinaire, could get a charter in New York State now before the cap is lifted or eliminated, just wait and see what happens after the cap is increased or ended completely.

The Dr. Ted Morris Greater Works Charter School Edifice Comes Crashing Down

If you've been following the story of 22 year old Dr. Ted Morris, the proud owner of a Regents-approved charter school in Rochester, you know that Diane Ravitch, Peter Greene and Merecedes Schneider all raised questions about Dr. Morris' background and qualifications in the last 24 hours.

The Democrat and Chronicle published a puff piece about Morris yesterday, but the same writer came back with a piece tonight that confirms Dr. Ted isn't all he was cracked up to be in the D&C piece yesterday.

It is now confirmed that Morris didn't graduate from School Without Walls in Rochester as he first told the Democrat and Chronicle he did:

He said Sunday that he graduated from School Without Walls in Rochester, but clarified Monday that he withdrew from that school in 2008 and graduated later that year from Penn Foster High School, a private online high school based in Pennsylvania.

Former School Without Walls principal Dan Drmacich and the Rochester School District both verified that Morris left the district in 2008.

"From what I remember, he was very articulate, a great conversationalist, but ... he didn't go to many of his classes," Drmacich said. "We constantly worked with him through his teacher adviser and the school counselor, to no avail — to the point he realized and we realized he was just coming to school and hanging out versus attending classes on a regular basis."

Morris denied not attending class regularly but said he did not feel challenged at School Without Walls, part of the reason he left for an online school.

It had been reported that Dr. Morris had a BA from an online college, but it turns out that he may not actually have a BA at all.  In addition, his MA and Ph.D claims are also in dispute (which makes sense since it doesn't seem like he actually has a BA):

Morris said in interviews and in paperwork submitted to the state that he got a bachelor's degree from Western Governors University, an online college based in Salt Lake City. But a school spokesman said he attended classes there but did not graduate and is not currently enrolled.

From 2008 on, Morris' education included little time in a traditional classroom. He also took classes at the online Grand Canyon University and eventually got a master's and doctoral degrees from Concordia University Chicago through a program that required him to be on campus for one weekend a month, he said Tuesday.

Representatives from Penn Foster, Grand Canyon and Concordia could not be reached to verify those claims.

The D & C reported that Dr. Morris didn't give a resume with the 2014 application for his Greater Works Charter School, but the resume Morris handed in with a 2013 application for the charter had several "misrepresentations" (i.e., "lies") on it (UPDATE - Mercedes Scheider writes that he did give in a resume with the 2014 application and that it contains many of the same items from the 2013 version.)

Morris wrote he was the assistant chief executive officer for the Hickok Center for Brain Injury, with duties including "developed and implemented all program policies and procedures" and "served as acting CEO in the absence of the CEO."

Elaine Comarella, the center's CEO, said his title was actually administrative assistant, and that the responsibilities he listed in the resume were "a little overshot."

"He worked on all those things, but he didn't actually do all that stuff himself," she said.

...

 Another of the jobs listed on his resume was director of Church Women United's Task Force on Courts. That was accurate, but in the resume he submitted to get that position, obtained by the Democrat and Chronicle, he claimed he had bachelor's and master's degrees from Almeda University, an unaccredited online school in Idaho.

That apparently isn't true. He said Tuesday he'd never heard of that school and didn't know why it was on his resume.

...

A third job listing was senior administrator for Victory Living Christian Faith Centers from 2003 — when he was a few months shy of his 11th birthday — to 2010. The resume said he "hired, trained and supervised a staff of seven administrators ... (for) a national Christian organization)."

Morris reiterated Tuesday that he did in fact start serving as an administrator at age 10, "as little as I was," and "did all the official paperwork" in those seven years. His hiring and supervisory responsibilities started when he was around 15 or 16 years old and were done together with other leaders, he said.

Victory Living didn't return a call seeking comment Tuesday.

And so Dr. Ted Morris' Greater Works Charter School dream comes crashing down in a clatter of lies, half-truths, misrepresentations and delusions.

That the New York Board of Regents approved this dude for a charter school gives you a glimpse of what the future is going to bring after they raise the charter cap or eliminate it completely.

Regents Chancellor Tisch said the following to the Daily News post-election:

“As we look to this legislative season, people are going to say we need to raise the charter cap. I personally am a great believer in charter schools ... I believe in opening them aggressively” Chancellor Merryl Tisch said on the John Catsimatidis radio show. “I’d like to push more charter schools.”

If Dr. Ted Morris, the 22 year old with the unconfirmed online high school diploma (who lied about graduating from School Without Walls), the disputed online BA, a disputed MA and Ph.D and a phonied up resume could get a charter school in New York State before they eliminate the charter cap, just imagine what's going to happen after the cap is eliminated.

This is an embarrassment for the Board of Regents and I don't think it's going too far to say that the individuals who approved Dr. Ted and his Greater Works Charter School need to be forced out immediately.

In addition, the Regents Chancellor herself needs to be called to account for this mess.

I am under no illusion either of those things will happen.

But if there were any justice in this world, they certainly would.

Democrat And Chronicle Takes Down Story About Dr. Ted Morris And His Greater Works Charter School (SECOND UPDATE - 10:40 AM)

The Democrat and Chronicle article about Dr. Ted Morris and his Greater Works Charter School is now offline.

Yesterday Diane Ravitch posted the D and C story about the miraculous Dr. Ted Morris, the 22-year old with the online BA and (perhaps) online MA and Ph.D as well who was granted approval for a charter school in Rochester by the New York Board of Regents.

Ravitch received an email from the principal of the school Morris claimed to have graduated from, School Without Walls, saying that Morris had only attended the school one year and not graduated from SWW.

Peter Greene and Mercedes Schneider further looked into Morris and found strange details about Morris that make him look less like a child prodigy and more like a con man.

And now, without ceremony, the Democrat and Chronicle has taken the Morris story down.

It will be interesting to see if they make an announcement for why the story is now offline.

The article read like a PR puff piece for Morris.

Perhaps they're embarrassed now that a couple of bloggers like Greene and Schenider, along with education historian Diane Ravitch, were able to expose him in less than 24 hours for being something he isn't.

It will be interesting to see how Regents Chancellor Tisch defends the Regents approving Morris for a charter school.

Tisch has said she wants an "aggressive" expansion of the charter sector in New York in the next few years.

Apparently that means giving just about anybody - including a con man like Morris - a charter school.

UPDATE - 8:18 AM. The D and C story on Morris is back online, though it says it was updated at 8:02 a.m. EST November 25, 2014.

No immediate changes to the story call out to me.

Looks like the Democrat and Chronicle does indeed stand by its puff piece on Morris.

We'll see if it - and Dr Ted - stand up to further scrutiny.

SECOND UPDATE - 10:40 AM: Leonie Haimson left the following comment:

The story now says he graduated from on online HS instead of School w/o Walls: "It was only six years ago that he graduated from an online high school at age 16. He had previously attended School Without Walls." so this 22 yr old has online degrees from HS, College and grad school, w/out any teaching experience or even evidence he can interact with human beings in a classroom.

Indeed, I went back to the story and it looks like the update to it seems to be changing the details around School Without Walls, to note that Morris attended the school but didn't graduate from it and graduated instead from an online high school.

Still seems like just about anybody can get a charter school these days.