These high school journalists just outdid the national press

#education These high school journalists investigated a new principal’s credentials. Days… https://t.co/dhdXNlLyNE pic.twitter.com/kRD0M46Hbd

— John Pollock (@john_jpollock) April 5, 2017

The mainstream media could learn a lot from these seven high school journalists from Pittsburgh, Kansas.

These seniors and juniors did some digging on a new principal that was hired for Pittsburg High School and found out her credentials were fake. Amy Robertson had been hired by the district to begin this next fall and offered her $93,000 for the position. But the student journalists were curious about who would be leading them and so, they wanted to know a little about where she came from.

“She was going to be the head of our school, and we wanted be assured that she was qualified and had the proper credentials,” said Trina Paul, one of the student journalists. “We stumbled on some things that most might not consider legitimate credentials.”

PJ Media has the details on Robertson:

Her alma mater is a diploma mill, where people buy fake degrees. Corllins University, where Robertson allegedly received her master’s and doctorate degrees, is not accredited and has no known physical address. Its website is an obvious sham, as is its Facebook page, where you can read comments from a lot of unhappy customers, many of whom come from foreign countries.

Even the U.S. Department of Education couldn’t confirm the university’s existence. As it turns out, Corllins University was started in Pakistan by a crook called Salem Kureshi, as a consumer watchdog group discovered. This man also runs other so-called universities and has been scamming people out of thousands of dollars.

Maddie Baden is another journalist at the high school and said her team discovered that Robertson has been a partial resident of Dubai for the last 19 years. As they sleuthed the news there, they found out she was denied a principal position at a science school.

“That raised a red flag,” Baden said.

Yet, the school district was oblivious to Robertson’s past. Destry Brown, the superintendent, found himself quite embarrassed by the lack of vetting done by his department and took back the offer of employment:

“In light of the issues that arose, Dr. Robertson felt it was in the best interest of the district to resign her position. The Board has agreed to accept her resignation… As superintendent, I feel like I let the teachers and the students down. I publicly admit that.”

But here’s where the student journalists really nail the crux of the issue: “If students could uncover this, I want to know why the adults couldn’t find this,” Baden said.

Exactly! How is it that the city couldn’t use a computer to find out these things before they handed over a near-six-figure income to someone completely unqualified to be around children? That’s a faulty government if I’ve ever seen one.

These students should be proud of themselves for not only saving the school from a disaster, but for doing a better job than half of our national press.