A plagiarism investigation of a Michigan State University professor is ongoing, according to The State News. The issue was raised by Mike Van Beek, education policy director, after he reviewed a school consolidation study by Sharif Shakrani, a senior scholar at MSU's Education Policy Center.
This side-by-side comparison shows the verbatim matches between Shakrani's piece and the Syracuse University study it was based on.
Shakrani's work was commissioned by Booth Newspapers which, despite the plagiarism, has refused to denounce the study. Van Beek found its methodology "seriously flawed," explaining that "it takes the findings and mathematical model from a 2001 study of 12 rural New York state school district consolidations between 1985 and 1997, and applies them uniformly to all 551 Michigan districts, regardless of size or location."
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