Just a couple of weeks after it was announced that the co-founder of IDEA Public Schools, Tom Torkelson, was leaving IDEA, a U.S. Democrat congressman from Wisconsin, Mark Pocan, sent a letter to the U.S. Education Department, posing questions about a multi-million-dollar federal grant that had recently been awarded to IDEA. According to the congressman, at least three employees at the Department of Education had told him in confidence, and had evidence to prove it, that professional staff inside the department had discarded IDEA’s application for the grant because it was now deemed “high risk” because of the way it had ...