Ian Andre Roberts: Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus
I assume you’ve followed at least some of the story of Ian Andre Roberts, the Des Moines school superintendent who turns out to have been an illegal alien wanted for gun violations. The initial question was, why didn’t the people who hired him do enough of a background check to discover that he was not only an illegal alien, but he was on deportation orders due to the gun violations?
It turns out that’s not all they didn’t discover:
More universities have denied claims from Des Moines Public Schools’ former superintendent about his education and accomplishments, raising questions about how thoroughly Iowa’s largest school district vetted his application.
For years, former Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts, 54, had claimed he completed programs and was honored at several universities, including Morgan State University and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Roberts had long stated that he received a doctorate in urban educational leadership from Morgan State University in July 2007.
Morgan State confirmed to the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network, on Sept. 30 that Roberts did not obtain a degree from the school, despite attending from the fall of 2002 through the spring of 2007. An MIT spokesperson later told the Register that the school does not have records of Roberts attending.
Did the school district do any vetting of this guy at all, even the most basic? Perhaps his demographics checked too many boxes. He turns out to have been the great pretender.
His Wiki seems to have been updated:
Ian Andre Roberts is an educator who was Des Moines Independent Community School District system superintendent from 2023 until 2025 and an athlete who ran in the 2000 Olympics for Guyana.
In September 2025, Roberts was detained by ICE, who stated that they acted on an order of removal issued in May 2024. The Department of Homeland Security further termed him a “criminal alien” and a public safety threat. His detention spurred a protest outside the Des Moines federal courthouse, and subsequently garnered both national and international media attention.
Here’s an article that goes into his credentials – both fake and real – in some detail.
There’s also this:
Roberts spent over 20 years bouncing around the nation’s education system, holding top posts from coast to coast, but also proved controversial.
“He ruined our district for three years,” a former colleague in the state told The Post. “He was very smooth, affable, but the overarching feeling you got from him was smoke and mirrors, mystique.” …
He is also rumored to have been caught having sex with a female co-worker on school property in his previous role as a superintendent in rural Pennsylvania, a post he held from 2020 to 2023.
Former colleagues claimed to The Post that Roberts was a sketchy figure and pathological liar. They said they felt he was hired because of his diversity, equity and inclusion bona fides — and claimed that once on the job, he did little work.
“He was a player. He liked the women,” a source who knew Roberts, who asked not to be named, told The Post.
Another source expressed concern to the school board in Pennsylvania that Roberts might not be a legal resident based on casual comments he had made — but their concern was ignored, they said.
Hindsight is 20/20. But I assume the existence of such complaints would be on record.
There’s also this:
Roberts was superintendent of Millcreek Township schools near Erie, Pa., for three years.
During that time, the school district was inundated by lawsuits — and forced to pay out over $400,000 in sex discrimination settlements — claiming Roberts promoted less qualified women over more deserving men.
Town gossip claimed Roberts hightailed it out of Millcreek after he was caught having sex with a female co-worker on school property — although this could not be verified by The Post. …
Even so, while Roberts publicly claims to have a wife, his former co-worker told The Post they had never met or seen her and wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t exist. Another person who knew Roberts said Roberts didn’t hide the fact he was actively on the wife hunt for immigration reasons. …
More shockingly, it was revealed this week that Roberts has an active Democratic voter registration in Maryland, prompting congressional Republicans to demand answers from the Maryland Board of Elections about “gaping holes” in the state’s election integrity systems, according to Fox News.
Before moving to small-town Pennsylvania, Roberts held a cushy, high-power job as chief schools officer for Aspire Public Schools in Oakland, Calif., was a superintendent for public schools in St. Louis, Mo., and was a principal at high schools in Washington, DC, and Baltimore.
Nice. So there’s some sort of voter fraud, too?
One thing that seems true in Roberts’ resume, however – at least, according to a photo at the link – is that he really was a runner for Guyana in the 2000 Olympics.
The title of this post is a legal maxim that means, “False in one thing, false in all things.” The saying isn’t literally true in Roberts’ case – a certain amount of his story pans out. But the maxim is way too close to being correct. Roberts clearly had certain skills that allowed him to fool many people, when combined with his stellar DEI bona fides.
To be charitable, there just might have been school districts who did check his credentials and discovered they were fraudulent, so did not hire him. Were that the case, though, you’d think they’d contact other school districts for whom he claimed to have worked and notified them that his credentials were fraudulent, just in case he attempted to use said districts as a reference. Either they were negligent or they did not check his credentials. NB, he’d have had a gap in his resume for his years at Mill Creek Township, or the Des Moines dingbats never called anyone in Mill Creek Township, or the characters in Mill Creek Township refused to tell them salient information, or the Des Moines dingbats hired him knowing full well there were law suits in Mill Creek Township.
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One thing that gets you about primary and secondary schooling in this country is the institutionalized stupidity. The teacher-training programs, the state departments, the local boards boards, the super’s offices, the on-site administrators, and the lesser half of the teacher corps. It all makes you want to holler. Private schooling is less bureaucratic, but it’s often shot through with woke-tards. (See the Dalton School in New York).
I’m retired now, but I would have not a scruple about lying on my
CV if it wasn’t going to be checked
Do we have video of him running in Greece?
Art Deco:
One of the articles I read said that the PA school district used some sort of agency to check his credentials. The agency seems to have been negligent, because they said all was well.
The agency seems to have been negligent, because they said all was well.
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That’s not negligence. That’s fraudulence.
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While we’re at it, why use an agency? You don’t hire that many superintendents. There’s no one on that board or on its staff who knows how to place a phone call to Morgan State?
Why use an agency?
Because its easier to launder money that way.
I love this guy!
A recipient of DEI can do no wrong because that would threaten the narrative. The MSM will memory hole this as quickly as possible.
The school board should already have a lawyer drafting the suit to recover all the money paid to the search firm (and any subcontractor(s) they used) in vetting this candidate, plus a substantial amount for all the trouble and bad press the district is being subjected to.
“No one would lie about all this, it’s too easy to check.” Famous last words.
Drafting a suit?
Discovery will illuminate the kickbacks to the board, be they soft kickbacks like dinners or boxes of steak knives, or hard such as dollars for the board member’s reelection campaign.
Not gonna happen.
But Roberts is a handsome fellow with gleaming black skin, a great smile, and a magnificent set of choppers. Not to mention a great faked CV.
If he could be engaging and halfway intelligent, what’s not to like for DEI-obsessed educators?
He was too good to be true and he wasn’t. I’ll bet they didn’t check. I’ll bet they didn’t want to check. They might even have found out, but preferred not to rock that boat.
This new post mentions the vetting process and has a lot of other interesting information:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/10/iowa-man-blame-game.php
Des Moines schools said they used an agency to verify his credentials. The agency said it does not check for citizenship. The school board is suing the agency. The school does not use E-Verify to validate citizenship.
When Roberts was hired, he announced his plan of Reimagine Education which the board fervently endorsed. GreatSchools ratings for DM schools (1-10) gives nearly all grades as 1-4. Parents try to enroll in the suburban schools if possible.
One of the policies implemented was to remove barriers so former convicts could be employed at the district. School Board Chair, Jackie Norris is running in the Democrat primary to take the place of US Senator Ernst who is not running for reelection. Norris served as Chief of Staff for Michelle Obama in the White House.
Re: ID Frauds / Catch Me If You Can
Recently I discovered that the Frank Abagnale story presented in Spielberg’s “Catch Me If You Can” was mostly a hoax.
In the film FBI man Tom Hanks relentlessly pursues criminal mastermind Leonard DiCaprio who successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor and a lawyer while passing thousands of dollars in bad checks. After he was caught, DiCaprio was recruited by the FBI to do white hat work exposing other frauds.
Great film, not really based on a true story.
I seem to recall some 60s writer who speculated that it would be easier to fake being somebody who fakes being somebody. Genius!
A meta-impostor as it were. Frank Abagnale succeeded.
We’re all postmodernists now.
It would seem that a prolonged search would have been necessary to find somebody with so many reasons not to be hired.
Of all the losers out there, none were loserish enough for the board.
To think this was an accident strains the imagination. But….maybe it was an accident.
Or maybe it was an accident due to various requirements for consideration. Within those requirements would only be losers.
Okay. I’m kind of spitballing here, but to have one guy checking so many DO NOT HIRE boxes, just one guy covering all the DO NOT HIRE bases….gets hired.
[Checks probability theory.]
Multiply this by thousands and you will get the true damage of DEI hires. From government to medicine to the military to business we failed and continue to fail to hire and advance the best. We will greatly suffer for this in the future.
My observation, over many years, is that people who bounce around from job to job every couple years are typically one step ahead of being exposed as a fraud.
Eventually it catches up with them.
DEI enables them to keep up the fraud longer.
Plus, those who were defrauded don’t want to admit how stupid they are.
Art Deco and Steph (both above) make reference to it, “it” being the stunning incompetence of just about every level of the Education Industrial Complex. One has to – very severely – question “just what the #&% is going on in the taxpayer-funded / supported dot edu business.”
Neo’s post title, Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (“False in one thing, false in all things”) could easily be extended to “Incompetent in One, Incompetent in All” which seems to be the governing principle for so much of what is claimed to be “education” in America. Ian Andre Roberts is today’s poster child for education industry malfeasance, but anyone who has kids in school – and I’m including private schools as well as public – and has dealt with the ingrained bureaucracies the industry is founded upon and has so throughly embraced – has to wonder about everything else the Geniuses of Education are doing.
“Oh, but my kids’ school is great/terrific/etc., and Ms. Bradford/Ms. Jones/Mr. Smith is/are great teachers.” “Teachers of what?” exactly, and how is that information delivered and the student performance improvement derived therefrom measured?
I’m firmly in the “nuke it from orbit and rebuild from scratch on fresh ground” camp on this. Too much money, and too many futures – including America’s – are at stake to ccontinue to tolerate tghe substandArd peformance that has become the default setting for educatuion in America. The idea of a “town school marm” funded by the town council was appealing a couple centuries ago, and it probably worked pretty well in a one-room schoolhouse with a few dozen students of varying ages who would head back to the farm or ranch with roughly an 8th grade education (which, it must be pointed out, was often substantially more broad and contained much more detail and skill improvement than today’s “graduating” high school seniors are capable of).
So. anyone know just how many more Ian Andre Roberts there are out in Education Land? And, just what, exactly, those dot edu agencies, departments and boards – each of which would eagerly adopt another Ian Andre Roberts if offered the opportunity – are teaching our kids, especially to what end and achievement level?
Not sure can add to comments, probably no one wanted to see because DEI requires blinders.
Andre Roberts is a member of the anointed class.
That’s all you need to know.
“I’m retired now, but I would have not a scruple about lying on my
CV if it wasn’t going to be checked”
Talking your way into a job, especially when the employer has a serious need to fill a position, is all too easy. I’ve done it three times in the past six years.
I always assumed that my resume would be check, at the very least by my on-the-job performance (engineering), and if that was lacking, I would be fired. And, I assumed that if my resume wasn’t scrupulously accurate, I would be fired, so I double-checked everything and listed everything, including the job in housekeeping. Sigh.
@ huxley > “Re: ID Frauds / Catch Me If You Can”
Abagnale’s opus was my first thought also.
Even if not a true story, his book and the movie were both brilliant works of the con man genre.
@ eeyore mood > “The agency said it does not check for citizenship.”
One would assume that a background check would at least include determining that a claimed job or award or degree actually existed — and ditto the employer, awarder, or school.
Apparently one would be wrong.
@ Watt in re the Powerline post: amazing the amount of background information that can be found by actually checking someone’s background.
Especially the criminal charges that have nothing to do with citizenship status.