The Academy at Ivy Ridge, a boarding school near Ogdensburg, N.Y., for troubled teenagers, has agreed to stop issuing high school diplomas and to give refunds to families whose children attended the school.
New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said in a news release that the school’s programs were not approved by the state education department, and that the school had misrepresented itself to families, who paid up to $50,000 a year in tuition.
Under the agreement, the 400-student school will stop advertising that it can legally issue diplomas and that it is accredited. Its 113 graduates will receive refunds of 15 percent of the total tuition paid. The total amount of the refunds is expected to be more than $1 million.
The school is affiliated with the Worldwide Association of Specialty Programs and Schools, based in La Verkin, Utah. Other schools affiliated with the association have been closed in recent years by authorities in Mexico, Costa Rica, and the Czech Republic after complaints of physical abuse.