Cheater's Proof

The woman in the photo is Christine Pelton, a former Biology teacher at Piper High School in Piper Kansas. Ms. Pelton became the center of an international story in 2002 when she caught 28 sophomore students plagiarizing on a project for her class. The project in question was known as the “leaf project” by the students and was supposed to count for 50% of their semester grade in her class. As a result of getting caught, the 28 “cheaters” were going to fail the class for first semester; the incident occurring in December of 2001. Because of complaints from several parents the Piper School Board modified the teacher’s decision, resulting in 27 of the 28 students passing her class. Ms. Pelton resigned; leaving her position after the School Board rendered their decision.

If you “Google” Christine Pelton you will get more than 70,000 hits, all of the links I saw roundly demonized the school board and criticized the student and parents. Ms. Pelton is portrayed as a Christ-like figure, who was being crucified for sticking to her standards. She gave up her career for the sake of honesty. I guess I am the only one in the world, besides the parents who complained and the School Board, who disagrees.
In the case of the Piper High School cheating scandal the School Board made the correct decision, Ms. Pelton was wrong. By the way, I am not being sarcastic here.

Ms. Pelton is guilty of a common mistake second year teachers make—inappropriately over-weighting an assignment. No single assignment should ever be more than 10% of a semester grade in high school, 20% if it is a comprehensive semester exam. There is no way to justify a weighting of 50% on a “leaf collection” in Biology. It is disturbingly inappropriate and can’t be rationalized in terms of its alignment with the Kansas State Goals in Life Science—go ahead and try to justify it if you like, I dare you!!! I actually looked up the published Kansas Science Standards.

My biggest question is; where was her supervision? How did her principal, department chair, and fellow teachers allow her to implement this policy without at least trying to dissuade her from such a mistake? All of the turmoil; the public scandal, national spotlight, and disturbing drama of her resignation, could have been avoided if anyone had pulled her aside before it was too late and given her some guidance.

Most readers are probably outraged at the idea of letting the little cheaters get away with their crime; in fact, none of them did. As far as I can determine from my research, none of the 28 plagiarists got a passing grade on the project, they all failed it! Contrary to what most have been led to believe by the media circus that resulted, the school board did not change the failing grades on the project to passing. Rather, they changed the weighting of the project from 50% to a more appropriate 12%. The result of this change was that most of the students did not fail the semester while still failing the project. The board never said that plagiarism was OK only that the weighting of the assignment was inappropriate. The media misrepresented the board's decision to make for a better story, and in doing so, wrongly convicted the school board in the court of public opinion.

For those of you who still feel that the school board should have backed her up, teaching the cheaters a lesson, what about this? Suppose her punishment for cheating was having the students paddled? Would you still be arguing that the school board should have let them learn their lesson? If the school board acted to alter the punishment would you argue that they were telling the students that cheating was OK? Of course not, you’re sane. Certainly paddling is different from getting no credit for half the work in a semester—but both are inappropriate. The school board was correct, the cheaters deserved to fail the project (and did), and Ms. Pelton was let down by her supervisors and colleagues who wern't paying attention.

For those of you who feel sorry for Ms. Pelton for loosing her career, Education Week reported that she had signed a movie contract for her story.

Your Education Dollars at Work

The story from the Toronto Sun Newspaper about the Simcoe County District School Board beginning an investigation of sexual abuse based on the “visions” of a psychic would have made me laugh my ass off if I hadn’t thought about it and realized how scary this really was.

According to the article, an educational assistant (EA) who worked with the 11 year old girl in question visited a psychic who told the EA that she had a “vision”, telling her that the girl was being molested. The girl exhibits autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and is non-verbal. The EA reported her “suspicions” to the school board who, in turn, reported the allegations to the Children's Aid Society (CAS) to investigate. The article goes on to say that the CAS refused to comment on the investigation, but said that the Child and Family Services Act requires that allegations of sexual abuse be investigated "if there are reasonable grounds." Apparently “reasonable grounds” includes the visions of a psychic.

The mother of the girl is understandably upset, and pulled her daughter out of the school, citing “trust issues.” The school principal referred all requests for comment to the school board. Everyone involved is hiding behind the contention that they were following protocol and were required to report the information to the CAS.

In my mind, this is evidence that the CAS has too large a budget, the legislature needs to act before more money is demanded to investigate information derived from consulting tea leaves and Oui Ja boards. This kind of silliness wastes resources needed to investigate allegations based on legitimate justification, and should be viewed as insulting to those who are genuine victims of abuse.

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Canada/2008/06/18/5910691-sun.html

Random Thoughts on the Last Day of School

It is the last full day of school and, as of 5th period, everything is going more or less smoothly. First period my English teacher friend came to my room to deliver two exams she had taken from students in first period study hall. She said they were working together and she confiscated the tests. I told her that the test was “take-home” and it was acceptable for them to work together. She was very suspicious of them because when she caught them the students lied to her about what they were doing. Everything would have been fine if they had told her the truth—that they were working together on an assignment and I had said that it was all right to do so. They lied, even when the truth would have kept them out of trouble. This is very common among students; the tendency to lie when confronted by authority figures. You can only wonder why they act so stupidly.

On May 18th we had our graduation ceremony at a large outdoor music theater. It was very cold and I wish I had worn something warmer under my graduation gown. So much for global warming! Every teacher wears a graduation gown that represents their degree and university.

The ceremony lasted about 90 minutes, including reading the names of every one of the almost 400 graduates. The reading of the names takes up about half the time. The senior class president and the valedictorian each give a brief speech, both being rather good as these speeches go.

Overall I hate going to graduation, finding it to be a waste of my time. Our contract requires us to be there, but I don’t know if our attendance means anything to the students.

Next week we give final exams. The juniors in A.P. Chemistry already took there’s with the senior’s last week. It was the multiple choice section of the 1984 exam. The Honors Chemistry final is comprehensive over the whole year, and the students have had a review packet for 3 weeks. In the first three periods today nobody had a question about anything on the review. This means that either they have it finished and need no help, or none of them have started it yet. We will find out next week which one is the case.

The Crapshoot

Interviewing prospective teachers is a lot like trying to pick the chocolate in a box with the cherry inside. They all look the same on the outside, but some have a special something inside, that “something” that all school administrators look for. Finding that person who will become a special teacher someday is as much luck as it is science.

Most administrators I have worked with have certain things they look for in a candidate.
Some prefer experience and look for established teachers with known track records; others prefer young, inexperienced new hires that will be low on the pay scale. A friend that teaches in a local district sarcastically tells people that the district policy on hiring is to get the “cheapest person possible” for every opening. At my school, there is no set policy concerning experience. We will hire a teacher with experience, but generally give new hires credit for no more than eight previous years of teaching. In some cases, where the candidate has a special talent or skill that we want, more credit can be given. One teacher in my department, who has a special degree, was given extra years of experience in order to make our offer more desirable for him.

Our interviews for the new Biology teacher all took place last week. Two of the candidates were new teachers with only one year experience. The third was a teacher with 6 years experience. All three gave a very professional interview. The principal has a set of questions she asks all teaching candidates; what made you want to become a teacher, who were the major influences that make you who you are, what things do students do that “push your button?” My questions centered on their teaching style and how they felt about teaching a set curriculum. I am more concerned that the person we hire be a team player than they are a superstar. One department chair’s superstar is another’s pain in the ass.

One candidate we both agreed to reject, feeling that she might have discipline problems because of her inexperience. Of the other two I preferred one and the principal preferred the other. My preference was the other inexperienced teacher, an alumna who I had taught. The alumna is outgoing and confident, not afraid to speak her mind. The experienced teacher that the principal favored was meeker, her soft spoken personality hiding a quiet confidence. I was impressed with both.

As you can guess we hired the experienced teacher, and I feel this was because of her personality. I don’t mean to suggest that I am unhappy with our new Biology teacher, or that I think the other choice was significantly better. They were both very close in ability and potential, and I can live with either and be happy. My preference for the other candidate was subjectively based on familiarity not on any objective measure. Like I suggested, hiring a new teacher is a crapshoot at best.