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.
5 comments:
This is old news by now, but some of what you posted is incorrect and you've also argued illogically in at least one instance. I do agree that the project may was weighted too heavily to begin with, but hindsight is 20/20. To start, the school board in this case did adjust the grades on the leaf project. They basically made it so that the students who plagiarized could still earn up to 60% on the assignment. That is still a failing score as you mentioned, but combine that with the re-weighting of the project and the result amounts to a slap on the wrist for the students involved. In fact, we're potentially looking at a difference between a plus or minus, not even an entire grade level. Secondly, you failed to mention how the redistribution of the semester point total affected the students who appropriately completed the assignment. Statistically there had to have been several students who were given lower grades for the semester than the ones they EARNED based on the syllabus.
Finally, you argue that Ms. Pelton is "guilty," but then later go on to acknowledge that her policy may have been inappropriate but she should have received proper guidance from her fellow teachers and her administrators. You also compare her policy to paddling. The comparison is extreme, but in any case if paddling were a published policy of Ms. Pelton, I expect that more than one parent would have balked at the request to acknowledge and sign the syllabus at the beginning of the semester. The backlash only came when the written and agreed upon policy was enforced, resulting in unfavorable scores for the students who refused to abide by said policy.
While some people over dramatized the sanctity of Ms. Pelton, she certainly was not primarily at fault for this incident.
(By the way, I am in no way associated with the town of Piper or Ms. Pelton. I happened to have come across this story while doing research and took an interest.)
When you argue that I am blaming Ms. Pelton for the situation you are significantly missing the point. The premises of your argument, that Ms. Pelton is not significantly responsible for the situation is supported by the facts of the story, but that is not the conclusion I argued. A full reading of the sentence that the word “guilty” appears in would illustrate my actual point. Anonymous is also guilty of creating a false dichotomy; the school board had to allow the punishment to stand; any other action allows the cheaters to win and punishes those who followed the rules.
Finally, your argument that the new punishment amounted to a difference between a + or – is not supported by any “facts” in evidence. Nobody, including myself, has any knowledge of how the board’s decision affected anyone’s grade for the semester except for the fact that most of the cheaters passed the semester.
It might be more helpful to the argument if Anonymous could more clearly indicate which incorrect information in the original post substantially affects the validity of my argument, and point out actual logical fallacies in my original argument—rather than pointing arguments you just disagree with.
Who is to blame for the circus that resulted from the bad behavior of the cheaters? Maybe we should blame a school system that did not effectively teach students about plagiarism. Possibly we should blame Ms. Pelton’s colleagues and supervisors who weren’t paying enough attention to what an inexperienced teacher was doing. Perhaps the guilty parties are the parents of the students who cheated, or the school board who changes the playing field midstream. I don’t know how to evaluate each of these factors. I do know that the board did the right thing in changing the weighting of the assignment.
Hey, I'm only 11 years late to the game. It's a common policy at four-year institutions to give a student a failing grade for the entire course if he or she cheats.
Yes it is--as well as it should be. In this case these were 14 year old children--not 18+ college students. It is generally accepted that a child would receive a lighter punishment than an adult for the same crime. After 40 years of teaching I have never encountered a high school that would fail a student for the entire course for cheating on a single assignment.
Again, the school board did not say that cheating was OK. They simply said that no assignment in a high school course should count for 50% of a student’s grade. The students are contemptible cheaters and should have failed the assignment and they did.
They were not "14 year old children." They were 15= and 16-year=old young people, who knew that plagiarism was cheating and chose to do it anyway.
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