School that was center of plagiarism controversy losing personnel

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP)
Though officials say it's not tied to this year's plagiarism controversy, Piper High School will lose almost 30 percent of its teachers and counselors, district officials said.

Seven teachers and two counselors from the high school's staff of 31 teachers and counselors have resigned, Piper Superintendent Mike Rooney said. The number is higher than usual, but the people are leaving for "a whole bunch of reasons," Rooney said.

However, a teacher who has served as a spokeswoman for the school's teachers said she thought the plagiarism flap did have an impact. A parent helping lead an effort to recall three school board members agrees.

The controversy centers around biology teacher Christine Pelton's resignation in December after Rooney ordered her to change the failing grades of students she had accused of plagiarism. The order came after the school board discussed the matter behind closed doors the night before.

There is still no consensus on who ordered the grading change. Pelton said Rooney told her then that the board made the decision. But since then, three board members have claimed that Rooney made the call.

Regardless, many teachers think that administrators and the board broke faith with them by failing to back Pelton, English teacher Leona Sigwing said this week. She said the district's leaders still have a long way to go to rebuild trust with teachers.

Some of the Piper teachers said they couldn't continue to work with administrators who failed to treat them as professionals, said Pam Ruth, one of the parents leading the recall effort.

"Some of the teachers we are losing are superb teachers," Ruth said. "My freshman is not a happy camper knowing that she is losing people she was counting on to be there for her."

The leaders of the recall effort also are upset with the role Rooney played, and they've asked the school board to fire him. The board has not responded.

He also said Thursday that the number of students accused of plagiarism was 25, not 28, as has been widely reported. He said there might have been some confusion initially because three students failed to complete the assignment.

I can remember my parents telling me that if I got a licking in school, I'd get another when, and if, they found out. I can also remember about 1/2 of my high school class finding the key to a test in Biology, memorizing as much as possible and then having to retake the entire course the next year. No school board member entervined in that little flap. I might add that it was a rather large class the next year and I learned more than just biology because of it.

Thanks for the heads up, TroutStalker.

Regarding the impact on the kids that did the assignment on their own -- They were actually impacted in their grades.

Earlier reports gave the project as 50% of their grade, and some posters commented it sounded like the teacher wasn't doing enough if the project was weighted that high. As in all things, there was some truth behind the confusion. The project was 50% of the class points, but only up to the point in the class when it was turned in, prior to semester ending exams. It was about 30% overall. But the re-grading effort changed the weighting of the test as well as eliminating the plagerized portions from being graded.

The end result is that kids that would have pulled their grade UP by correct performance above what they had accumulated in other tests, raised their grade less, or not at all, from the honest effort on the reduced impact project.

Many of the early posts and stories focused on the board perhaps to heavily it now appears in hindsight. It was certainly the board members that brought the matter up due to some of their own children and their neighbors with failed kids. But it turns out that it was the Superintendent, the servant of the political body, who tried to out politic the situation. He told the teachers that he fought the ruling. He, however, had secretely told the board to reverse the teacher and he would back their decision and make the problem go away. He failed.

In Kansas, the new positions at other schools came out in April and early May and those teachers that took those positions resigned prior to contract renewal at Piper on May 15th....so yes, for those that asked, the bulk of the leaving teachers are already under new contracts.

The community knows what must be done and the mistake will take some time to rectify and get behind them...I wish them the best of luck.

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