School that was center of plagiarism controversy losing personnel

The Associated Press ^

[neutrino]

Very interesting details. I'm a bit disappointed that the deans apologized though; when roughly 20 percent of a group are caught cheating, it's fair to say that the problem is pervasive.

[jonefab]

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.

[Octavius]

They're making home schooling look better every day.

[jonefab]

Home-schoolers outperform peers:

National 'Bees' buzz with home schoolers

[EODGUY]

The school's reputation has clearly been damaged, but I do feel sorry for the students who did not cheat and who must, unfortunately, acknowledge their high school alma mater just the same.

[KC Burke]

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.

[monkey]

So what if they lose personnel? They will just hire more.

There is no accountability from government, at any level.