Teacher Resigns After Classroom Battle

Kansas City TV 5 ^ | 1/25/02 | Staff Reporter

[KC Burke]

WYANDOTTE COUNTY, KS -- Cheating, power struggles and a teacher who says she just can't do her job.

A classroom project triggered a battle in the Piper School District in Wyandotte County over right and wrong that won't soon be forgotten.

The teacher says some 30 students plagiarized off the Internet. The teacher was going to flunk them, but parents complained to the school board and everything changed.

The teacher says the students learned a dangerous lesson, and she learned she simply couldn't teach them anymore.

It was the end of the fall semester at Piper High School, 4400 North 107th St. A final project to collect and describe leaves for 10th grade biology.

Teacher Christine Pelton noticed a disturbing trend.

"They were giving the same report, word-for-word," Pelton says.

Pelton went to the Web and matched up entire paragraphs from some papers, then told the students they'd plagiarized.

"The kids claim they didn't know how to cite and what plagiarism was, and we covered it in class," Pelton says.

She referred them to the district handbook they received at the beginning of the year and the policy inside. She referred them to the same policy on the syllabus, which the kids and their parents had signed.

Then, based on that policy, she gave 30 students, about a quarter of the class, a zero on the project.

The project was worth 50 percent of the semester grade. That's how the teacher before her had done it; that's how she did it. Flunking the project meant flunking the course, so parents complained to the teacher and then the school board.

The board, in turn, revised its own plagiarism policy and applied it to Pelton's class. Then the board revised Pelton's policy about the weight of the grade, from 50 percent to 30.

Some of Pelton's former students see the whole flap as a sign that the wrong people are running the school.

"It's not the parents' decision if they should be failed or not. They're not the ones in the classroom," says Lance Finley, a junior.

Pelton says the decision undermined her authority, and made it practically impossible to keep teaching at the school.

"When they found out, they started cheering, 'We won, we won. We don't have to listen to you any longer,' that, 'teachers need to realize that we run the school, not you,'" Pelton says.

That's why she resigned a month ago.

The school superintendent confirmed all of the facts that Pelton presented to KCTV5, but did not express an opinion on the board's decision, saying, quote, "I don't want to pick at that scab again."

The school board president declined any comment, and the rest of the board did not return KCTV5's phone calls.

[KC Burke]

Still home schooling those kids of yours?

[RobbyS]

As a teacher friend of mine says, the schools are what they are because they are what the public wants. This is why all the money in the world is not going to produce meaningful reform.

[KC Burke]

The ones that are in this profession are a dedicated lot. I know they don't get into it for the money.

[GeronL]

On a side note...having one project worth 50% of the grade is reflective of a lazy teacher

I don't think that was the teacher but policy

[Slapper]

Good luck at University kids.

If you make it that far...

[KC Burke]

The distiction is that this is one aspect of government that any small group of neighborhood hold the purse strings on. If you can't keep your taxes down elsewhere in the vast range of governement Takings, you can at least starve your school district through Property Tax and Levy defeats.

[B4Ranch]

MORAL INTERITY is disappearing in our schools. That's not a shock to you is it?

[F16Fighter]

A final project to collect and describe leaves for 10th grade biology [was plagarized]...by about a quarter of the class.

Well well. Proof of yet one more generation of mental midgets taught nothing but drivel by the NEA. This final report (duh, leaves) should have been a piece of cake for 6th graders. Like that reported $49b hike for more education the Drunken Swimmer and Dubya posed for might make a difference.

No wonder America has to import professional brain power from overseas. Just how many carwash jobs can America generate for it's public schooled "educated" geniouses?

[mommadooo3]

Sounds like a good place to 'freep'. Not so much to overturn the decision made, but just to show that it is the TEACHER who has a supportive public group.

It would ALSO make a public spectacle/embarassment of the cheaters and those who have TAUGHT them to be cheaters.

[Arkinsaw]

In your example there was probably a strong District Finacial Officer and a Superintendent standing behind them telling them what Had to be done. It appears that this teacher and her peers didn't have such effective support based on the superintendent's quote.

Actually, the Superintendent is weak. But here is what happened. A few days after the vote the newspaper reported that the now useless school building had been sold to a church to expand their elementary school. Many of the town leaders are members of the church. It was obvious that the papers had been drawn up and the deal agreed to prior to the council vote.

I'm a firm supporter of home schooling and private religous instruction. However the closing of a fine school that led the district in many categories, and its subsequent sale, stunk pretty good.

[summer]

Not only did the cheating students learn a dangerous lesson from their complaining/enabling parents and the compliant school board, but the honest kids were taught something as well.

And, here is the real news: this happens ALL the time. (Sorry, but it's true, and private schools are also not immune from it.)

[lizma]

It's just not government schools, it's also the mentality of the parents. If the school showed me one of my kids was a cheat, that baby's a$$ would be grass. Not the teachers.

Just went through a similair thing here. Our school got caught cheating on the state exam. A few parents were outraged at the mother that turned the school in. Amazing. I truly don't understand how this thought process works.
"Symbolism over substance" I guess. Gross.

[KC Burke]

..., and private schools are also not immune from it.)

You make a good additional point. As I felt when drafting my initial comment, the problems that we often lay at the feet of "the teachers" are often bigger, and your example points out that they are often beyond public education in general. Their cultural base is what I saw in this article.

It also looks like the teacher's union was no where to be seen when her back was to the wall and the kids were on the line. Where were they, it doesn't make that clear?

[KC Burke]

Did you notice the part of the article I underlined? The parents apparently signed the sylibus which contained the plagerism prohibition.

[B4Ranch]

I still have knots on my head from one of my history teachers. She had soft hands and a long ruler. Ouch! That was back in the days when teachers got chewed out if the kids didn't work in class. Cheating was unheard of in my early days.

[summer]

It also looks like the teacher's union was no where to be seen

More big news: the union, and the administrators, do not support teachers in these matters. Period. They are there to please the parents. The fact that the student has learned a horrible lesson does not occur to anyone except a conscience teacher.

Maybe that is yet another reason why up to 50% of new teachers leave the profession within five years. Some teachers do not want to teach these "lessons."

[KC Burke]

And transient Values over Enduring Virtues.

[summer]

"conscientious" is the word I meant to type in my previous post.