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From time to time in each community school board members might engage in micromanaging. Consider the case of the Piper School District, near Kansas City, Kansas. The Piper School District school board micromanaged themselves into national notoriety. The short of the story is that last semester Piper High School biology teacher, Christine Pelton, gave an assignment to the 118 total students in her six daily classes of tenth grade biology. It was a term project counting for half of the semester grade. In November, after the students had turned in the comprehensive project, Pelton noticed something odd. A number of the projects had the same, word for word, paragraphs. The assignment she handed out had a strict message about what was plagiarism. Students caught plagiarizing would receive a zero for the assignment. Eventually, after carefully scanning each report, Pelton found that 28 reports were plagiarized from one website on the Internet. Being a teacher of her word, she gave a zero to the 28 cheaters. The other 80 students were graded and their grades were recorded. The zero on the assignment for the 28 cheaters meant they each failed that semester. Three parents complained to the school board and the school board discussed this issue behind closed doors on December 11th. They did not consult Christine Pelton. According to the Kansas City Star, while board minutes show no decisions, Piper School District Superintendent Michael Rooney said, “It was communicated to me that night that the teacher should be told to change the failing grades.” Second year teacher Pelton resigned instead. The Kansas City Star reported Pelton quit immediately because, “When the students found out (the grades had been reversed) they started cheering, ‘We won, we won. We don’t have to listen to you any longer.’ The students added, ‘Teachers need to realize that we run the school, not you.’ I just couldn’t continue.” But that is not the end of the story. The student cheaters won. But did they? Reportedly, several students were taking a college entrance examination at a nearby university. The proctor was walking around talking to the students before the test began. When the proctor asked where the Piper High School students were from, they told him. He looked suspiciously at them and said, “No cheating.” The students came back to the school furious at the proctor and furious that everyone who, when they hear Piper High School, now substitutes the name, “Cheater’s High School.” Well, as Hunter Thompson says, if you lay down in the mud with pigs, sooner or later someone will call you a swine. There is no place for the school district to go to get away from the stench. They have made their bed. Is it fair to paint all of the students with the same brush? Maybe. Students at Piper High School cheated. Then, the school board painted in large letter on the community, we are cheaters. One can assume the next teacher who catches a student cheating will look the other way. That is why it is appropriate to call the school, Cheater’s High School. Consider this, what was the lesson for the 80 students who did not cheat? What did the school board say to those students who did the assignment without plagiarizing? In fact, the entire student body was abused by the school board rewarding the 28 cheaters for their nerve in demanding not to be flunked after being caught cheating. The good name of the community was ruined. The academic spirit of the school system destroyed. That is the price of school boards micromanaging. And what of the 28 students? The taint will follow them throughout their school days. Everyone will know why Piper High School is known nationally as Cheater’s High. No one will trust them at college or in the job market. That is really unfair, the students only cheated. They should have gotten a quick gut check on cheating and gone on to better times without national attention. But they will not do so because three parents and the school board damaged them and the community by micromanaging. © 2002 Michael Swickard, Ph.D. |
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