[wordup] integrity? we don't need no stinking integrity ...

[Adam Shand]

Via: Erica <erica at spack.org>
From: http://fyi.cnn.com/2002/fyi/teachers.ednews/02/07/plagiarism.dispute.ap/index.html

Teacher resigns over plagiarism fight
February 7, 2002 Posted: 8:04 AM EST (1304 GMT)

PIPER, Kansas (AP) -- High school teacher Christine Pelton wasted no
time after discovering that nearly a fifth of her biology students had
plagiarized their semester projects from the Internet.

She had received her rural Kansas district's backing before when she
accused students of cheating, and she expected it again this time after
failing the 28 sophomores.

Her principal and superintendent agreed: It was plagiarism and the
students should get a zero for the assignment.

But after parents complained, the Piper School Board ordered her to go
easier on the guilty.

Pelton resigned in protest in an episode that some say reflects a
national decline in integrity.

"This kind of thing is happening every day around the country, where
people with integrity are not being backed by their organization," said
Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Josephson Institute of
Ethics in Marina del Rey, Calif.

Josephson pointed to the Enron bankruptcy scandal, in which an executive
whistle-blower had warned superiors about the potential consequences of
energy trader's off-the-books business deals.

Also in recent months, some of the nation's top historians, including
Stephen Ambrose, have been accused of borrowing passages from other
authors without proper credit.

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Joseph Ellis was suspended without pay
for a year from Mount Holyoke College after lying to his students about
serving in Vietnam. Notre Dame University football coach George O'Leary
resigned after falsifying his athletic and academic achievements on his
resume.

"It's so hard to keep sending the message that character counts when you
have officials saying it doesn't count that much," Josephson said.

In Piper, about 20 miles west of Kansas City, Mo., students got that
message loud and clear, Pelton said.

"The students no longer listened to what I had to say," she said. "They
knew if they didn't like anything in my classroom from here on out, they
can just go to the school board and complain."

Piper High School junior Brandon Schmalz, 17, agreed. "That was bad. She
was right, and they were wrong," Schmalz said of the board.

Pelton, 26, resigned days after the board ordered her to give the
students partial credit and to decrease the project's value from 50
percent of the final course grade to 30 percent.

Board president Chris McCord did not give a reason for the Dec. 11
decision, which was made behind closed doors. He said it was not
prompted by parents' complaints.

"If I had known all the publicity that would have come with this, I
would still make the same decision," McCord said.

One of the complaining parents was Theresa Woolley, who told The Kansas
City Star that her daughter did not plagiarize. Rather, her daughter was
not sure how much she needed to rewrite research material, she said.

But Pelton said the course syllabus, which she required students to
sign, warned of the consequences of cheating and plagiarism.

Rutgers University professor of management Donald McCabe, who has
researched academic dishonesty in high schools and colleges, said many
teachers ignore cheating, and the Kansas episode illustrates why.

"Parents are going to complain to principals and the school board, and
teachers feel there's no reason to believe they'll get support," said
McCabe, whose study of high school students in 2000-01 found that 74
percent had cheated or plagiarized during the prior year.

What is worse, McCabe said, is that tolerance of dishonesty disheartens
other students, who have to compete with the cheaters to get into
college.

"If they see teachers looking the other way, students feel compelled to
participate even though it makes them uncomfortable," McCabe said. "The
loss of that sense of fairness is the fundamental reason students
cheat."

In Kansas, at least a dozen teachers have said they plan to leave the
district after the school year because of the episode, said Lee
Quisenberry, a teachers union representative.

"You can get away with anything whether you're honest or not," Pelton
said. The board's decision hurt "the honest people, and that's the worst
thing about it."