Fat, Drunk, and Stupid is No Way to Go Through Life, Son

February 18, 2011

Teacher Union Political Honcho, Paul Egan, has an even better resume than I thought. In addition to his alcohol-fueled tizzy fit in a fancy restaurant with two-dozen other union hacks over the portion size (which is something that he may have a habit of doing), Egan also has the distinction of being caught cheating when proctoring exams as a middle school teacher in 1999.

According to the NY Daily News:

The special schools investigator fingered Egan, a social studies teacher, 11 years ago for his part in the cheating scandal. “Teacher Paul Egan used several different methods to cheat,” the investigator reported. The probe found he would tell students before a test to sharpen their pencils – and then depart, leaving the answers to the first 11 questions near the sharpener.

Because he loves children, Egan reportedly told his class: “Don’t tell anyone that I helped you or you’ll be the ones who get into trouble.”  Ah, education at its finest.

And thanks to incredibly difficult fair dismissal procedures required by the union’s collective bargaining agreement, Egan was not punished for these transgressions beyond having a letter of reprimand added to his file.

Given the type of people who are the leaders of the UFT, including cheating, glutinous, bullies, I can see why Diane Ravitch switched her views and became such good friends with the NY teacher union.

5 Comments | teacher union | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Who’s the Criminal?

January 26, 2011

In Akron, Ohio a woman who put her children in a better public school was sent to jail when private investigators hired by the school found that she did not live in the district.  Her father did and she sometimes stayed with him, but that was not enough to keep her out of prison for seeking a better education for her children.

Meanwhile, in Atlanta there is evidence of widespread cheating on standardized tests by teachers and administrators as well as a potential cover-up in the investigation of those accusations.  No one has gone to jail (and no one ever will) for robbing children of a quality education and then lying about their true achievement by cheating on the state test to hide that fact.

A few years ago Atlanta and other Georgia districts violated the state law to prohibit the social promotion of students who failed the 3rd grade reading test.  There was a procedure for exempting students if the schools and parents met and decided it was in the best interest of a student to be promoted, but many districts exempted virtually all of the students and did so without actually holding the required meetings.  They already knew what was best for children regardless of what the law said.

I could keep going with stories along these lines, but I think you get the idea.  So, who’s the real criminal here?

9 Comments | civic values, school accountability | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

Is The Fox Guarding the Hen House?

November 15, 2010

Cheating in K-12 education appears to be a serious problem.  Addressing that problem may not be helped by the allegations in this Chronicle of Higher Education piece that education students are themselves frequent cheaters.

The piece is written by Ed Dante, which the editors note “is a pseudonym for a writer who lives on the East Coast. Through a literary agent, he approached The Chronicle wanting to tell the story of how he makes a living writing papers for a custom-essay company and to describe the extent of student cheating he has observed.”

Here’s the money quote:

it’s hard to determine which course of study is most infested with cheating. But I’d say education is the worst. I’ve written papers for students in elementary-education programs, special-education majors, and ESL-training courses. I’ve written lesson plans for aspiring high-school teachers, and I’ve synthesized reports from notes that customers have taken during classroom observations. I’ve written essays for those studying to become school administrators, and I’ve completed theses for those on course to become principals. In the enormous conspiracy that is student cheating, the frontline intelligence community is infiltrated by double agents. (Future educators of America, I know who you are.)

(HT to SB)

7 Comments | scandal, teacher quality | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Jay P. Greene

PJM on Colleges – and PJM Column Authors – Who Lack the Guts to Punish Cheating

December 3, 2008

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

You may have heard about the Texas prof who was fired for publicly disclosing the names of students he caught cheating. Pajamas Media carries a somewhat confessional column today in which I discuss the role of the Internet (which, contrary to popular opinion, makes cheating harder rather than easier) and the rise of educational lawsuits (which colleges have responded to by abdicating their traditional disciplinary role), but also reflect, without satisfaction, upon my own experience dealing with a cheater:

The fear of lawsuits only compounds the difficulty of what is already a difficult decision. Even with the strongest possible intellectual conviction that it’s the right thing to do, actually imposing a punishment on a fellow human being takes a certain amount of moral courage. It takes some guts.

The isolation of the teacher as the lone defender of honesty in the classroom only makes it much more difficult to do the difficult but necessary thing when the time comes. And this, again, is something I can testify about from personal experience.

I regret to say that when I confronted my cheater, I chickened out.

What I ended up doing in the end, instead of what I had resolved to do and then didn’t have the courage to do, actually might be a good model for how to deal with a cheater. Of course, I’d rather have discovered it through intelligence rather than cowardice. As C.S. Lewis says, only fools learn by experience, but at least they do learn.

2 Comments | civic values, scandal | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Greg Forster