Cheating In The Heartland?

- CBS News
This is a story about a teacher who sacrificed her profession when she took a moral stand against
cheating about the college board that overruled her and about a town that was torn apart by that
selection. Bill Lagattuta reports.
At the center of this storm is Christine Pelton, a teacher at Piper Higher School, in Piper, Kansas.
She wouldn't let her students get away with cheating.
"I hold my children to high expectations. And I am not lowering my expectations for these children,"
she says.
The saga sabanas started with an assignment known just as the "Leaf Project." Students in Pelton's
biology classes at tratamientos para eliminar la celulitis Piper High have been to gather samples
from 20 distinct local trees, take measurements, give an oral presentation and write an extensive
report.
The project was worth half the final biology grade.
Pelton was so adamant about honesty that she made her students - and their parents - sign a
contract.
Rule quantity seven could not be clearer: "Cheating and plagiarism will result in the failure of the
assignment. It is anticipated that all function turned in is entirely their personal."
What is plagiarism, to Pelton? "It is copying items word for word and making use of it as your
personal material."
But as students began handing in their reports, Pelton says she started seeing sentences and
phrases that did not sound like some thing her students would come up with on their personal. She
reads one instance: "The box elder is intermediate in its intolerance."
"If I asked them 'What does that imply?' they will go, 'I do not know.'" She says. She turned to
Turnitin.com, a new Web service that compares student papers to worldwide databases. The verdict:
28 of her students - nearly one quarter of the complete sophomore class - had plagiarized.
Of the 28, only a single would speak to 48 Hours, and his parents did not want his name used. "I was
kind of upset 'cause I was quite sure I did't do it," he says, claiming he copied from the World wide
web but did not plagiarize.
"I place that as two distinct sentences," he says. "So it is not like I copied it straight from the
Internet website. I changed it into two various celulitisnuncamas sentences."
The students won the backing of their parents. "The problem in her classroom wasn't with the
students, but with the teacher," says 1 parent.
"Plagiarism is black on this side, white on this side, with
http://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2011/05/preparedness-101-zombie-apocalypse/ a whole
lotta gray in the middle," mentioned an additional parent.
The parents have been so upset that they went to the school board and demanded the teacher be
overruled. In an unprecedented move, the board agreed. It produced the Leaf Project count for a lot
less of the total grade. All the children who failed the class for cheating, would now pass.
Pelton says her authority had been entirely undermined, "taken away in a moment's choice, it was
just wiped away." Her students now knew that her word was no longer law, as extended as it could
be reversed by the school board.
"I knew I couldn't teach," she says. "I left at noon and did not come back. I resigned. "
Pelton, has become one thing of a national hero for standing by her principles, but at Piper Higher,
the scandal has tarnished guilty and innocent alike.
"We don't like to say what college we go to, maybe. Or what class we're in," says student Laura
Johnson, "because we're looked at as we're cheaters, but we're truly not."
Johnson is just 1 of the majority of students who did not cheat and truly earned their grades. She
originally got 101 %. But when the school board gave into pressure from parents and made the Leaf
Project count for much less, Laura's grade was lowered, while the grades of the students accused of
plagiarism went up.
Mathew Whitmore, head of the English department at Edison High School in Huntington Beach,
Calif., says that while the World wide web tends to make it less difficult to cheat, it also tends to
make it easier to get caught.
At his school, exactly where intellectual theft is not tolerated, teachers routinely police their
students' function using Turnitin.com, the anti-plagiarism site that Pelton utilized.
He tells of a single student who lifted material from eight different Internet web sites for 1
assignment, and of yet another who turned in verse from Shakespeare as an original adore eliminar
la celulitis rapido poem.
Not only are students utilizing the World wide web to reduce, paste and plagiarize, Whitmore says,
they also are going to cheating sites and downloading higher-tech tools like so-referred to as magic
labels.
On that website, students find 20-ounce Coke bottle labels with blank space where the components
generally are listed. Students can kind test answers in this space, paste the label on their bottles and
maintain the bottles on their desks during an exam.
"It probably sounds twisted, but I would say that in this day and age, cheating is nearly not
incorrect. Simply because it is any way that you can get an advantage," says a 17-year-old higher
school senior who has an virtually ideal grade-point typical. He spoke only if his name was not used.
Ironically, he says cheating is most prevalent among the smartest students "because
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/ they have to get that 4
http://catalog.ucdenver.edu/mime/media/10/915/2-Courses.docx point what ever to get into your Ivy
League school. I've often been told you have to go to the very best college you can, you have to go to
the Ivy League to succeed in life. If I can get the advantage by carrying out this, why not?"
Pelton is no longer teaching, a high price she has paid for her principles. But she is opening a day-
care company in her house.
According to some of the parents of the students she failed, Pelton missed a "teachable moment."
"She's uncovered plagiarism," says a parent. "That is great, that is celulitis nunca mas wonderful,
let's give her an attaboy. Let's cease, put on a seminar, teach these children exactly what plagiarism
is, how to steer clear of it, and then let them take their new knowledge, go back, and rework their
projects and resubmit them. They missed their teachable moment I really think that."
Pelton sees it differently.
"No, I never think I missed a teachable moment. I believe
http://thefiresidepost.com/2009/05/03/swine-flu-pandemics-and-paid-sick-leave/ the Board of
Education missed a teachable moment: Teaching that doing the proper factor is the proper point to
do."
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