It's bad enough when kids cheat on the NY Regents exams; it's worse when parents - who happen to be school administrators - are willing to help their kids do so:
Long Island school officials say they caught a sophomore cheating on a Regents examination last week and were quickly able to trace the cribbed answers - written on his hand - to the student's father, an assistant superintendent in charge of exams and answer sheets in another district.The alleged scheme was disclosed yesterday when the father, Isben Jeudy, 40, of East Northport, was charged with official misconduct in First District Court of Nassau County, in Hempstead. He pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance. His lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.
How many things are wrong with this picture? First off, the father's willingness to help his son cheat is not only sending the wrong message, but is also an admission that he doesn't think his son has what it takes to pass the exam. Next, the father jeopardized his own career to do so. Finally, the exam form that father was in charge of is now suspect - if he gave answers to his kid, maybe he (or his kid) gave them to other students as well.
Update: The Education Wonks, for whom this topic hits close to home, are asking the right questions:
One question that needs to be asked is this: Why would the answers to such a high-stakes assessment be in the unsupervised custody of any school site or district administrator? Common sense would seem to indicate that those who would have an inherent interest in an examination (such as school site/district administrators) should never be in the possession of test answers....Posted by kswygert at June 28, 2005 05:08 PMConsidering the high-stakes nature of these examinations, security should be a priority...This whole sad episode (and possibly others that have gone unreported) should have been avoided.