Here in Fun City, it's good grades or face school closure. Even worse, bad grades may adversely affect the merit pay of principals. So naturally, people will go to all sorts of extremes to ensure their passing rates appear as they should. From the very top, when Chancellor Klein mandates kids deserve credit for "seat time," to the AP's who pit teachers against one another, claiming teachers who pass more kids are intrinsically superior to those who don't, to the lowly teacher, terrified of failing the kid who simply cut 47 times, these are strange times indeed.
Still, the Tweedies are shocked (shocked!) when they find one AP altered the answers on Regents exams. How could anyone do such a thing?
The school system's special commissioner of investigation, Richard J. Condon, calls it an isolated incident.
Oddly, I recall an AP doing something very similar in a school in which I used to work. And I've heard similar stories from other teachers. It's odd that Mr. Condon, having caught one offender, simply assumes there are not others.
But Tweedie logic does not reflect reality. Of course, if the AP in question hadn't been following Tweedie logic, and instructing her teachers in it, there'd have been less need for her to alter the answers in the first place.
Thanks to Schoolgal
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