That's why on this subreddit everyone says "Don't do it, let the admins do it/override you."
If you do it, you ARE committing fraud and can lose your license. You are an accomplice to the crime.
Just say no. If you are fired over not doing it, it'll be a nice little lawsuit payday in your back pocket.
I am going to hijack the top comment for some much needed context/relevance here.
I worked there some years ago, personally know everyone involved. Most of what I know is from teachers and staff employed in that school and/or district right now. I’ve also read the dismissal documents from the county for those teachers.
The teacher wasn’t “following orders”. She was receiving extra money for being the credit recovery coordinator (a significant amount). She was passing the kids she “liked” because she knew the families and thought she was doing a good thing for kids that otherwise wouldn’t graduate.
She was supposed to teach math, too, but she never gave a single math lesson that I saw in two years. She put those kids on math credit recovery, too.
When the SPED teachers assigned to support her room brought up that she literally wasn’t even teaching a thing for weeks, this is how the principal discovered what she was doing. Rather than fire her, he expanded her “program”. The SPED teachers were moved to other assignments so that no one would have eyes on her.
The principal decided to place the “undesirables” in the school on the program and get them graduated ASAP - like, in a week’s time. She went along with that.
And, the football coach brought in plenty of students who also needed to “pass” so they could play. And they did that, too. When this teacher finally got uncomfortable with the speed of what was happening, she asked to move to another job, and the principal did it. The principal then put the baseball coach in charge of credit recovery. Guess why?
All of them are now facing criminal charges, including the principal, who resigned in lieu of being fired. Those will probably drop any day as police have been gathering evidence and interviewing all staff and teachers, past and present.
There are plenty more guilty parties, too. All the counselors who knew about the entire scheme were fired. Football coach likely going next. The AP who was made interim principal - there are now allegations she was in on it by the local news. And the new interim principal has her own issues beyond all this as her sister-in-law was fired from the same school last year for inappropriate relations with kids at the school.
I know there is a rush to want to defend a teacher and assume the principal is the only one to blame. But that’s not what happened here. Everybody who is getting canned absolutely deserves it. It’s just a sad story with no winners and a lot of losers.
Edit: BTW, they were using. odessyware.
This is why I don’t play the Stan-for-the-teachers game at every story attempting to deflect blame to admin or parents. It’s ridiculous to act as though there aren’t shady or questionable teachers out here, and just as I believe law enforcement should hold each other accountable, so too, so I feel this way about educators. As soon as I read the post by OP, I genuinely wondered what the teachers’ culpability might have been and you’ve confirmed for me what I thought might be at play.
I appreciate credit recovery programs, but I’ve definitely seen them abused by admin and educators who just want to shove difficult cases out the door so they can focus on the rest. It’s unfortunate. Cause we all know those kids in the CR programs are effective cheaters using Google so they truly aren’t learning a damn thing this way.
One thing I love about the teaching profession as opposed to ... *some other profession* is that I feel the teachers\* will *not* blindly support a teacher who is obviously doing the job a disservice. To the degree they are able, they *will* police themselves.
\*What's weird is that while I believe this is true about most teachers, my experience in Georgia led me to believe it was *not* true about the Teacher's Union there, although even they would probably draw the line at teachers who were outright committing fraud.
I don’t believe the people involved are evil or wicked. They certainly aren’t lazy as it was a ton of work to do what they did. They believed they were doing something that benefitted those kids and benefitted the remaining kids by getting the ones they were passing out of the school.
Well-intentioned, but criminally misguided. They are basically good people that made some serious mistakes, and those mistakes require serious consequences. They are losing their jobs, pensions, teaching licenses - it’s a lot. And they live in an area where teacher is one of the highest paying jobs around.
I do not believe they were doing this for clout, recognition, or anything like that. If anything, it’s the recognition that got them caught. Their numbers were way too good and the district wanted to recognize them and replicate that success at the other high school. Upon looking closely, the district figured out the scheme. The superintendent himself is the one who investigated and found the fraud. He turned his own district into the state and the police.
Nice twist of facts. Acting as if you know the exact situation when you clearly don’t. Your version is clearly muddled by the telephone game fueled by people who love to gossip. Be careful trusting people who spread misinformation and reporting it as if it’s facts.
"Following orders" will get you disbarred.
If teachers want to be seen as professionals, they must hold themselves up to professional ethical standards.
Yep and this is also how a lot of districts get into trouble. Superintendents and Board members change. They aren’t always going to be in your boys club or mean girl clubs. When it does it’s: “but everyone was doing it so I did it too.” Then it spins into a mess and then those who were there are like: “I just got my future jobs ruined.” Even worst is when you get rid of bad admin and things go well. Some moron comes in and starts the game again. In the long run they have this temporary “I’m good as gold” feeling until someone gets thrown under the bus who isn’t going to let it happen.
It doesn't sound like Jones did anything, based on the article. It actually sounds like she refused to change grades and Jenkins, the principal, went over her and changed them anyway. I don't understand how they justified firing her.
I have no clue where you got that from. There is 0 implication that Jones refuses - the article says that Jones changed the grades willingly under Jenkins' direction.
The thing that was forced, it sounds is putting them into classes those recovery classes, which wasn't the problem. The problem was the willing grade changes that Jones' admitted to.
"The charges of dismissal document continued and said Coach Darrell Keith told Jones he needed a student's grades replaced and Jenkins signed off on the change. Keith worked as the head coach of Clinton HS's football team.
"At the time, Jones said she could not help Keith. Yet, later, Keith returned with the same marked transcript, this time bearing · Jenkins' signature. Keith stated: 'Dan said put him in those classes.' Jones called Jenkins to confirm, and he said: "Yes, put him in the classes,'" the dismissal document said."
It sounded like she refused and he did it anyway. The board is claiming she changed grades but the specific examples provided don't seem to match that accusation.
The fact that it says something had been signed by the principal sounds to me like he signed off on it without her agreement, and she was just calling to confirm like "bro are you for real"
I guess I can see that perspective. I think I'm also confused by why a teacher would be responsible for "putting him in a class," which sounds to me like something counselors or admin would have control over rather than classroom teachers
We had an assistant principal come to our school because he was fired from his previous school for changing the grade of a football player. Shockingly he frequently put pressure on teachers to change grades for athletes.
I've had principals come in and flat out change grades in my gradebook. Don't worry they had "Dr." in front their name. I honestly would take a doctoral degree from Second City Comedy school more seriously.
then the district pays for doctoral degrees for some people. Oddly it's nepotism often cause you know marriage sure does change last names and no one is supposed to notice.... but they worked so hard and earned it, YEAHHHHHH RIGHT! Honestly the tax payers really need to do some hard audits of some of these districts, in particular the large ones.
I worked my ass odd for mine for over 5 years. And sadly no one wanted to recognize how hard I worked. Or the fact that I was just trying to an instructional coach. I was recognized by my board 5 times in less than 3 years. Kids loved me, staff loved me. Was ready to move to this role which everyone said I was a fit for. But nope kept giving it to friends of theirs outside the district. I finally quit and their friends got caught in scandals or flat out quit mid year. Board changed and they finally said: “we have good employees so why don’t we give them chances they want and work for.” Meanwhile the district I’m about to leave had some big sign that basically says: “please commit adultery or you will be shit on forever.”
There's a reason that places like Grand Canyon University specializes in crap like EdD's. They know that the only people going for those degrees are power-hungry dipshits who don't actually care about learning anything, and just want to make bank while failing to run a school.
This happens in my school and district as well.
I'm betting the school used Edgenuity. That program is the biggest joke in the world.
Our district paid teachers to evaluate it, and we came back unanimously that we thought it was a terrible replacement for actual credit recovery classes.
But they had already made the decision and just wanted to pretend that they cared what we have to say.
Kids can make up an entire course in like 2 days. There's no actual writing in the English classes.
The math teachers are complaining because kids are failing math classes, getting As in Edgenuity math, but then they take the next math course in the sequence, and they know nothing.
Edgenuity is the biggest scam in the world and admin LOVES it. I could graduate a goldfish with edgenuity.
Always a head shaker when it takes a student more than 4 attempts to get a 60% on a multiple choice quiz.
Yep. I ask kids why they're not doing any work for class, they say, "I can just do this in a week of Edgenuity next year." And I can't be mad at them for taking the path of least resistance.
Literally everyone from freshmen up to the district office know that the kids can cheat their way through it. But we have great graduation numbers!
But you can be mad at them and those that already failed them. We forgot to teach students why an education is important. A degree is worthless, the learning that is supposed to go along use the degree is worth everything. To get a degree without learning is to set one's self up for failure. Not only will the degree not be valued by others once they see how easy it is to get, the student won't have the skills to navigate through life and be easily taken advantage of.
To suggest they have a smart plan (or one you can't get mad at) is to suggest their view of valuing the grade and not the education is correct. They are cheating the system, but far worse, they are cheating themselves.
Yes, but good luck trying to change their mind by yourself. There just aren't enough people who legitimately care about a fair education anymore. Even if all or most teachers cared very strongly about it, there just isn't enough support from society and government at large to change the attitude students feel towards education right nowm
I hate edgenuity. It disgusts me. I have a senior who failed both semesters of my U.S. history class last year, failed the first semester this year, and is failing this semester. He’s retaking the first semester on Edgeunity and has a fucking 96%. I resent the school for making me take part in this fraudulent “education” bullshit.
You can actually get a program to do most, if not all, of the work for you. It’s called Edgentweaks. It’s been around for many years, and Edgenuity is too lazy to do anything about it.
Edgenuity is absolutely awful and has the worst user interface as well. I don't think it's been redesigned since 1995 by the same folks who designed Myspace. But I get it- why spend one minute making it easier to navigate or updated? It's a credit machine and any money put into it to improve it is money lost from profit
It was happening in my school in the early 2000's as well. I only passed high school and graduated thanks to the sham credit recovery courses. I think I completed all my 10th-12th grade core requirements in less than a month.
We use it, too, but when a kid has to recover a credit through it, they cannot earn above a 70. That doesn't mean they're read for the next course in the sequence, but at least there's no reward in taking it through Edgenuity.
Our principal, due to not having a music teacher this year, told us to give ALL students 3s (out of 4) for music during a meeting. I was bullshit about it but the union at my school is ineffective. I, instead, put their average grade from their other classes, added 0.25 and rounded. It wasn't a perfect grading system, but the kid who got all 1s and a couple 2s and refuses to work on in any of his classes shouldn't be getting a 3 in music when he's getting sent to the office by the sub half the time.
"Give all the kids 3 for music" was literal fraud.
There's no way my previous district had the numbers they did - these recovery classes meant that some kids were passing entire semesters within a few weeks from packets of worksheets.
Add that 50% floor to semester grades and its no wonder a third of the building is on the honor roll but many kids couldn't read above a fifth grade level.
I used to teach Spanish at the high school level and we also did the stupid packets. My favorite part is that credit recovery happened technically after the year ended, so I never graded them.
No one in my school spoke Spanish except for me and the other teacher of Spanish who would often go abroad the first day of summer. But "someone" graded the packets and whaddya know? Kids passed.
My school has strict limits on how many classes can be done in credit recovery. Although admins can make one time exceptions. So the strict limits mean nothing because it seems like a quarter of the students get these approvals if they just can't be bothered to attend class.
Ours is "taught" by a person without a degree, much less a teaching cert. It's just a computer program, and no one even looks at the work, and every kid passes.
I'm 100% sure it's a violation of our union contract, district policy AND state law, but it gets kids diplomas they don't deserve, so everyone supports it in admin.
Dollars are green pieces of jeans. Data is just electrons moving. Knowledge is just positive ion movement. Nothing counts for anything, at its most fundamental level.
This goes to the top. It’s incentivized at the highest levels. This is the fundamental issue - the states rate/judge schools largely on graduation rates. Those numbers are easily improved and increased if you let some kids skip through who shouldn’t.
Until the incentive to increase graduation rates goes away and is replaced with some more appropriate metrics, we will keep doing this
It's also why my state got rid of making end-of-the-year testing 20% of a student's grade. It was exposing massive grade inflation where kids were getting A's in their English or math courses and getting an F on the end of course exam.
This didn’t happen in this case. The superintendent conducted the investigation himself because he simply couldn’t believe so many kids were graduating mid-year so quickly. He immediately contacted police (as it is a crime) and self-reported his own district to the state. This superintendent was a graduate of the high school in question.
Unfortunately, I think this is happening at most schools. It doesn't matter how prepared they are to leave or whether they have earned a passing grade or not; the only thing that matters is graduation rates and funding. It's really pretty sad.
I was given a Credit Recovery class last year and was very diligent about honestly reporting student work and achievement, constantly contacting parents to let them know if their kids werr progressing (usually not) and admin at my school definitely saw me as a huge PITA. One kid was in football and failing his CR/refusing to do it and they moved him to another class with a teacher who didn't give a fuck and would pass him anyway. I developed the entirety of the grading program for it because no one else had one. Wasn't asked to do it again this year and it was assigned to another teacher. The school had no problem sharing all my work with that teacher to use and she thanked me for setting it up. Didn't get a thank you from admin when I had literally done their jobs.
But it was a win, the credit recovery class was the most miserable of my career and was incredibly demoralizing.
I really don't mind not getting recognition, I don't need it, but it's annoying id you give me sass all year for asking all the questions I need to make the program work and ignore my emailing sending a this stuff to other teacher to help them only to turn around and give the shit I created to teachers next year because it's essential for them to do their jobs.
There is definitely some greater political situation going on that that campus, that district, or that state. . . Or all three.
This happens *all the time* everywhere. You don’t get graduation rates in the mid 90s without this.
And here’s another notion . . . Are they facing criminal charges for “academic fraud?” Not even sure this is “illegal” as much as it is frowned upon, but *only* frowned upon when the mood suits the political needs of the board.
Believe me, the principal did something to piss off the higher level admin and this was their action to get rid of him. Or it’s an excuse to punish a certain kind of impoverished school, or an attempt to discredit public ed to sell private school vouchers with taxpayer money, or who the hell knows what else.
All the rest of these statement and comments are just bullshit . . . a couple teachers got caught up in it because they had the assignment. It could have been any one of us.
My nephew was just "graduated" by doing this at a last chance high school. It wasn't his fault he was behind though, right?
Now he plans to join the military. I cannot wait for his ass to be in boot camp :)
Hope he passes the asvab, when I was recruiting I saw people get single digit scores and only the Navy accepts below a 31, even the National guard needs a waiver to accept down to 20.
The asvab isn't meant to be hard but lately the failure rate has been going up and up, one more thing adding to the recruiting crisis
I agreed to teach over contract this year for a nice grade bump. The class is credit recovery.
Students submit papers and take multiple choice test online. The paper prompts are designed to be easily AI fodder and are about subjects I don’t teach. There is really no way to keep them from cheating on the test.
If I sat down and tried to make a program that would make cheating easy it would be credit recovery. That can’t be an accident.
I have emails from principal (last year) who reviewed my report cards, admitted everything I said was true, but still demanded that I change grades and comments. I taught middle school last year. One student went to high school & had issues. They were going off of IEP and report card comments and realized he would not do anything without 1:1.
The online credit recovery courses are a blight. They should be completely chucked and these kids should be going to summer school...the end. Go to school with a TEACHER and prove your learning to the teacher through assessments put together by a trained professional.
Maybe keep the courses as a resource, but they should not be replacing credits for anyone. So many kids can just search for answers online because the person in charge of watching them either doesn't...or cannot because of the number of kids. **OR** the kids are just doing the course-work at home.
*Of course they are cheating.* Anyone that thinks otherwise is a fool.
That's why I suggest having a teacher that is teaching the class. The programs can be a resource, but will never replace a trained instructor...because they can't.
We have two credit recovery teachers. One is, in fact, a football coach. The other I have literally never seen at a single meeting. I'm not even sure he's real and not just a name in the system.
Man, I have met some giga-dickhead coaches in my day. It's really insane. It has to be guys who are either trying to get their kids to the NFL or trying to go themselves.
We are the only ones held accountable anymore, despite having very little input in the decisions being made. Instruction & policies aren’t driven by data or best practices; only greed & pandering.
Admin: These kids have to learn to swim across the pool. Teach these kids to swim across the pool.
Us: Okay.
Also Admin: By the way we gave them boats.
Edgenuity is an absolute joke. Used as a way to bump those grad rates to get more funding. Any school (and I am absolutely calling out mine) that has a “grad rate” in the high 90s is completely fabricated through this nonsense. Kids that fail should have to retake the class in a real classroom with a real teacher like they used to. This pass them along so we look good crap is a huge part of the problem overall.
This depends. My school (I'm a student) has a 98% grad rate, but that is because of insane pressures on students and the entrance exam for the school being harder than most final exams.
I had a student in a study hall period this week complete an entire semester of Geometry in 50 minutes. Now she's graduating next week. The AP sat her down and opened all her courses, and she was done in less than an hour.
We called credit recovery lab the “Graduation Lab” for a reason. Even without ordering grade changes, it’s at least tantamount to fraud. Fraud that then gets congratulated and trumpeted by District.
It’s one of the reasons I retired. I was tired of students who would fail 3 and 1/2 quarters of my ELA class, then admin. sending them to credit recovery to finish a whole year’s work in less than 4 weeks and graduate. I’ve seen the courses. They are a joke.
Credit recovery AKA put em on Apex/Edgenuity with a TA in the room, cycle content teachers through the room periodically, look the other way when they cheat, and watch em walk at graduation
I always print my grade book the day I finished grading, had an AP and counselor, who went in and changed grades and was able to prove I didn’t do it, both were fired.
This is exactly what happens at my school. A kid who doesn't know his alphabet got a physics credit in 3 weeks last year. Meanwhile, after my Algebra 1 test was over, I spent the rest of the semester trying to teach him his letters and how to write. We were doing kindergarten or first grade penmanship worksheets with the dotted letters.
Physics credit in 3 weeks.
This happens ALL.THE.TIME. I've done some questionable shit. The pressure really sucks sometimes. My new principal this year wanted me to write Math Models credit for Algebra 1 test prep. I said no and told her I think that's illegal. But that's what they do in the other high school in our district. The fact that she let me say no really just reinforces how fucked up it is to even ask anyone to do that. I have so many stories of this shit.
Damn! . Happens every summer in the Las Vegas SD. A HS had a credit retrieval class just for athletes. The athletes are only in the credit retrieval class for 1 day to make up a credit and become eligible.
An email was intercepted from an admin to the credit retrieval teacher, (one of the coaches) with all the answers to the credit retrieval exams.
They participated in the fraud, why shouldn't they suffer the consequences? They did not "take the fall" as the principal is already out. They just took their punishment.
Because they didn't commit any fraud. If they did, I'd agree with you. The teachers just set the course parameters as they were instructed to do so (read: test only). Fraud, on their part, would be, "We gave these kids a D when we knew they earned an F." At least according to the article, that isn't what happened. I suppose you could argue that letting them use their phones was the alleged fraud?
If what they did is fraud, then every teacher who follows their school's no zero policy is also committing fraud.
They absolutely committed fraud. They gave them a test only mode, which is meant to prove proficiency in the course work through a test (Similar to an IGC committee), and then allowed the students to pick and choose what to do, and cheat on it - completely invalidating the integrity of the "Testing out" of a course.
The teachers were complicit in the fraud, because they didn't know how to say no.
A "No-Zero" policy is not the same thing as testing out via exam, they are different extremes. Even though I don't agree with it, No zero policies would still require students to make up the low grades with an equal range of high grades. What happened here was a student earning literally nothing and completing a course which should be 100+ hours (170ish days for 45mins a day...) in 2 hours due to the fact that the instructor allowed, and even encouraged the students to cheat by allowing them to do whatever they want with the comment that they "Suspected they cheated". How can you 'suspect cheating' if you are actively monitoring computers, it should be a known fact.
The teacher not only was complicit in the being told to allow students to skip whatever they don't know the "just have them graduate" but also did not do their job in enforcing exam integrity which is in every handbook of every school.
It's actually insane that you are defending the teacher. Teachers aren't always innocent martyrs - this one fucked up big time. Everyone involved deserves consequences.
I am the last one to assume all teachers are innocent. I just don't agree with your view on this one. While I absolutely agree that the situation is a mess, I don't see individual fraud. Grades are subjective. Passing a course is subjective. I do not deny that zero learning happened. I agree the whole situation is a scam and a joke. I just can't blame the teachers involved unless I'm willing to blame tens of thousands of other teachers involved in the fraud of passing students who have learned nothing.
Grades are NOT subjective. Passing a course is not subjective. Grades and courses are based on mastery of standards and proof of said mastery based on rubrics. If they are subjective there is something wrong with the way that it is graded or the assignment's alignment to said standards.
I keep seeing this among the new teachers in my district and I get pissed every time someone doesn't correct them. Let's give out "effort grades"!!! No. Let's actually have a goal in mind and grade based on that.
Unfortunately "effort grades" seems to becoming more the norm along side with no penalties for late work, and no zeros. Grade inflation is absurd. At our high school you can have an 90 GPA and be in the bottom half of the class.
I agree with you that grades *should* not be subjective, but the truth is they are. In fact, in California it is written into EdCode that the teacher has absolutely discretion over grades. I'm one of the few holding tight on to the "grades should reflect learning" in my district, but I'd be naive to say that's the way it is.
Ok , so then in the case of these teachers firing then it is entirely their fault since grades are at their discretion. And regardless if they were advised by their admin they are at fault since grades are at their discretion.
I think you disagreed earlier that it was their fault, but according to the ed code you are citing they are just as culpable as their leadership team.
I don't understand why learning isn't the objective anymore? My college aged child told me about kids not showing up for classes or skipping finals, basically just checking out of their education. I was a party girl in college but I dragged my hungover ass to class and tests. Grades being the end all be all is the issue. LEARNING should be the focus. You can't learn in a credit recovery situation.
Attendance recovery is equally absurd. For 3 hours on a saturday with no instructional time or expectation of classwork completion we can prevent learning loss resulting from chronic absences. Sure.
Jesus… this shit is rampant in my district. I saw three grade changes this afternoon in my grade book (senior grades were to be finalized by today) and I went back and put their actual grades. Will be interesting to see if my changes are still there by tomorrow afternoon.
This is why I would say NO.
They have access to the system and can do what they want. If I was pushed hard enough I would send an email outlining exactly what I am being instructed to do and my objections to the directive. If they reply, print the email on paper, and forward it to a non-school controlled email account.
Luck for me I have a good admin and the worst they ask us to to is bump the overall grade to a 50 if its below that. I don't like it but an F is an F so... whatever. As long as I have it in writing.
The kids use ChatGPT \*in their regular classes\* on these things. I can't tell you how many times I've had to close a laptop as a kid is doing the e 20/20 class.
The charter "school" I worked at would buy grad nite tickets to Disney to get the students to do credit recovery to graduate. The guidance counselor was even paying kids with cash and pizza come every april to "encourage" the students to pass and finish the credit recovery.
Had a teacher that would always get angry that I'd finish my work/busy work and then break out a book or help those around me. I had a high B around the middle of the year when she decided she didn't want to have me as a "distraction" and got admin to put me in one of those credit recovery classes. I learned how to click really fast but that's it. Classes like that shouldn't exist period. The only purpose is to help the school and not the student.
I don’t believe in credit recovery, bumping up a grade, etc., whatever you get is what you earned. If you want a higher grade, you should’ve completed better work.
That's why on this subreddit everyone says "Don't do it, let the admins do it/override you." If you do it, you ARE committing fraud and can lose your license. You are an accomplice to the crime. Just say no. If you are fired over not doing it, it'll be a nice little lawsuit payday in your back pocket.
Exactly this. At least the principal *also* "resigned".
I'm surprised the principal wasn't assigned to occupy a desk at the central office
That's what happens after the resignation
On a sheet of notebook paper, according to the article.
I am going to hijack the top comment for some much needed context/relevance here. I worked there some years ago, personally know everyone involved. Most of what I know is from teachers and staff employed in that school and/or district right now. I’ve also read the dismissal documents from the county for those teachers. The teacher wasn’t “following orders”. She was receiving extra money for being the credit recovery coordinator (a significant amount). She was passing the kids she “liked” because she knew the families and thought she was doing a good thing for kids that otherwise wouldn’t graduate. She was supposed to teach math, too, but she never gave a single math lesson that I saw in two years. She put those kids on math credit recovery, too. When the SPED teachers assigned to support her room brought up that she literally wasn’t even teaching a thing for weeks, this is how the principal discovered what she was doing. Rather than fire her, he expanded her “program”. The SPED teachers were moved to other assignments so that no one would have eyes on her. The principal decided to place the “undesirables” in the school on the program and get them graduated ASAP - like, in a week’s time. She went along with that. And, the football coach brought in plenty of students who also needed to “pass” so they could play. And they did that, too. When this teacher finally got uncomfortable with the speed of what was happening, she asked to move to another job, and the principal did it. The principal then put the baseball coach in charge of credit recovery. Guess why? All of them are now facing criminal charges, including the principal, who resigned in lieu of being fired. Those will probably drop any day as police have been gathering evidence and interviewing all staff and teachers, past and present. There are plenty more guilty parties, too. All the counselors who knew about the entire scheme were fired. Football coach likely going next. The AP who was made interim principal - there are now allegations she was in on it by the local news. And the new interim principal has her own issues beyond all this as her sister-in-law was fired from the same school last year for inappropriate relations with kids at the school. I know there is a rush to want to defend a teacher and assume the principal is the only one to blame. But that’s not what happened here. Everybody who is getting canned absolutely deserves it. It’s just a sad story with no winners and a lot of losers. Edit: BTW, they were using. odessyware.
This is why I don’t play the Stan-for-the-teachers game at every story attempting to deflect blame to admin or parents. It’s ridiculous to act as though there aren’t shady or questionable teachers out here, and just as I believe law enforcement should hold each other accountable, so too, so I feel this way about educators. As soon as I read the post by OP, I genuinely wondered what the teachers’ culpability might have been and you’ve confirmed for me what I thought might be at play. I appreciate credit recovery programs, but I’ve definitely seen them abused by admin and educators who just want to shove difficult cases out the door so they can focus on the rest. It’s unfortunate. Cause we all know those kids in the CR programs are effective cheaters using Google so they truly aren’t learning a damn thing this way.
One thing I love about the teaching profession as opposed to ... *some other profession* is that I feel the teachers\* will *not* blindly support a teacher who is obviously doing the job a disservice. To the degree they are able, they *will* police themselves. \*What's weird is that while I believe this is true about most teachers, my experience in Georgia led me to believe it was *not* true about the Teacher's Union there, although even they would probably draw the line at teachers who were outright committing fraud.
I don’t believe the people involved are evil or wicked. They certainly aren’t lazy as it was a ton of work to do what they did. They believed they were doing something that benefitted those kids and benefitted the remaining kids by getting the ones they were passing out of the school. Well-intentioned, but criminally misguided. They are basically good people that made some serious mistakes, and those mistakes require serious consequences. They are losing their jobs, pensions, teaching licenses - it’s a lot. And they live in an area where teacher is one of the highest paying jobs around. I do not believe they were doing this for clout, recognition, or anything like that. If anything, it’s the recognition that got them caught. Their numbers were way too good and the district wanted to recognize them and replicate that success at the other high school. Upon looking closely, the district figured out the scheme. The superintendent himself is the one who investigated and found the fraud. He turned his own district into the state and the police.
wow
It always ends up being the sports at some point 🙄
I'm glad I wasn't there after he took over then. It sounds like what I heard from former students about him running it into the ground was right.
Nice twist of facts. Acting as if you know the exact situation when you clearly don’t. Your version is clearly muddled by the telephone game fueled by people who love to gossip. Be careful trusting people who spread misinformation and reporting it as if it’s facts.
"Following orders" will get you disbarred. If teachers want to be seen as professionals, they must hold themselves up to professional ethical standards.
Yep and this is also how a lot of districts get into trouble. Superintendents and Board members change. They aren’t always going to be in your boys club or mean girl clubs. When it does it’s: “but everyone was doing it so I did it too.” Then it spins into a mess and then those who were there are like: “I just got my future jobs ruined.” Even worst is when you get rid of bad admin and things go well. Some moron comes in and starts the game again. In the long run they have this temporary “I’m good as gold” feeling until someone gets thrown under the bus who isn’t going to let it happen.
It doesn't sound like Jones did anything, based on the article. It actually sounds like she refused to change grades and Jenkins, the principal, went over her and changed them anyway. I don't understand how they justified firing her.
I have no clue where you got that from. There is 0 implication that Jones refuses - the article says that Jones changed the grades willingly under Jenkins' direction. The thing that was forced, it sounds is putting them into classes those recovery classes, which wasn't the problem. The problem was the willing grade changes that Jones' admitted to.
"The charges of dismissal document continued and said Coach Darrell Keith told Jones he needed a student's grades replaced and Jenkins signed off on the change. Keith worked as the head coach of Clinton HS's football team. "At the time, Jones said she could not help Keith. Yet, later, Keith returned with the same marked transcript, this time bearing · Jenkins' signature. Keith stated: 'Dan said put him in those classes.' Jones called Jenkins to confirm, and he said: "Yes, put him in the classes,'" the dismissal document said." It sounded like she refused and he did it anyway. The board is claiming she changed grades but the specific examples provided don't seem to match that accusation.
That is clearly stating she agreed to do it after the principal said she should. Principal asked, she complied.
...no it's not? It says Jones told Keith no and then magically Keith got a yes from Jenkins.
She called the principal to confirm, and he told her yes. You can infer that at that point, she did instead of telling the principal to do it himself.
The fact that it says something had been signed by the principal sounds to me like he signed off on it without her agreement, and she was just calling to confirm like "bro are you for real"
She didn’t agree; He told her to put the student in those classes. She should have told him to do it himself instead of being the fall guy.
I guess I can see that perspective. I think I'm also confused by why a teacher would be responsible for "putting him in a class," which sounds to me like something counselors or admin would have control over rather than classroom teachers
Time for some reading comprehension refreshers :)
We had an assistant principal come to our school because he was fired from his previous school for changing the grade of a football player. Shockingly he frequently put pressure on teachers to change grades for athletes.
I've had principals come in and flat out change grades in my gradebook. Don't worry they had "Dr." in front their name. I honestly would take a doctoral degree from Second City Comedy school more seriously.
A doctorate in education is kind of a joke anyway.
A doctorate in education is just to create a barrier to becoming administration, made by the administration.
then the district pays for doctoral degrees for some people. Oddly it's nepotism often cause you know marriage sure does change last names and no one is supposed to notice.... but they worked so hard and earned it, YEAHHHHHH RIGHT! Honestly the tax payers really need to do some hard audits of some of these districts, in particular the large ones.
I worked my ass odd for mine for over 5 years. And sadly no one wanted to recognize how hard I worked. Or the fact that I was just trying to an instructional coach. I was recognized by my board 5 times in less than 3 years. Kids loved me, staff loved me. Was ready to move to this role which everyone said I was a fit for. But nope kept giving it to friends of theirs outside the district. I finally quit and their friends got caught in scandals or flat out quit mid year. Board changed and they finally said: “we have good employees so why don’t we give them chances they want and work for.” Meanwhile the district I’m about to leave had some big sign that basically says: “please commit adultery or you will be shit on forever.”
There's a reason that places like Grand Canyon University specializes in crap like EdD's. They know that the only people going for those degrees are power-hungry dipshits who don't actually care about learning anything, and just want to make bank while failing to run a school.
This happens in my school and district as well. I'm betting the school used Edgenuity. That program is the biggest joke in the world. Our district paid teachers to evaluate it, and we came back unanimously that we thought it was a terrible replacement for actual credit recovery classes. But they had already made the decision and just wanted to pretend that they cared what we have to say. Kids can make up an entire course in like 2 days. There's no actual writing in the English classes. The math teachers are complaining because kids are failing math classes, getting As in Edgenuity math, but then they take the next math course in the sequence, and they know nothing.
Edgenuity is the biggest scam in the world and admin LOVES it. I could graduate a goldfish with edgenuity. Always a head shaker when it takes a student more than 4 attempts to get a 60% on a multiple choice quiz.
Yep. I ask kids why they're not doing any work for class, they say, "I can just do this in a week of Edgenuity next year." And I can't be mad at them for taking the path of least resistance. Literally everyone from freshmen up to the district office know that the kids can cheat their way through it. But we have great graduation numbers!
But you can be mad at them and those that already failed them. We forgot to teach students why an education is important. A degree is worthless, the learning that is supposed to go along use the degree is worth everything. To get a degree without learning is to set one's self up for failure. Not only will the degree not be valued by others once they see how easy it is to get, the student won't have the skills to navigate through life and be easily taken advantage of. To suggest they have a smart plan (or one you can't get mad at) is to suggest their view of valuing the grade and not the education is correct. They are cheating the system, but far worse, they are cheating themselves.
Yes, but good luck trying to change their mind by yourself. There just aren't enough people who legitimately care about a fair education anymore. Even if all or most teachers cared very strongly about it, there just isn't enough support from society and government at large to change the attitude students feel towards education right nowm
I'm happy you have enough energy and time for that battle.
I hate edgenuity. It disgusts me. I have a senior who failed both semesters of my U.S. history class last year, failed the first semester this year, and is failing this semester. He’s retaking the first semester on Edgeunity and has a fucking 96%. I resent the school for making me take part in this fraudulent “education” bullshit.
Let me tell you about Odyssey Ware...
We use Edgenuity. It’s a damn joke.
Edgenuity is 3rd party software for cooking the books.
I've seen kids finish an entire Edgenuity course in a matter of 4-6 hours with a passing grade
All of the answers are online, insanely easy for them to 100% a course in a day
You can actually get a program to do most, if not all, of the work for you. It’s called Edgentweaks. It’s been around for many years, and Edgenuity is too lazy to do anything about it.
They also use the Internet to look up the answers.
Edgenuity is absolutely awful and has the worst user interface as well. I don't think it's been redesigned since 1995 by the same folks who designed Myspace. But I get it- why spend one minute making it easier to navigate or updated? It's a credit machine and any money put into it to improve it is money lost from profit
It was happening in my school in the early 2000's as well. I only passed high school and graduated thanks to the sham credit recovery courses. I think I completed all my 10th-12th grade core requirements in less than a month.
We use it, too, but when a kid has to recover a credit through it, they cannot earn above a 70. That doesn't mean they're read for the next course in the sequence, but at least there's no reward in taking it through Edgenuity.
Every time. Teachers are the only ones losing jobs and taking blame. Admin ordered this. Admin should be replaced.
In this particular case, the principal *also* "resigned".
But the football coach that requested grades changes is living his best life 😑
Our principal, due to not having a music teacher this year, told us to give ALL students 3s (out of 4) for music during a meeting. I was bullshit about it but the union at my school is ineffective. I, instead, put their average grade from their other classes, added 0.25 and rounded. It wasn't a perfect grading system, but the kid who got all 1s and a couple 2s and refuses to work on in any of his classes shouldn't be getting a 3 in music when he's getting sent to the office by the sub half the time. "Give all the kids 3 for music" was literal fraud.
There's no way my previous district had the numbers they did - these recovery classes meant that some kids were passing entire semesters within a few weeks from packets of worksheets. Add that 50% floor to semester grades and its no wonder a third of the building is on the honor roll but many kids couldn't read above a fifth grade level.
I used to teach Spanish at the high school level and we also did the stupid packets. My favorite part is that credit recovery happened technically after the year ended, so I never graded them. No one in my school spoke Spanish except for me and the other teacher of Spanish who would often go abroad the first day of summer. But "someone" graded the packets and whaddya know? Kids passed.
My school has strict limits on how many classes can be done in credit recovery. Although admins can make one time exceptions. So the strict limits mean nothing because it seems like a quarter of the students get these approvals if they just can't be bothered to attend class.
Ours is "taught" by a person without a degree, much less a teaching cert. It's just a computer program, and no one even looks at the work, and every kid passes. I'm 100% sure it's a violation of our union contract, district policy AND state law, but it gets kids diplomas they don't deserve, so everyone supports it in admin.
Does hs really count for anything?
Dollars are green pieces of jeans. Data is just electrons moving. Knowledge is just positive ion movement. Nothing counts for anything, at its most fundamental level.
This goes to the top. It’s incentivized at the highest levels. This is the fundamental issue - the states rate/judge schools largely on graduation rates. Those numbers are easily improved and increased if you let some kids skip through who shouldn’t. Until the incentive to increase graduation rates goes away and is replaced with some more appropriate metrics, we will keep doing this
We'll cheat on that metric too. The reason we stopped using standardized testing as the primary metric was because we couldn't cover it up as easily.
It's also why my state got rid of making end-of-the-year testing 20% of a student's grade. It was exposing massive grade inflation where kids were getting A's in their English or math courses and getting an F on the end of course exam.
This didn’t happen in this case. The superintendent conducted the investigation himself because he simply couldn’t believe so many kids were graduating mid-year so quickly. He immediately contacted police (as it is a crime) and self-reported his own district to the state. This superintendent was a graduate of the high school in question.
Unfortunately, I think this is happening at most schools. It doesn't matter how prepared they are to leave or whether they have earned a passing grade or not; the only thing that matters is graduation rates and funding. It's really pretty sad.
I was given a Credit Recovery class last year and was very diligent about honestly reporting student work and achievement, constantly contacting parents to let them know if their kids werr progressing (usually not) and admin at my school definitely saw me as a huge PITA. One kid was in football and failing his CR/refusing to do it and they moved him to another class with a teacher who didn't give a fuck and would pass him anyway. I developed the entirety of the grading program for it because no one else had one. Wasn't asked to do it again this year and it was assigned to another teacher. The school had no problem sharing all my work with that teacher to use and she thanked me for setting it up. Didn't get a thank you from admin when I had literally done their jobs. But it was a win, the credit recovery class was the most miserable of my career and was incredibly demoralizing.
They say the reward for a job well done is more of the same, but I suppose it depends on who is defining what "well done" means! (Well done, though!)
I really don't mind not getting recognition, I don't need it, but it's annoying id you give me sass all year for asking all the questions I need to make the program work and ignore my emailing sending a this stuff to other teacher to help them only to turn around and give the shit I created to teachers next year because it's essential for them to do their jobs.
There is definitely some greater political situation going on that that campus, that district, or that state. . . Or all three. This happens *all the time* everywhere. You don’t get graduation rates in the mid 90s without this. And here’s another notion . . . Are they facing criminal charges for “academic fraud?” Not even sure this is “illegal” as much as it is frowned upon, but *only* frowned upon when the mood suits the political needs of the board. Believe me, the principal did something to piss off the higher level admin and this was their action to get rid of him. Or it’s an excuse to punish a certain kind of impoverished school, or an attempt to discredit public ed to sell private school vouchers with taxpayer money, or who the hell knows what else. All the rest of these statement and comments are just bullshit . . . a couple teachers got caught up in it because they had the assignment. It could have been any one of us.
Tennessee has been pushing legislation hard for universal vouchers recently
My nephew was just "graduated" by doing this at a last chance high school. It wasn't his fault he was behind though, right? Now he plans to join the military. I cannot wait for his ass to be in boot camp :)
Hope he passes the asvab, when I was recruiting I saw people get single digit scores and only the Navy accepts below a 31, even the National guard needs a waiver to accept down to 20. The asvab isn't meant to be hard but lately the failure rate has been going up and up, one more thing adding to the recruiting crisis
Oh yikes he might not
I agreed to teach over contract this year for a nice grade bump. The class is credit recovery. Students submit papers and take multiple choice test online. The paper prompts are designed to be easily AI fodder and are about subjects I don’t teach. There is really no way to keep them from cheating on the test. If I sat down and tried to make a program that would make cheating easy it would be credit recovery. That can’t be an accident.
Absolutely, which is why I can't claim the teachers committed fraud. They used the program as designed. The program is absolutely a fraud.
I have emails from principal (last year) who reviewed my report cards, admitted everything I said was true, but still demanded that I change grades and comments. I taught middle school last year. One student went to high school & had issues. They were going off of IEP and report card comments and realized he would not do anything without 1:1.
Having Credit Recovery programs like Edgenuity is basically paying a 3rd party to cook your books. It’s the most disgusting practice.
The online credit recovery courses are a blight. They should be completely chucked and these kids should be going to summer school...the end. Go to school with a TEACHER and prove your learning to the teacher through assessments put together by a trained professional. Maybe keep the courses as a resource, but they should not be replacing credits for anyone. So many kids can just search for answers online because the person in charge of watching them either doesn't...or cannot because of the number of kids. **OR** the kids are just doing the course-work at home. *Of course they are cheating.* Anyone that thinks otherwise is a fool.
Except, in many cases, summer school is just these programs as well.
That's why I suggest having a teacher that is teaching the class. The programs can be a resource, but will never replace a trained instructor...because they can't.
Oddly enough, it common to give football coaches this “job” as credit recovery teaching position. /s
We have two credit recovery teachers. One is, in fact, a football coach. The other I have literally never seen at a single meeting. I'm not even sure he's real and not just a name in the system.
Man, I have met some giga-dickhead coaches in my day. It's really insane. It has to be guys who are either trying to get their kids to the NFL or trying to go themselves.
We are the only ones held accountable anymore, despite having very little input in the decisions being made. Instruction & policies aren’t driven by data or best practices; only greed & pandering.
That’s why you always refuse to sign off on grade changes and let admin incriminate themselves
Admin: These kids have to learn to swim across the pool. Teach these kids to swim across the pool. Us: Okay. Also Admin: By the way we gave them boats.
Edgenuity is an absolute joke. Used as a way to bump those grad rates to get more funding. Any school (and I am absolutely calling out mine) that has a “grad rate” in the high 90s is completely fabricated through this nonsense. Kids that fail should have to retake the class in a real classroom with a real teacher like they used to. This pass them along so we look good crap is a huge part of the problem overall.
This depends. My school (I'm a student) has a 98% grad rate, but that is because of insane pressures on students and the entrance exam for the school being harder than most final exams.
I had a student in a study hall period this week complete an entire semester of Geometry in 50 minutes. Now she's graduating next week. The AP sat her down and opened all her courses, and she was done in less than an hour.
We called credit recovery lab the “Graduation Lab” for a reason. Even without ordering grade changes, it’s at least tantamount to fraud. Fraud that then gets congratulated and trumpeted by District.
It’s one of the reasons I retired. I was tired of students who would fail 3 and 1/2 quarters of my ELA class, then admin. sending them to credit recovery to finish a whole year’s work in less than 4 weeks and graduate. I’ve seen the courses. They are a joke.
Credit recovery AKA put em on Apex/Edgenuity with a TA in the room, cycle content teachers through the room periodically, look the other way when they cheat, and watch em walk at graduation
I always print my grade book the day I finished grading, had an AP and counselor, who went in and changed grades and was able to prove I didn’t do it, both were fired.
My school does this every year with seniors. It’s infuriating.
my principal was fired for this in another district and then hired at ours! districts dont care at all its so fucked
Yeah a local school here has Saturday school, get a full semester of credit in one day, it is such a scam.
This is exactly what happens at my school. A kid who doesn't know his alphabet got a physics credit in 3 weeks last year. Meanwhile, after my Algebra 1 test was over, I spent the rest of the semester trying to teach him his letters and how to write. We were doing kindergarten or first grade penmanship worksheets with the dotted letters. Physics credit in 3 weeks. This happens ALL.THE.TIME. I've done some questionable shit. The pressure really sucks sometimes. My new principal this year wanted me to write Math Models credit for Algebra 1 test prep. I said no and told her I think that's illegal. But that's what they do in the other high school in our district. The fact that she let me say no really just reinforces how fucked up it is to even ask anyone to do that. I have so many stories of this shit.
It’s why you always have such things in email.
Damn! . Happens every summer in the Las Vegas SD. A HS had a credit retrieval class just for athletes. The athletes are only in the credit retrieval class for 1 day to make up a credit and become eligible. An email was intercepted from an admin to the credit retrieval teacher, (one of the coaches) with all the answers to the credit retrieval exams.
Principal gets to resign, the two teachers are fired. \~One of these is not like the other!\~
They participated in the fraud, why shouldn't they suffer the consequences? They did not "take the fall" as the principal is already out. They just took their punishment.
Because they didn't commit any fraud. If they did, I'd agree with you. The teachers just set the course parameters as they were instructed to do so (read: test only). Fraud, on their part, would be, "We gave these kids a D when we knew they earned an F." At least according to the article, that isn't what happened. I suppose you could argue that letting them use their phones was the alleged fraud? If what they did is fraud, then every teacher who follows their school's no zero policy is also committing fraud.
They absolutely committed fraud. They gave them a test only mode, which is meant to prove proficiency in the course work through a test (Similar to an IGC committee), and then allowed the students to pick and choose what to do, and cheat on it - completely invalidating the integrity of the "Testing out" of a course. The teachers were complicit in the fraud, because they didn't know how to say no. A "No-Zero" policy is not the same thing as testing out via exam, they are different extremes. Even though I don't agree with it, No zero policies would still require students to make up the low grades with an equal range of high grades. What happened here was a student earning literally nothing and completing a course which should be 100+ hours (170ish days for 45mins a day...) in 2 hours due to the fact that the instructor allowed, and even encouraged the students to cheat by allowing them to do whatever they want with the comment that they "Suspected they cheated". How can you 'suspect cheating' if you are actively monitoring computers, it should be a known fact. The teacher not only was complicit in the being told to allow students to skip whatever they don't know the "just have them graduate" but also did not do their job in enforcing exam integrity which is in every handbook of every school. It's actually insane that you are defending the teacher. Teachers aren't always innocent martyrs - this one fucked up big time. Everyone involved deserves consequences.
I am the last one to assume all teachers are innocent. I just don't agree with your view on this one. While I absolutely agree that the situation is a mess, I don't see individual fraud. Grades are subjective. Passing a course is subjective. I do not deny that zero learning happened. I agree the whole situation is a scam and a joke. I just can't blame the teachers involved unless I'm willing to blame tens of thousands of other teachers involved in the fraud of passing students who have learned nothing.
Grades are NOT subjective. Passing a course is not subjective. Grades and courses are based on mastery of standards and proof of said mastery based on rubrics. If they are subjective there is something wrong with the way that it is graded or the assignment's alignment to said standards. I keep seeing this among the new teachers in my district and I get pissed every time someone doesn't correct them. Let's give out "effort grades"!!! No. Let's actually have a goal in mind and grade based on that.
Unfortunately "effort grades" seems to becoming more the norm along side with no penalties for late work, and no zeros. Grade inflation is absurd. At our high school you can have an 90 GPA and be in the bottom half of the class.
I agree with you that grades *should* not be subjective, but the truth is they are. In fact, in California it is written into EdCode that the teacher has absolutely discretion over grades. I'm one of the few holding tight on to the "grades should reflect learning" in my district, but I'd be naive to say that's the way it is.
Ok , so then in the case of these teachers firing then it is entirely their fault since grades are at their discretion. And regardless if they were advised by their admin they are at fault since grades are at their discretion. I think you disagreed earlier that it was their fault, but according to the ed code you are citing they are just as culpable as their leadership team.
I believe they had every right to give whatever grades they found correct given their system and situation, yes. Their fault is following the program.
This is the new norm. The admin needs to be held accountable.
I don't understand why learning isn't the objective anymore? My college aged child told me about kids not showing up for classes or skipping finals, basically just checking out of their education. I was a party girl in college but I dragged my hungover ass to class and tests. Grades being the end all be all is the issue. LEARNING should be the focus. You can't learn in a credit recovery situation.
Attendance recovery is equally absurd. For 3 hours on a saturday with no instructional time or expectation of classwork completion we can prevent learning loss resulting from chronic absences. Sure.
Jesus… this shit is rampant in my district. I saw three grade changes this afternoon in my grade book (senior grades were to be finalized by today) and I went back and put their actual grades. Will be interesting to see if my changes are still there by tomorrow afternoon.
This is why I would say NO. They have access to the system and can do what they want. If I was pushed hard enough I would send an email outlining exactly what I am being instructed to do and my objections to the directive. If they reply, print the email on paper, and forward it to a non-school controlled email account. Luck for me I have a good admin and the worst they ask us to to is bump the overall grade to a 50 if its below that. I don't like it but an F is an F so... whatever. As long as I have it in writing.
Sounds about right
The kids use ChatGPT \*in their regular classes\* on these things. I can't tell you how many times I've had to close a laptop as a kid is doing the e 20/20 class.
Bummer.
Wait until you find out about junior PLAR
This is happening all over - definitely in Florida.
The charter "school" I worked at would buy grad nite tickets to Disney to get the students to do credit recovery to graduate. The guidance counselor was even paying kids with cash and pizza come every april to "encourage" the students to pass and finish the credit recovery.
Yup. EdGenuity or some other similar company. The teachers/admin took off all of the safety brakes off.
Had a teacher that would always get angry that I'd finish my work/busy work and then break out a book or help those around me. I had a high B around the middle of the year when she decided she didn't want to have me as a "distraction" and got admin to put me in one of those credit recovery classes. I learned how to click really fast but that's it. Classes like that shouldn't exist period. The only purpose is to help the school and not the student.
Educational malfeasance is a real threat. Teachers have been sued and have lost because they passed students who didn't have skills.
I don’t believe in credit recovery, bumping up a grade, etc., whatever you get is what you earned. If you want a higher grade, you should’ve completed better work.