KQED News Mind/Shift – Linda Flanagan
“Jennifer Tammi teaches U.S. History to tenth graders at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School in the Bronx. A few years ago, she took on an additional role, one with a long-lasting, school-wide impact: she led a task force to study academic dishonesty and to come up with a new way of countering it. Fallout from a cheating incident at school set the task force in motion. A student had been reprimanded for plagiarism, and the student’s parents had rebelled at the school’s punishment. At the time, Fieldston imposed a tough three-strikes policy: the first offense resulted in an automatic zero on the assignment combined with a letter of reprimand from the dean, with progressive penalties for further offenses, and ending in expulsion. “They thought our policy was horrible,” Tammi recalls, in part because faculty applied the penalties inconsistently. Fieldston’s principal at the time wanted to explore other options for the school, and formed a committee, led by Tammi, to look for new ways to think about and address academic dishonesty.”(more)