Clinton High Principal Resigns, Two Teachers Fired After Investigation Into Grade Manipulation
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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
The Anderson County Board of Education unanimously voted to fire two teachers for their involvement in a grade manipulation scandal at Clinton High School. They had already accepted the resignation of the school’s principal last month.
The official reason given for the firing of teachers Rachel Jones and Clay Turpin was “unprofessional conduct, insubordination, and neglect of duty.” The two are accused of changing thousands of grades through the school’s credit recovery program.
Jones was originally suspended pending the investigation, which began in April. Principal Daniel Jenkins was also suspended, but he submitted his resignation immediately after that.
The investigation report shows that during her tenure as the credit recovery teacher, Jones would “bump students’ grades, skip questions, and skip assignments” at the instruction of Jenkins in order to move students quickly through courses in order to push them towards graduation.
Jones stated that she believes Jenkins asked her to do that to improve the school’s graduation rate numbers.
After Jones informed Jenkins that she would no longer change student grades, he replaced her with Turpin. Turpin is said to have changed more than 1000 grades himself in the short amount of time that he held the position.
During the investigation, Turpin admitted that students would be enrolled in “test only” online courses and that he suspected that they were using their cell phones to look up the answers for those tests and quizzes.
One student was noted to have finished a semester-long geometry class in less than two hours.
Besides issues with credit recovery grades, some students who were labeled as on track to graduate were found to be missing required courses. One student apparently graduated last year without taking a math course, despite the fact that Tennessee law requires that students take a math class each year.
Other students were enrolled in online credit recovery classes but did not take the mandatory End of Course exams.
Accusations have also been levied against Clinton High School’s head football coach Darrell Keith, with Jones stating that Keith asked her to fix grades for a student athlete. When Jones told him that she was unable to do that, he got signed permission from Principal Jenkins authorizing the grade adjustments.
The investigation was initiated by Anderson County Schools after they noticed grade irregularities with the credit recovery program. The district has been working with the Tennessee Department of Education since they began reviewing the situation.
Director of Schools Tim Parrott appointed Assistant Principal Amanda Powers to serve as interim principal beginning on April 12.
Wow. Is this all about receiving state school funding?
One can blame this obsession with achievement tests at the expense of teacher/student interaction in a genuine friendly teaching environment and on Lee’s fourth grade retention policy for students who do not pass a test that even most of Tennessee’s Republican legislators and their rich children could not pass. Indeed, the fourth grade retention law is not only causing parents who can afford it to transfer their children to private schools with the deliberate of destroying Tennessee’s 200 year old public school system but it causes students and their parents to cheat in order to pass these absurd achievement tests. Only the testers benefit from such a system along with Lee and Company who get their cut from these testers.
Oh yeah, it is the fault of the people trying to bring accountability to a school system that is failing the students, parents, and tax payers. So it is perfectly acceptable to lie and cheat? Do you think Joe Biden is doing a great job as well? Please explain how school districts with proficiency rates between 40%-60% in every subject have graduation rates of 95%-98%. Is that Bill Lee’s fault too?