[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|
Status: Not Logged In; Sign In
United States News Title: Report: Pennsylvania State Police Academy fostered cheating State Police Academy instructors helped create a climate of cheating by sharing answers with cadets and using the same testing material for decades, allowing graduating classes to pass down study guides to newer cadets, a special state investigation shows. Released Friday by the Office of Inspector General, the report also faulted instructors for using outdated lessons and for giving tests that failed to keep pace with current law or American Red Cross first aid regulations. The investigation, which involved 8,160 man-hours and 105 interviews, was conducted following a public cheating and discrimination scandal involving a 2015-16 cadet class at the storied institution outside Hershey. "Several cadets from the 144th Cadet Class told [investigators] that during test review sessions, instructors provided actual or direct test answers for upcoming traffic law, Taser and emergency medical response examinations," the report states. One cadet told investigators the emergency medical response classes were so inadequate that rendering first aid at the scene of an accident would be difficult. Four instructors also admitted to giving cadets answers "immediately before" tests either because cadets routinely flubbed the questions, a question was ambiguously worded or a question did not reflect a change in criminal law. "The former [academy] director said that the body of the academy's lesson plans have been inherited for decades because it is not productive to rewrite the material, although the material is occasionally revised, most often due to changes in law or judicial decisions interpreting the law," the report states. Some instructors turned their classrooms into rote note-taking seminars that included repeated warnings that material will be on tests before test questions were read verbatim. That classroom setting allowed cadets to create study guides that contained exact questions and matching answer keys. Cadets then either emailed or handed off their study guides to the next class, and there were no regulations to stop such practices. The study guides were so accurate the inspector general's investigators were able to use them to pass the tests themselves, the report states. Despite these longtime teaching and study practices, the state police came down hard on members of the 144th class when a cadet was found with a study guide during a test in December 2015. The cheating probe involving the 113-member cadet class began four months into the term of Gov. Tom Wolf's first Senate-confirmed state police Commissioner, Tyrone C. Blocker. A subsequent state police internal affairs investigation caused 38 cadets to be dismissed or resign from the academy. Some of those cadets told Pennlive/Harrisburg Patriot News they were treated unfairly because they came into an environment where instructors readily provided answers and encouraged them to use prior classmates' material. Following the media reports, Blocker asked the inspector general's office to do an outside review, even though the academy had already started cleaning up its instructional practices and rotating in new instructors. "As the result of a self-initiated internal investigation, the PSP has implemented considerable improvements to the academy organizational structure, command and instructional staff, and operational procedures to prevent cadets from cheating on examinations and to improve the quality of instruction at the academy," Blocker said in a statement. "Steps have been taken to advance the training, guidance, and evaluation of academy instructors. In support of these efforts, a new position was created within the Bureau of Training and Education to oversee course content, cadet instruction and examinations. In addition, the department worked with the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association to institute three- to five-year term limits for academy instructors." The inspector general's office is a little-known agency within the governor's office. Its role is to investigate waste, fraud and abuse in the executive branch. Historically, its work has been cloaked in secrecy. The state police report is the largest investigation the agency has ever performed. The office is led by Bruce Beemer, a longtime county and state prosecutor who served as attorney general following the conviction and resignation of Kathleen Kane. "Our charge in conducting this investigation was not to rule on the merits of the individual dismissed cadets' cases but to take a comprehensive and independent look at the academy's instruction and testing methods to determine what factors may have contributed to any misconduct uncovered and to make recommendations to address our findings," Beemer said. "The state police was fully cooperative in the investigation and, indeed, has already made changes and improvements to some of the shortcomings we identified." The full report can be found on the inspector general's website. Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Deckard (#0)
Don't blame them,blame the political creatures above them who create the Affirmative Action Laws that DEMAND a certain percentage of non-white and female students graduate,even if they don't have a pulse. Somebody needs to splain to these reporters and reporterette's that they can't have it both ways. You just can't have "social justice" and actual justice occupy the same space at the same time. In the entire history of the world,the only nations that had to build walls to keep their own citizens from leaving were those with leftist governments.
|
|
[Home] [Headlines] [Latest Articles] [Latest Comments] [Post] [Mail] [Sign-in] [Setup] [Help] [Register]
|