More Stuy cheating news and a new sheriff principal in town

The follow-up investigation to the Spring semester Regents exam cheating scandal has revealed more Stuy kids cheating. The suspension count is up to 66. As to my earlier question about the point of recording test data for classmates taking the same test at the same time, the Daily News clarifies the Stuy kids were messaging each other during the tests; more on the mechanics of the scam from the Atlantic. The scandal is making headlines across local and national MSM, including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

Ex-principal Stanley Teitel, who taught at Stuyvesant when I was there, suddenly 'resigned' his post and retired in August. Lax enforcement of academic integrity, including ignoring a NYC DOE-wide ban on cellphones in schools, is cited as a factor in the scandal. Jie Zhang, an experienced NYC DOE teacher and administrator, including as a HS principal, and 2-time Stuy mom herself, has been brought in as interim principal. Fittingly, Zhang started her teaching career at Rikers Island. She has been charged with cleaning up not only the particular cheating scandal but the revealed endemic cheating culture at Stuy.

Left to their own 'state of nature', most people - including gifted and talented Stuy kids - will make cost/benefit choices that follow the path of least resistance to greatest reward and least burden (punishment). As social creatures, a 'cooperate and graduate' mentality comes naturally. A few exceptional people will adhere to internalized codes of honor regardless of their environment. Some people are inveterate 'if you ain't cheating you ain't trying' opportunists. Most people can recite an ethical code and prefer a fair arena but will, in reality, adjust pragmatically to their environment. An environment that binds its members with higher standards and integrity, as Stuy aspires to, requires leaders who take it upon themselves to push back against human nature and create an artificial environment that alters natural cost/benefit choices. I learned the leadership lesson as a platoon sergeant at USMAPS who set his own standards and enforced them for his peers because the TACs had become virtual absentee landlords in the 4th quarter, secure in the knowledge that the CCs remaining had passed the hurdles required for making it to West Point, and my classmates were falling out in the absence of the TACs' oversight.

19SEP12 Add: New York magazine has a long expose on the Stuy cheating scandal, including an interview with Nayeem Ahsan. It sounds like he had 89 GPA smarts but wanted a 95+ GPA and needed to cheat in order to score better than his natural ceiling. For the Stuy entrance exam, he studied as hard as he could and only scored in the low 600s. My advice as a Stuy grad to Ahsan? The social networking skills he's developed are very useful, but for the rest of it, work ethic and fundamentals will take him a lot farther in the long run than short cuts and cheating. An Ivy League degree is not the be-all/end-all.

Eric