Note: Jayne, who has been consistently updating me on Kati Rose's progress in finding work, overcoming mobbing situations and dealing with the consequences of being a whistleblower for a local collegeate cheating ring, recently sent a huge compliment of articles on the subject. Jayne maintains Kati blew the whistle because of the way she had been brought up...to be honest and ethical. She also believes Kati's actions, which should have been commended, instead have been the cause of her enduring difficulties in securing even the most basic of jobs and making it difficult to move to a new location and start with a clean slate. Here are a couple of articles from 1997 on the topic, which Jayne feels very strongly about.

Widespread Cheating Reported on Tests
(The Associated Press)

NEW YORK- The Educational Testing Service, which administers the Scholastic Assessment test, citizenship tests, and professional licensing exams, has suffered serious security lapses and cheating problems, The New York Times reported on Sunday (1997). The Times cited numerous instances in which the Princeton, NJ based company had discovered widespread cheating. However, the newspaper said SAT tests--skill evaluations taken by millions of high school students--have not confronted similar levels of cheating.: Among the examples cited:

-Copies of an exam given to Louisiana teachers who want to be school principals were found have circulated throughout the state, along with the answer sheet.

-People who speak no English have appeared at Immigration and Naturalization Services offices with certificates showing they passed English and civics tests administered at the ETS offices. The non-profit company closed 23 citizenship-testing centers in New York City because of the evidence of cheating and bribes, The Times said.

-Questions on graduate school admissions tests have been memorized by people taking the test in one time zone and supplied by telephone to people taking thetests inother time zones. The times said its fourth month investiagation found that ETS had confronted many cases of cheating,but withheld informationf romthe e-public and local officials.

It is said the company has played down the cheating to protect its dominance of the testing business. ETS president Nancy Cole told the Times the compnay handled the chating incidences appropriately.

Professor in Grade Case to Retire

Perry says NCSU made life miserable (abbreviated)

by Ned Glascock, staff writer

RALEIGH--An NC State University professor who blew the whistle in a campus cheating case last spring says school administrators have made his life so miserable that he decided to retire early.

After publically criticizing NCSU trustees for overturning a guilty ruiling against a student he had accused of cheating, Jerome Perry says he became a target for recrimination. Perry, a microbiology professor, says NCSU administrators put him through an unnecessary grievance procedure, stripped him of his teaching responsibility for the Spring 1998 semester and threatened to sue him if he did not honor his plan to retire in January--a plan he says he offered because the university stopped supporting him.

"I think somebody at a higher level just decided, 'By golly, we're going to make this guy's life miserable," Perry, 67, said. "And they did a good job of it. It's something out of a nightmare."

University administrators tell a different tale. They say that Perry never ways treated unfairly or threatened with university legal action, and that his removal from teaching was not a punishment.

His boss, Hosni Hassan, paints Perry as a veteran professor made bitter by the trustees' action --a stubborn man who refused to accept the decision and go along with university procedures.

"The other way you look at it is, he made our life miserable," said Hassan, head of the microbiology department. "He hasn't been very cooperative on a lot of issues...That's his personality. He has never trusted the higher administration."

Perry made headlines in May (1997) with his attack on the trustees in the first case of academic misconduct he had brought in a career spanning more than three decades at NCSU.

In February, a trustees committee overturned a ruling that one of Perry's students cheated on a microbiology exam in April 1996, although the verdict had been upheld throught three rounds of administrative appeals, including a review by Chancellor Larry Monteith. In response, Perry wrote an angry letter to the trustees, saying they had undermined efforts to promote academic integrity on a campus already burdened with a "palpable cynicism" among faculty members wary of the university's committment to pursuing cheating cases.

After the trustees' decision, the vindicated student filed a grievance with NCSU, seeing a higher grade in Perry's course. Eventually, a higher grade was awarded.

Hassan agreed with Perry that the trustees had erred, but he said that Perry refused to get beyond his disgust and resolve the case more appropriately. He said Perry made the process more difficult for everyone by refusing to cooperate with a university grievance committee.

Perry acknowleged that he didn't want to cooperate, charging that such committees start off assuming the professor is wrong.

"I don't think anybody who's been here 34 years wants to go hat-in-hand to a grievance committee to confess the error of his ways," Perry said sarcastically. "This is a kanagaroo court."

Besides, he said, he offered to give the student the grade he wanted in order to avoid the grievance procedure, which he thought would arrive at the same result. Hassan said administrators disagreed with the reasons he gave for chaning the grade and followed through with the process.

Replaced in Class:

Perry said he learned in August that he had been dropped from his usual teaching assignment...a general biology lecuture course...for next spring. He thought he was being punished. Hassan said he replaced Perry because Perry hadn't committed to teach the class and would be retiring soon anyway, at least by June.

A few days later, Perry told Hassan he intended to resign in January, citing a lack of support from adiministrators in the cheating case, which he said undermined his ability to teach and grade appropriately. When Perry suggested he put off his retirement until June, he said, Hassan threatned that the University provost would file a law suit against him. Hassan said no such threat was made....

The dispute has bruised relations between Perry and some NCSU administrators. But no one set out to get Perry, Provost Phil Stiles said.

"There was no intent by anybody I know to make his life miserable," he said. "He's been here a long time, and a lot of students, I'm sure, would say he's a very meritorious professor."

Leo Parks, an NCSU microbiology professor and the department head from 1985 to 1993, vouched for Perry's abilities. "I think the tragedy of this, if in fact he does resign, is we're losing a really fine teacher," Parks said. "He teaches these really huge classes that are so tough to teach. In all the time I was department head, I don't remember a single student who complained about his classes, and that's remarkable."