Principal, teacher clash on cheating

“You are creating an expectation that students will cheat,” Martel recalls the principal telling him after he showed his anti-copying measures. “By creating that expectation, they will rise to your expectation.”

Last week’s column, full of practical suggestions on how to limit cheating, did not seem controversial to me. Many teachers sent their own ideas. Many recommended small adjustments, such as having the questions in different order for different students, to hinder copying.

So I was surprised to hear from Erich Martel, an Advanced Placement U.S. History teacher at Wilson High School in the District, that his principal, Peter Cahall, was critical of him doing that.

Martel’s classroom, 18 by 25 feet, feels like shoebox to him. Some days he squeezes in 30 students, plus himself. That is 15 square feet per student, which Martel has been told is well below the district standard of 25 square feet. The cramped conditions led to a disagreement when Cahall assessed Martel’s work under the school district’s IMPACT teacher evaluation system.