Unethical Conduct by Administrators

I have worked for and with many great ethical educational leaders in my career; however, a few that I have worked with will always stand out as unethical. One principal that I worked for early in my career was doing some great things on the job. He had helped turn around the discipline problems at a school, such as fights and tardies; however, one thing that glaringly pointed to him being unethical was the fact that he was a married man who had a girlfriend on campus that everyone knew about. I was pretty shocked when I found out and didn’t really want to believe it because I really looked up to him as an educational leader, but the more I heard about, the evidence was there. I saw how this defined his career for some and not the strides he made at the school where I worked. It taught me the important of us being role models not just to the students but also to coworkers. 

Another case that I read about recently involving unethical behavior happened during a district’s testing.  The testing coordinator was in charge of securing the testing materials.  Her location of choice was in a locked desk drawer inside her locked office.  Though this is common practice at many schools, it was a particular problem at this middle school due to the door lock being a common master key held by many on the campus.  Additionally, the desk drawer key was also being very common.  Provided at the school, but unused in this situation, was a separate, locked closet for testing materials with only one key available that was held by the testing coordinator.  During a district-led testing audit, it was discovered that a large number of students who failed the previous year’s 7^th grade writing or 8^th grade math test received a commended score on the 2009 test.  This audit led to an erasure analysis by TEA that discovered the answer choices that were erased and changed to right answers far exceeded the state average for these tests.  The state average was 0.16 erasures per answer document, and in this case the average was 17.7 where 98% of those erasures led to an incorrect answer being changed to a correct answer.  Though neither TEA nor the district was able to prove who tampered with the answer documents, they were able to conclude that someone definitely had a hand in it.  The testing coordinator and the principal were brought before the Texas Education Agency with sanctions looming.  Though the principal did not actually handle the tests, part of his job was to oversee the person who did, in this case, the testing coordinator.  Both of the educators received major sanctions from TEA, including the lost of their license for a one year period.  This taught me that as a campus administrator you have to be aware of everything and you take ethics very serious when comes to testing.