al-AP is reporting that 100 professors in Germany are being investigated for allegedly accepting bribes from a company acting as an intermediary between PhD students and the professors. The students paid the company for help in getting doctorates through the company's extensive contacts with the professors--although I can't imagine what kind of "help" the students expected for the thousands of dollars they each paid--but there's no evidence yet that the students knew of outright bribes.
One professor, convicted of taking such bribes last year, received a 3 year prison term.
I would provide a link to this story, but given their attacks on people who quote "their" stories even in fair use, I no longer link to al-AP. Should you want to find the actual story, you might find it by doing a search for the company in question, Institute for Scientific Consulting.
My son actually goes to the school. Here's a little background: The school just opened last year. This was a 166 million dollar facility that was built in the middle of what was supposed to be a huge new development that could accomodate approx. 3600 students between the high school (Consumnes Oaks) and the middle. Then construction stopped on the housing. So they opened the school up to the district, I feel it was fairly discreet. We went to the meeting and it was explained that there would only be about 400-500 middle school students in the school this year. In relation to his home school's 2000 students it sounded good and he decided to leave his friends and attend Pinkerton. I feel the kids that attended last year tended to have parents who were more involved and students who could see the benefit of a smaller school. I have a friend that taught math with Mr. Freathy and he said that he is an excellent teacher. You may have noticed that the article states the demographics of the school, but not of the Alegebra classes themselves. As for the students in those classes, my son earned 100% for the year in Mrs. Chungs' pre algebra class, but was not placed in algebra last year. By the way he thinks she's a really good teacher. The school is also on a block schedule and they only have 2 blocks(out of 4) for the year of the math class itself. There is a "bridge" class inbetween while they are not in math that keeps them fresh. So its not just a case of curriculum and pedagody, I think the success for this year is probably more related to the type of student who was drawn to the school.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking you meant this comment for the previous post, not this one!!!
ReplyDeleteBut thank you for the added information.