An extraordinarily disheartening article for teachers (mostly college, but I bet high school too)

[tzikeh]

The Shadow Scholar: The man who writes your students' papers tells his story

You've never heard of me, but there's a good chance that you've read some of my work. I'm a hired gun, a doctor of everything, an academic mercenary. My customers are your students. I promise you that. Somebody in your classroom uses a service that you can't detect, that you can't defend against, that you may not even know exists. (emphasis mine)

And now we have even more of an understanding of why so many people in the workforce have absolutely no fucking clue what they're doing.

(I'm particularly frightened by the fact that he's responsible for terrible nursing students graduating and becoming nurses.)

In happier news: once I (finally!) get my teacher certification for Secondary Education in English/Language Arts (grades 8-12), I will be automatically certified to teach theater, speech, and social studies as well, thanks to all of the transferable credits from Northwestern University. \o/

Comments

[tzikeh.livejournal.com]

Huh - interesting. We have standardized exams nationwide for students in 4th, 8th, and... 12th grade, I think, but they have nothing to do with grades that students get in school - they're part of the NEAP (pretty much the "national report card") to see how the students of America are reading, writing, etc.

As for college, how the class is structured (papers, exams, orals, etc.) differs from professor to professor, let alone university to university. There are no nationwide standards for that.

High-school students probably still have some exams, but I'm certain that the vast majority of this guy's work is for college and grad school. For what he charges, I don't know that a lot of teenagers could afford it.