Charter School Scandal

The problems with Oakland's University Preparatory Charter Academy (or "Uprep") are mounting, with an anonymous teacher leaking papers to the Chron today that indicated possible grade-changing on official transcripts sent with college application papers. For instance, the teacher gave one student Fs and Ds on his/her work, the report card that went home had Ds and Cs, and the transcript that went to the colleges showed only As and Bs. Teachers also noticed that the names of the classes were changed: for instance, from Math to Math Analysis to Trigonometry on the offical transcript.

Uprep was intended to serve disadvantaged students and put them on a college preparatory path, but the school has been hit hard by cheating scandals as of late -- earlier in the month, teachers accused the school of cheating on their state achievement tests, and the principal, after angrily denying the allegations, suddenly resigned. The Oakland Unified School District is also evaluating a report it received earlier this summer about a rampant culture of cheating and intimidation in the school, and investigating whether there's been misappropriation of state and federal funds.

It's been a bad year for academia in the East Bay -- Diablo Valley College is still reeling from last semester's money (and sex)-for-grades scandal too.