"Had this been just another failing urban school, no one
would have made these accusations.”

When Preuss School Board of Directors Chair Cecil Lytle made
this comment defending the integrity of UCSD’s nationally recognized charter
school against allegations of grade tampering, he was also inadvertently
exposing its Achilles’ heel. Since its inception in 1999, the school has
stockpiled accolades, including recent slots in Newsweek and U.S. News and
World Report’s lists of the top 10 high schools in the nation. However, judging
by the results of the recent UCSD audit of the school’s operations — which
unearthed multiple instances of administrative mismanagement, including altered
transcripts suspiciously missing the initial grade entry forms — it’s clear
that the abundance of acclaim was accompanied by an unhealthy dose of
managerial complacency.

Even if none of the 427 grade alterations were deliberate —
a very unlikely scenario, according to the auditors — it doesn’t retroactively
absolve Preuss administrators for allowing these problems to go unnoticed for
many years. As a self-proclaimed model for urban education, the school’s
leaders should have reasonably foreseen the dangers of lax management,
particularly regarding their students’ grades. Lytle was correct in
acknowledging that charter-school skeptics are a dime a dozen — all the more
reason why there should have been double- and triple-checks in place to ensure
that there were no closeted skeletons that the reporters flocking around Preuss
have now uncovered.

Ex-Principal Doris Alvarez, waging a media campaign against
the auditors for implicating her in the grade-changing process, has inferred
that the university’s post-audit disciplinary actions may not have happened at
a time when the school was less visible on the national radar. However, UCSD’s
strong stance against documented cheating is the only acceptable recourse for
such reprehensible actions.

Had Preuss administrators periodically performed their own
internal audits, or even just kept a closer eye on their lower-level employees,
the scandal never would have snowballed into such a public-relations nightmare.
Instead, a former registrar was allowed access to her son’s transcripts, which
she later admitted to altering. Instead, Alvarez chose to terminate Jennifer
Howard, an ex-teacher who was testifying in the ongoing audit at the time her
contract was up for renewal. Instead, the Board of Directors allowed Alvarez to
take the wheel, failing to realize the implications of these decisions until
the university’s audit was all but inevitable. By turning a blind eye to its
own operations, the Preuss School did its bright, hardworking students an
undeniable disservice.

Now that the captain of the wayward ship has resigned,
however, Preuss is making strides in the long process of rebuilding its
national standing and the community’s faith. Alvarez’s successor will have
undoubtedly learned many lessons from this unfortunate situation, but perhaps
the most important moral is the necessity of constant internal vigilance — even
when nothing appears to be amiss. Preuss is not a failing urban school, but a
successful educational prototype that has been temporarily derailed from its
upward track. While it is unfortunate that the university must uphold its
dedication to integrity and personal responsibility through punitive measures,
continuing to adhere to these values is the only way that UCSD can return
Preuss to the high regard that it could — and should — occupy.