Is it as bad as it looks?

An e-mail sent to Superintendent Jerry Weast on January 29, 2010:

I was very concerned to read the following paragraph in this morning's Post story about grade hacking at Winston Churchill High School:

"Teachers were told to check grades for anomalies and correct them before first semester report cards are released Feb. 3, according to the sources. But
because teachers at the school no longer keep separate log books of their grades, it might be difficult to go back and find a student's original grade, the sources said."

If teachers' are not keeping a back-up record of their grades, this could happen at any MCPS school. Is this so? I worked as an internal auditor for two different banks for a decade, and this was the first question we asked when a department was considering adopting a new computer system: "How can we audit the integrity of the system?" All systems require an audit trail. We teach our children to back up their work. Are teachers being required to do the same when they record our children's hard-earned grades? And if not, why?

Please assure all parents and tax payers that a security breach such as that at Churchill can be remedied because proper controls are in place. Could what happen at Churchill happen at any Montgomery County high school without correction?

Thank you.

Parent of a MCPS high school student

Reprinted with permission of the author.