Loading ...

In what appeared to be a win win situation… Jeff Spires was a high school teacher strapped for cash in the middle of a recession. So he came up with the genius idea to charge his students for better grades. He didn’t set a certain price. It was a give whatever you can afford program.  Of course eventually he got ratted out and had to resign. 

Jeff Spires told students to staple cash to their test papers and he would give them a higher mark.

One 16 year old student said he paid $40 on two occasions to have his grades improved from a C to a B.

‘Maybe I see the kids are as desperate as I am,’ he told the school’s investigators.

The maths teacher said he was in such dire financial straits this year that he decided to take the cash. 

Students were told to staple the cash to quiz or exam sheets or use a paper clip. There was no set fee and students gave what they could afford.

One senior paid Spires $15 and $30 for his grade to be improved for a quiz, but Spires rejected an offer of $200 from another student to mark her up from a B to an A as the grades had already been recorded.

Changing the grade could have led to an investigation which would have uncovered the bribes.

Should he have been fired or reprimanded? If he was a good teacher I would say reprimanded.

source