PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla— — Cam Cary is the parent of a Watson B. Duncan student who recently reported to the school district a controversial quiz question calling President Donald Trump an idiot. He’s now speaking out about the incident after the PBCSD reported the investigation found the company Quizlet is at fault, not the teacher who administered the quiz.
“There’s a problem here that teachers need to be a little bit more careful and diligent looking at their actual quizzes and tests presented to the students,” said Cary.
Cary won’t comment on what he believes the computer teacher’s punishment should be, instead, he hopes this sparks a bigger conversation inside the homes of families across the country.
“What this is about is making a statement that forces a child to think a certain way it should be more about facts based teaching,” said Cary.
Cary says he spoke at great lengths with an instructional superintendent over the phone on Friday and was told the district is reaching out to the Department of Education about Quizlet being sanctioned by the DOE.
After more than a week-long investigation within the Palm Beach County School District it found the teacher didn’t review the quiz before administering it, however, she didn’t write the question.
The district wouldn’t address the incident on camera but provided a statement to NewsChannel 5 saying, “The School District of Palm Beach County holds our educators to the highest standards. The teacher has been disciplined.”
According to Cary, the teacher was removed from the child’s class and has yet to return.
“To be clear this is not about politics at all,” said Cary.
Yet how did this political question end up in the hands of 13 and 14-year-olds?
Quizlet issued the following statement on Saturday, October 5, 2019:
Quizlet is dedicated to helping students and their teachers practice and master whatever they are learning by providing a place where people can create study materials to share and engage with. Study sets on Quizlet are created by individual students and teachers, not Quizlet, and they can choose to make those study sets available for others to use for their learning activities. Every day we see thousands of teachers work hard to educate and care for their students, and we believe educators have their students' best interests at heart. We've made ourselves available to the school if they have questions we can help answer, and we wish the teachers and administration there a successful school year ahead.
“So my message to parents is listen to you kids, talk to them regularly, respect their views, you don’t have to share the same views it’s not important what’s important is teach them to listen to everything and make their own decisions,” said Cary.
NewsChannel 5 requested the documents from the district that provides insight into the investigation. Once we receive them we will provide an update to this story.