Toronto school board boss apologizes for plagiarism

The director of education for Torontos public school board issued an apology Wednesday, admitting that he plagiarized passages in an opinion piece he wrote for a daily newspaper.

Chris Spence, the boards director of education, wrote a piece that waspublished in the Toronto Stars Sunday edition and posted on its websiteabout the importance of extracurricular activities in schools.

Two paragraphs in Spences article are identical to an opinion piece published in a 1989 New York Times piece. In other places, Spence cribbed material from online sources.

Spence has since written an apology posted on the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) website admitting he failed to provide proper attribution for the work of others in five places in the article.

"I am ashamed and embarrassed by what I did," Spence wrote. "I have invited criticism and condemnation, and I richly deserve both."

In his posting on the TDSB website, Spence said he wrote down notes while researching his article andthen wrote the notes into his piece after coming back to work on iton another day.

'There is no excuse for what I did'

"I can provide excuses for how and why this happened that I was rushed, that I was sloppy, that I was careless but thats all they would be: excuses. There is no excuse for what I did."

Spence also conceded the punishment that a TDSB student would face for plagiarizing a mark of zero for an assignment is not fitting for him.

"I am not a student anymore; I am an adult, and an educator. I should know better. And I must set a clear example for the nearly 250,000 students at the TDSB."

Laura Murray, an English professor at Queen's University and an expert on plagiarism issues, told Canadian Press that Spence's misconduct is unacceptable and "undermines the values" that educators try to instil in students.

But while the school board must speak out strongly against it, she said firing Spenceor demanding he step downdoes nothing to prevent plagiarism from recurring.

"The school board might decide that because academic integrity is a central value of their organization, that he can't be considered to be doing his job if he plagiarizesthat's the debate that they'll have to have," she said.

Spence said he will enrol in a media ethics course and also apologized to the Star, which has removed Spences opinion piece from its website.

Spence, a former CFL player, has been head of the TDSB since 2009.