Blizzard of buzz for student who found error on test

BY SUZANNE PEREZ TOBIAS
The Wichita Eagle

Jaime Oppenheimer/The Wichita Eagle
East High School junior Geoffrey Stanford discovered a word usage error on the state writing assessment last week. The state is sending out a corrected version of the test.
Wichita student's keen eye nets national news coverage
Error on state test slips past everyone -- except East High student

East High School junior Geoffrey Stanford has been fielding media requests, phone calls, text messages and random comments -- some complimentary, some not so much -- after a story about his editing prowess drew national attention.

Stanford, a 17-year-old linebacker and International Baccalaureate student, caught an error on a state writing test last week: The word "emission" -- as in "the emission of greenhouse gases" -- was spelled "omission" in one of the writing prompts.

The Kansas Department of Education has since e-mailed a correction to test coordinators.

But after an Eagle story about the glitch appeared on the Yahoo home page Friday and received more than 3.9 million page views, Stanford heard from people around the world.

He is scheduled to appear on the Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends" morning show Sunday. Producers said the segment is expected to air at about 6:50 a.m.

Stanford got more than 100 Facebook friend requests, most from people he has never met. One e-mail from a woman in Boulder, Colo., proclaimed: "You have done a good deed!... Thank you for coming forward to do the right thing."

Stanford was blindsided by the attention.

"I just never thought it would get to this point," he said. "Some people are saying, 'Good job,' and some are giving me a little grief about it."

Stanford didn't alert reporters to the correction. He simply pointed it out to his teacher during the test. She told the test coordinator, who told state education officials, and the story got out.

"Millions of people do this all the time," said Stanford's father, Jim Stanford. "We see things that are wrong, and we try to correct them, and we never ask for any kind of reward.

"I think the fact that he's getting any attention at all is rubbing some people the wrong way."

Some have accused Geoffrey Stanford of gloating. Others pointed to the error as evidence of a faltering education system. And some, including one commenter on Kansas.com, said simply, "BIG DEAL!"

Jim Stanford, a medical student, advised his son to "take it all with a grain of salt."

"It's OK to expect things to be done well, and it's OK to let people know when there's a problem. And it's also OK for people to complain and whine about it.... That's the kind of freedom we have, thank goodness."

Geoffrey Stanford said the story's national appeal might say more about people's appetite for positive news.

"Maybe there's something kind of, I don't know, heartwarming about it," he said. "It's not one of those depressing stories you see a lot these days."

I thought that was funny when i heard that on the news, good for him.

Yep yep! He's one smart kid there, that's for sure!

Cool.