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[quote]
These are the sorts of calculations many students at Stuyvesant, New York City’s flagship public school, learn to make by the middle of their freshman year: weighing two classes against each other, the possibility of getting an A against the possibility of getting caught, keeping their integrity against making it to a dream college. By the time they graduate, many have internalized a moral and academic math: Copying homework is fine, but cheating on a test is less so; cheating to get by in a required class is more acceptable than cheating on an Advanced Placement exam; anything less than a grade of 85 is “failing”; achieve anything more than a grade-point average of 95, and you might be bound for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Yale.
<p>Regarding cheating by writing notes on one’s arm or otherwise bringing in cheat sheets, perhaps teachers can avoid that by having open-book tests with difficult problems that are not the typical “plug into the obvious formula” type.</p>
<p>My daughter witnessed lots of cheating by the top students in her HS AP classes. They would split up the homework and each do parts and then copy the other parts from each other. They would find out the test questions from the kids who took the same test during an earlier period. What bothered her most was that the students did not consider any of this cheating - rather this is what you were supposed to do. Most of the teachers did nothing to discourage this - did not mix up or change test questions for different sections, accepted homework form students which was identical, etc.</p>
<p>My kids see quite a bit of cheating too and it is really aggravating when the teacher is too lazy to do the simplest things to prevent it. Last year DS had a biology teacher that would give a test in an earlier class, then go over the answers before class was over. They were multiple choice tests so kids would use their phone to record the answers in order to send the answers to kids taking the class later in the day. All the teacher would have to have done was reorder the questions to stop this cold but no… In fact he wouldn’t believe the kids telling him this was going on until one student accidentally skipped a number and so all the subsequent answers were just shifted by one. He finally noticed the pattern but still did nothing to prevent future cheating.</p>
<p>D told me today, a kid in one of her AP classes has extra time/separate classroom for her exams. Kid will ask to go to the bathroom near the end of her time and has all her notes in the bathroom awaiting her to “help her”. Kid has a 99 average in the class. </p>
<p>IMO cell phones/twitter/internet has made this cheating way worse. I see kids offering others to do their HW assignments, give the login ID for their HW assignments, etc.
Same cheating went on when oldest was in HS, teachers were well aware as was the principal, he “tried” but the teachers responses were, well they wont pass the AP exam, well at that point, it doesn’t matter. The kids have high GPA’s and lousy SAT/ACT scores.</p>
<p>Even in junior high, this happened between morning and afternoon classes, as word got around (this was way before cell phones and their cameras). At least one teacher I remember used different versions of the tests for the morning and afternoon classes.</p>
<p>I wonder what the motivation is for the students who give out the test info to the other students. Maybe they benefit from the same students cheating for them in other classes?</p>
<p>Also, how could a teacher not notice if the class was consistently better in the second test period?</p>
<p>What struck me was how similar this “type” of cheating is to what happened at Harvard last year, and it makes me wonder how prevalent this type of collaborative cheating is in colleges and Universities.</p>
<p>It’s true that students set their own lines as to what is “cheating” and what isn’t. In my kids’ school, copying homework was not considered bad–but the same kids who did that routinely were angry at kids who plagiarized papers or who sneakily took home work that was supposed to be completed in class. But this kind of attitude is common to most of us–most people speed–at least a little–and don’t come to complete stops at every stop sign–but we are outraged by worse behavior by others.</p>
<p>I think that the school my children went to before the one they are at pretty much taught cheating. They did “project based learning.” That was defined basically as assigning a regular type assignment, but to a group of 3 and they split the work 3 ways. So, for example, they had to read and annotate a book. They were told to each read 1/3 of the book and annotate their portion. And then trade amongst each other the books so they can copy each others work.</p>
<p>No one got their own grades. No child was allowed to earn their own grades. So, if someone did poorly on their 1/3…everyone was given the low grade, regardless. Frequently, my daughter was matched with people who did not want to do their work.</p>
<p>When did teachers become sooooo lazy?? I remember when multiple-choice tests had several versions: the same questions but rearranged in a different order or a question that was a multiple-multiple choice had the first set re-ordered for each version of the exam. This was done pre-word processing, when each version had to be typed (not cut and paste).</p>
<p>Every group project my daughter did in HS (and there were way too many) - was basically an exercise in her doing all the work. One time she did all the work and one of the other kids who did nothing had the nerve to criticize what she had done. These projects always ended up with tears and frustration on my daughter’s part. </p>
<p>This week as a freshman in college she had to do a presentation with a partner - guess who did all the work - put together the powerpoint etc. I told her some things never change!</p>
<p>My S’s HS used project-based learning his freshman year, then began to go away from it his sophomore year, and now it is gone in his junior year. His freshman year, each five person group would usually have a couple of A students (according to past performance), a couple of B students, and one C student. A four person group would usually have one A student, two B students, and one C student. They were supposed to collaborate to produce a finished product that would receive a group grade. Then each student would be associated with some small individual part that would lead to an assigned individual grade. The student’s grade would then be the average of the group grade and the individual grade.</p>
<p>It didn’t take long for it to evolve into a system where the A students would do all the work, except for the small parts that would go into the individual grades of other students. It appeared to be intended to lead to the weaker students learning from and modeling their behavior after the stronger students, but it did not work that way. The weaker students became even less motivated and weaker and the stronger students worked even harder and became even stronger. </p>
<p>His sophomore year they only did limited group projects and they formed different groups – usually four person groups made up of all A students, all B students, or all C students. Usually in the pre-AP and AP classes there would be a couple of groups of A students, a couple of groups of B students, and a couple of groups of C students, and most of the students felt they were competing against the other groups that were at the same level. This obviously led to complaints, as it appeared to create different tracks in the same classroom. </p>
<p>His junior year the group projects appear to be gone completely.</p>
<p>High school teachers: Right around the time when their jobs became dependent on the test scores achieved by their students.</p>
<p>College professors: Right around the time when students started complaining to the University President’s Office, and threatening to sue the school, every time they got a bad grade, on the basis that the professor was ‘unfair’. If all the students are taking the same test, and the tests are constructed in such a way that the professor has no room to make any judgments about whether a student answered correctly or not, then it’s a lot less likely that the professor can be disciplined for ‘unfairness’.</p>
<p>(And before you say that never happens: I work in a college. It happens all the time.)</p>
<p>^^^^^Having several versions of a multiple-choice exam where the placement of the questions have been rearranged and/or having the correct answer placed in a different order among the deflectors is easily accomplished. No one can scream unfairness it is the SAME test.</p>
<p>well, not to sound cruel, but it sounds like your D has issues standing up for herself… It appears she has to work on not being taken advantage of…</p>
<p>S was in a wonderful 5/6 multiage program where they used project-based learning, BUT most of the time each kid worked on his or her own project. Sometimes they collaborated, and S hated it for all of the reasons stated above. There was some of that in middle school, but it had largely disappeared by HS, thankfully.</p>
<p>I think this is sad, but logical. So much rides on doing well in school and succeeding. If you read the whole article, the culture in the school seem insane-posting marks and college admissions? Who does that? My old, very successful, many HYPSMC acceptances, very wealthy high school never did that. Before going nuts over the students, the culture of the school needs to change too. Anti-cheating measures are great, but the administration, students, parents, all need to think seriously about what they want and need. </p>
<p>And teachers are lazy-not just in giving tests, but often times useless busy work. Make assignments that are genuinely interesting and useful, make required classes fun and see what results you get. Provide more help for struggling students, limit APs and encourage a healthy lifestyle. Do all of this in conjunction with anti cheating measures and I’m sure there’ll be a much better result. </p>
<p>From a smart kid’s perspective, a ton of required classes are completely useless to what you want to in life and so the attitude becomes “ugh, lets jump this hoop so we can get into [insert Prestigious School here] and be happy and successful.” I won’t deny it- at least 95% of the people I know (including me) have said that at least once (my bane is foreign languages). In a school that has such a competitive student body, I think it’s critical for administrators to emphasize some sort of balance- be it by curbing APs and making ‘normal classes’ more interesting and fun for students or getting more counselors, something needs to be done. This mentality that “we need to get through this and do extremely well to be happy” destroys enjoyment of learning, curiosity and frankly, makes high school miserable. Since students are usually evaluated in the context of their school, admins could make this kind of change and no one would be the worse off for admissions. </p>
<p>Of course, I do not condoning cheating- but cheating is usually a symptom, not the disease itself.</p>