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<p>Some do it because they feel the need to look out for #1 and the end justifies the means, others may have had a momentary lapse in judgement, etc, etc, etc.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, it is not only an individual act, but one which harms other students by diminishing other students’ accomplishments while boosting one’s own by false pretenses and deception. I also do not believe that high school kids are so young as to be naive and innocent about the gravity and wrongfulness of cheating as some seem to believe. </p>
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<p>As someone who was an alum, that struck many of us old alums as weird as regent exams were regarded as LCD exams which one should do well by default. </p>
<p>For instance, I scored in the mid-'90s on a regents exam in a subject where my class grades averaged Ds and Fs. None of the teachers back then felt that was anything out of the ordinary. </p>
<p>Not only was I disgusted by the cheaters involved in that incident, I along with many other alums were perplexed as to why they’d go through so much trouble to cheat on a test which was considered LCD and which most of us didn’t take very seriously back when we attended. </p>
<p>This puzzlement is furthered when I’ve heard from old teachers, HS classmates, and friends who currently teach in the NYC school system that more recent regents exams are actually watered down and easier than the ones we took back when were in HS…and those exams were already considered a joke by many kids in the NYCSHS back in the day. </p>