<p>You are right, as parents get in an up roar even when the phones are confiscated.</p>
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<p>Students have not returned to class because it is a non-instructional day. They will return tomorrow to pick up report cards/transcripts.</p>
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<p>There is no loss for transportation at Stuyvesant where almost every train line runs within blocks of the school; 123, ACE, 456, NR, JM along with buses. Metrocards are good until 8:30 pm</p>
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<p>Cyber bulling, arranging fights via texting, which happens a lot. Just because one student is not in class does not mean that all students are out of class at the same time.</p>
<p>Some teachers use the regents toward the final exam (it can account for up to 1/3rd of the grade). Since there is no longer a foreign language regents exam, students must take the LOTE if they want to receive an advanced regents or an advanced regents with hoors diploma.</p>
<p>Nowadays, many schools in NYC use the Regents exam in place of a final exam so it does have some weight.</p>
<p>The thing is that in some schools, they are considered something of a joke and aren’t proctored in the same serious manner of other exams, so that would make cheating at least possible. There was cheating identified in my son’s middle school this year on the Regents exams, and the tests are graded in school, which can sometimes be problematic.</p>
Yes we do! I like the private school method of dealing with phones. Don’t ask, don’t tell and if you are caught with it out it will be confiscated until a parent can come and pick it up and pay a fine. Decent deterrent.</p>
<p>But in schools/classrooms where the adults are serious about the issue, the phones generally stay away. It’s when there are mixed messages or teachers who sit texting that it becomes a problem. One of my daughter’s teachers used to take out the students’ cell phones and call their parents right from the classroom whenever there was a problem. So the kids weren’t motivated to leave the phones out of that class!</p>
<p>I would never let my kids take public transportation or walk alone without a phone. Never. However, they would be more sorry than I can ever tell you if the phones ever came out or were used to cheat. I was always one to check my kids phones and phone bills regularly and they knew it. So I can say that I’ve had three kids bring phones to school for the last 10 years and not once have they ever been abused.</p>
<p>Starting with the January exam administration, regents exams will no longer be graded in schools. there will be central exam centers where stubject teachers will have to go to grade exams. My sister’s school was part of the pilot; 100 teachers in a huge room at Brooklyn tech 4 to a table and over 8,000 US history regents to grade.</p>
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<p>This is the policy at mst schools. At scan schools, they are not even allowed in the building. At washington Irving they are checked in at a truck outside of the school. This was also done at a school in the bronx, but 2 weeks ago, the truck was robbed at gunpoint and students lost their phones, ipads, ipods, etc.</p>
<p>I understand all of that. My point is that what he did may be MUCH more serious than just taking pics of the test. There were multiple tests with answers on them found on his phone that had been sent to many people. </p>
<p>Did he commit a crime like breaking and entering to “steal” a picture of he test, or even steal a hard copy of the test prior to the exam? We have had a number of incidences of that in this area for AP’s, and SAT’s. That is the point I was trying to make, but the brevity on my phone made it unclear.</p>
<p>I think you (we) need lots more information. This could have been seen - at least by the perpetrator - as a prank, ie taking pictures of his own test with his own answers and sending them to everyone in his addressbook. Sort of like “testexting” </p>
<p>On the other hand, it might be an elaborate criminal scheme whereby students paid money to receive answers via phone that would give them an unfair advantage on the test. Somehow I doubt this is the case, but there doesn’t seem to be enough information out there to determine the true nature of the offense. I know for some, “cheating is cheating” and taking pictures of a test in progress (and emailing them) is sufficient grounds for expulsion. I am a big believer in determining intent, and have lots of tolerance… as opposed to zero tolerance.</p>
<p>[Post #46] Hm, if this kid somehow stole a hard copy of the test (possibly with answers) prior to the exam, why would he wait until the actual test to use his cell phone to send out pictures, and risk getting caught?!?!</p>
This is a good thing. In my son’s school, each math teacher proctored his/her own class, so the kids were asking questions and teachers were sending them back to fix answers. I can’t wait to see what the pass rate for Integrated Algebra is in that school.</p>
<p>We didn’t have cell phones when I attended high school and undergrad. Somehow, my HS classmates and I managed our academic class loads, many ECs, part-time work if applicable, and long commutes to/from home…sometimes as much as 2+ hours each way. Didn’t hurt us…and speaking for myself and some HS classmates…actually prepared us well for learning how to navigate living on our own in undergrad/life. </p>
<p>Then again, the idea of being tethered to parents 24/7 on cell phones would have been a horrifying thought for most NYC area adolescents/teens of the late '80s/early '90s. </p>
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<p>Agreed. Moreover, many adolescents/teens are far more resourceful and independent than some parents…especially overprotective ones give them credit for. </p>
<p>Had a recent conversation with an older alum whose main concern was that his younger 14 year old D is so lacking in independence that she’s reluctant to even walk a block to the neighborhood grocery store to run errands in their extremely safe near-suburban NYC neighborhood. </p>
<p>A contrast to her older sister who was sneaking long subway rides without missing a beat from a much younger age.</p>
<p>Also, unless the culture has changed…and it didn’t seem so…vast majority of Stuy/BxSci/BTech kids commuted to/from school themselves without parents dropping them off/picking them up.</p>
<p>We had a middle school graduation this week at which all of the students wore red Converse sneakers in honor of their classmate who was run over in the street like a dog on the last day of school last year. You see, in some areas of NYC there are no sidewalks, no public transportation, and no crossing guards – but plenty of large truck traffic. And the mayor, he of the blood on his hands, decided to overrule a variance of more than 40 years’ duration to show that he doesn’t give special treatment to wealthier kids from less diverse schools. Unfortunately, the child whose life was lost was the daughter of immigrants from Africa. She was precious and dear. Now she is dead. When she found out that the bus schedule was going to be altered that day, she could have made a call with a cell phone, rather than run for the departing bus that she couldn’t have caught. The bus my son would have taken if he had gone to a public high school is served by a route that is among the least reliable in the city. Unfortunately, the last bus in the evening is very early when kids do extracurriculars, so they have to be able to call someone on the regular basis that the bus doesn’t show.</p>
<p>There are also almost no public telephones in the city.</p>
And I’m sure this went on in plenty of schools! I wonder why NYS ever thought it was all right for teachers to correct their own students’ exams? The exams shouldn’t even be graded in the school, much less by the teacher!</p>
<p>When you hear “Regents” exams, one often thinks “oooh that is serious!” but they are often not treated seriously at all. WHich is what I bet happened here. That the students were of the opinion that their time could better be used preparing for and taking AP, SAT and subject tests.</p>
Maybe what really happened was that he was looking at his phone in order to copy the answers onto his test. That would make sense if these were actually stolen answer sheets.</p>
<p>Which is pretty darn presumptuous of them if that was the case. I thought everyone takes the Regent’s exams…these kids aren’t “special”…but perhaps therein is the problem…they think they are special.</p>
<p>They are special, though, which is why they got into Stuyvesant in the first place. They shouldn’t need to cheat (or even study) for these tests.</p>
Especially for the ones that are required for graduation, they are now so dumbed down as to be meaningless. The cheating was undoubtedly more about laziness than anything else.</p>
<p>Actually, trying to cheat on the Regents means they seem to be taken more seriously nowadays than in the early-mid '90s. Back then, Regents were treated as such a joke that it would be embarrassing to be caught expending effort to cheat on them. </p>
<p>And to some extent…they were. </p>
<p>For instance, I failed/barely passed the first 5 semesters of French…did well with an easy teacher on the 6th semester…and somehow scored in the mid-90’s/100 on the French Regents without doing much studying or any cheating*. This was my worst subject in HS. </p>
<p>When the French teachers saw how I did on the Regents…they said “Of course! The French regents are a complete joke! You’d have to be a complete idiot to get less than a 90 on that!” </p>
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<li>Too much work for my then slacker self.</li>
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