What’s your reaction when a bunch of students cheat on tests? Vicki Abeles, the author of “How We Teach Kids to Cheat on Tests,” is a filmmaker, attorney, and a mother who wrote her opinion about kids cheating. I have cheat in the past just like other students and Parents should figure out what their child’s interest on a subject.
In the article “How We Teach Kids to Cheat on Tests,” Vicki Abeles writes about the issue of cheating. Last month, administrators at the school in Wisconsin learned about widespread cheating in a variety ways on tests. The principal and the administrators are searching for solutions to stop the cheating issues by monitoring the students closely during the tests. Middleton is not the only one that is having cheating issues. Other institutes are having similar problems, including Harvard University. Parents and pundits would turn away attention to themselves and blame the administrators for poor security and the careless judgment of immaturity. Instead, parents do not ponder the roots of cheating in competitive culture. Every test prep tutor and SAT course a...
Cheating can be a common routine in a classroom—from copying work on homework to copying answers on a test. “Cheating by teachers and administrators on standardized tests is rare, and not a reason to stop testing America's children” (Standardized Tests). This statement is proved false by the fact that thirty-seven states have been caught cheating by “encouraging teachers to view upcoming test forms before they are administered” (“FairTest Press Release: Standardized Exam Cheating in 37 States And D.C., New Report Shows Widespread Test Score Corruption”). If teachers can view a test before it is administered, they can teach to the test so that their students’ scores are higher. Teachers who have viewed the test can then “drill students on actual upcoming test items” (“FairTest Press Release: Standardized Exam Cheating in 37 States And D.C., New Report Shows Widespread Test Score Corruption”). This is morally wrong since teachers who do not have the access to an actual test or those who refuse to view it do not know what would be on the test and cover a broad domain of material, not just specifics.
McCabe, Donald L. “Students Cheating in American High Schools.” The Center for Academic Integrity. 2002. 10 Nov. 2002. .
What amazed me though was the 125 Undergrads from Harvard that got caught cheating. These are the people that supposedly are the brightest and best student in the United States, maybe even the world and they are doing this. Many people would kill to have a spot at Harvard and have that experience, but these people are taking their spots. Yet, this number can be misleading when there are probably 50,000 undergrads at least attending. Most may be doing the right thing. The bigger problem is the fact that 85% of the high school student population are cheating (Richardson, Spring 2012). It makes me wonder how involved parents are in their kid’s education and what they are teaching them. I think that who your
Today, schools are making it a priority for teachers to follow the strict guidelines of a “one size fits all testing curriculum.” Educators must prepare students for the tests that could make or break their future. This curriculum is focused only on teaching students what they need to know in order to pass the test. “Because the test is based largely on the memorization of facts, teachers will have to teach their students these specific facts instead of teaching for deep comprehension and understanding of material.” (Martin, 309) As a result, students do not learn the true lesson. Although it is highly important that students pass “the test,” this strictly based curriculum is ignoring the important academic skills and fundamentals needed for their future, even beyond the years of high stakes testing; without these needed skills students will be left in the dark once they have graduated from high school. Students often learn on different levels and their educational requirements are not being met with the “one size fits all” approach. Those who create these tests tend not to include those who learn on a different educational level; rather their focus is pointed towards the money rather than on the success of all students. Children need to learn sk...
The Atlanta Public School system was involved in what some describe as one of the largest scandals in United States history. The scandal was uncovered by the Atlanta Journal – Constitution after research showed “statistically improbable increases” in test scores. A two-year investigation ensued and reviled test scores dating all the way back to 2005 were tampered with. In 2011 the investigation concluded 44 of the 56 schools examined were found cheating. The educators violated a numerous amount of code sections. Felonies, if found guilty are punishable by nothing less than five years, maximum twenty years. The number of educators with involvement in the scandal was astronomical. One-hundred and seventy eight educators helped orchestrate the plan to raise the CRCT test scores. CRCT stands for Criterion – Referenced Competency Test. This test is given to students from grades one through eight. The purpose of this test is to assess the students in areas such as reading, English, mathematics, social studies and science.
Sacks, Peter. Standardized Minds: The High Price of America's Testing Culture and What We Can Do to Change It. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2000. Print.
Slobogin, K. (2002, April 5). Survey: Many students say cheating’s ok. Retrieved June 12, 2009,
Strom, P., & Strom, R. (2007). Cheating in middle school and high school. Educational …..Forum,71(2), 104-116. doi:10.1080/00131720708984924
There is an ever broadening problem spreading throughout colleges all across America: cheating. Is it a serious offence or just a harmless crime? Cheating is on the rise, but schools and colleges are not far behind with ways of dealing with it. Mark Clayton deals with this issue in his essay entitled “A Whole Lot of Cheatin’ Going On.”
Why is it the fault of the educator that their students cheat? Blaming teachers for plagiarism is outrageous. While there is more that teachers can and should do, blaming them isn’t the answer. There is even a real story of a college professor who caught 20% of his class cheating and was rewarded by the smallest...
Alfie Kohn, author of The Case against Standardized Testing, recalls a specific incident of how children are being cheated out of valuable class time. He states that a school in Massachusetts used a remarkable unit, for a middle-school class, where students chose an activity and extensively researched it, and reported or taught, it to the class. This program has had to be removed from the course curriculum in order to devote enough time to teaching prescribed material for their standardized tests.
Situations of cheating have seemed to become more and more commonplace when the student is bored by the subject material, poor teaching and or feels they have no use for the knowledge. Kohn even states in his article, “cheating is more common when students experience the academic tasks they’ve been given as boring, irrelevant, or overwhelming.” This infers that if a student were attending a school interested in learning about art, the student maybe more inclined to cheat in a business accounting class due to the fact the student would find the subject material irrelevant to them and their future. Students seem to be less inclined to cheat and it “is relatively rare in classrooms where the learning is genuinely engaging and meaningful to students and where a commitment to exploring significant ideas hasn’t been eclipsed by a single-minded emphasis on “rigor”” (Kohn). To simplify everything mentioned above; students are inclined to cheat in school when they are disinterested in the subject material and or are overwhelmed by in assignment or finally the result in a poor teacher. Everyone who has attended school can relate to this in some way or another, most people do not want to retain knowledge they have no interest in or use for in their
For the student, there is either a social or an economic incentive to be gained by cheating [MacGregor, 2012]. However, cheating, more specifically, cheating during exams or in graded assignments gives the students who cheat an unfair advantage over those who remain honest and study hard to excel in the same examination or assignment. Grades are reflection of knowledge and competence gained through learning. Therefore, acts of academic dishonesty undermine the validity of student learning. This, in turn, has effect on academic system in two ways – 1. It reflects poorly on the academic standard or quality of education being imparted by the institution from where the cheating student earned his/her grades and 2. It also interferes with faculty’s ability to correctly diagnose gaps in student learning for the purpose of both re-teaching current students and re-designing instruction for future students [Passow, 2006].
...ell out and the name I couldn’t remember was staring me in the face. The teacher had not collected my paper yet and I could have just taken it and written the answer and he would have never known the difference. Whether I cheated or not, I still thought about doing it since I did not know the answer. Simply not knowing the material leads students to cheat all of the time.
In summary, we learned that there are many different theories that can support this problem. Stephanie’s teacher needs to respect how her students parents are raising their child, but need to bring up her concerns of the behavior Stephanie is protruding in her class. Cheating is not acceptable and her parents need to take a stand and teach Stephanie how to act correctly in a classroom setting and teach her that cheating is not right by finding a punishment that is acceptable for her