crimzonsol
09-11-2007, 12:03 AM
Running out of time to complete a homework
assignment and copying it from a friend.
Getting a heads-up about test questions from
someone who had the same class earlier in the
day.
Passing off material from online research as
your own.
Using your leg as a cheat sheet.
Boulder Valley high school students say these
are all ways they or their classmates have
dealt with overloaded schedules and the
pressure to get top grades. Cheating, they
say, is simply part of high school culture.
"People cheat if they feel like they can get
away with it," Boulder High senior Alena Heath
said. "Everyone does it."
Research agrees.
Don McCabe, a cheating researcher and
Professor at Rutgers University's business
school, said about 95 percent of the students
he's surveyed nationally admitted to some sort
of cheating, from copying homework to cheating
on a test. Schools and teachers that ignore
the problem, he said, make it worse.
"I really believe an increasing number of
students want to see us do something about
this," McCabe said. "Students who are working
very hard to do well and see other students
cheating may conclude that, 'I may not like
it, but I have no choice.'"
The Boulder Valley School District, which
doesn't track instances of cheating, is making
a new effort this year to curb attempts to
game the system by adopting its first
distictwide academic honesty policy, which
outlines what counts as cheating and the
potential consequences."We felt if we're going
to hold students accountable, we need to tell
them what cheating means to us," Boulder
Valley Superintendent Chris King said.
Local schools also are reporting more problems
with high-tech cheating, King said, from
plagiarizing Internet research to using cell
phones to text-message test answers or snap
pictures of tests.
"Cyberspace has really changed the landscape
of cheating," he said.
Pressure to excel
At Boulder's Fairview High School, there's
also a new anti-cheating campaign this year.
In the spring, at least three Fairview
students didn't qualify for an International
Baccalaureate diploma because they were caught
cheating. One of those students paid another
student to write a paper.
"We put a lot of pressure on kids to get that
grade, that scholarship, that placement in
certain colleges," Fairview Principal Don
Stensrud said. "Kids have made some choices
that are kind of a means to an end. If we
could have made education just for the sake of
learning, they may not have made that choice."
Changing student attitudes about cheating
likely won't be easy.
Boulder High and Fairview students generally
agreed that cheating happens when they run out
of time to study or complete an assignment or
aren't doing as well as they hoped in a class.
"School is this big competition of who can get
the best grades and go to the best colleges,"
Boulder High senior Maisie Salinger said.
"You're going to do what you have to do to get
an 'A' in the class."
One of the toughest issues for Julie Wheeler,
an assistant principal at Louisville's Monarch
High School who worked on the new district
policy, is teaching students about plagiarism
at a time when cutting and pasting text from
the Internet takes seconds.
"I have had conversations with students who
don't understand that a sentence from somebody
else is plagiarism, that they can't use
somebody else's words and pass them off as
their own," Wheeler said.
Sharing answers
Another frustration is homework copying.
"Kids don't necessarily see that as being
dishonest," Wheeler said. "I walk through the
cafeteria and see kids copying other people's
homework all the time. You're not learning
anything from that."
When it comes to copying homework, Boulder
High senior Cole Capsalis admitted to
laziness.
"Homework is worth so little and takes so much
time — it's not worth it," he said.
Students said they're less likely to try
plagiarizing essays because teachers are good
at detecting it. Fairview teachers, for
example, use a service called turnitin.com,
which compares students' papers against a
database of online sources, journal archives
and other student papers.
Using cell phones and iPods to cheat is still
rare, students and teachers said, while the
old standbys of writing answers under the bill
of a cap or on the label of a water bottle are
more common. Most frequent, they said, is
copying homework and whispering test answers.
At Fairview High, students said figuring out
what counts as cheating can be difficult.
"If I did a homework problem and got it wrong
and someone showed me how to do it right, is
that cheating?" senior Daniel Weidlein asked.
"It gets tough to know if I'm doing the right
thing or not."
Classmate Jack Olsen added that a friend used
to help him with physics problems, but now
won't because the friend is worried it might
be considered cheating.
Reporting students
Though International Baccalaureate classes are
taught at a college level, students said
getting an "A" is the standard, while a "B"
isn't considered a good score.
"A 'C' is out of the question," senior Faria
Ahmed said. "You might as well just fail."
Fairview students said they wish all teachers
had homework policies that allow for
collaborative work. They also don't like that
the academic honesty policy signed by everyone
in the International Baccalaureate program
encourages reporting other students who are
cheating.
"It's not our place to report students,"
Weidlein said. "I'm not saying I wouldn't
report blatant cheating, but it would be a
very tough decision."
Fairview plans to bring McCabe, the cheating
researcher, to talk to the school this year.
Teacher Jay Stott said he's not looking harder
for instances of cheating, but is talking more
about it with his students this year.
"All teachers are concerned about this because
of the really corrosive effect it has on
student learning," he said. "A transcript with
a bunch of 'A's' is nice, but it's only a
symbol.
"You'll get to a point where you didn't learn
enough and you can't do anything but cheat."
Source: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/sep/09/boulder-valley-hopes-to-check-cheating-drive/
assignment and copying it from a friend.
Getting a heads-up about test questions from
someone who had the same class earlier in the
day.
Passing off material from online research as
your own.
Using your leg as a cheat sheet.
Boulder Valley high school students say these
are all ways they or their classmates have
dealt with overloaded schedules and the
pressure to get top grades. Cheating, they
say, is simply part of high school culture.
"People cheat if they feel like they can get
away with it," Boulder High senior Alena Heath
said. "Everyone does it."
Research agrees.
Don McCabe, a cheating researcher and
Professor at Rutgers University's business
school, said about 95 percent of the students
he's surveyed nationally admitted to some sort
of cheating, from copying homework to cheating
on a test. Schools and teachers that ignore
the problem, he said, make it worse.
"I really believe an increasing number of
students want to see us do something about
this," McCabe said. "Students who are working
very hard to do well and see other students
cheating may conclude that, 'I may not like
it, but I have no choice.'"
The Boulder Valley School District, which
doesn't track instances of cheating, is making
a new effort this year to curb attempts to
game the system by adopting its first
distictwide academic honesty policy, which
outlines what counts as cheating and the
potential consequences."We felt if we're going
to hold students accountable, we need to tell
them what cheating means to us," Boulder
Valley Superintendent Chris King said.
Local schools also are reporting more problems
with high-tech cheating, King said, from
plagiarizing Internet research to using cell
phones to text-message test answers or snap
pictures of tests.
"Cyberspace has really changed the landscape
of cheating," he said.
Pressure to excel
At Boulder's Fairview High School, there's
also a new anti-cheating campaign this year.
In the spring, at least three Fairview
students didn't qualify for an International
Baccalaureate diploma because they were caught
cheating. One of those students paid another
student to write a paper.
"We put a lot of pressure on kids to get that
grade, that scholarship, that placement in
certain colleges," Fairview Principal Don
Stensrud said. "Kids have made some choices
that are kind of a means to an end. If we
could have made education just for the sake of
learning, they may not have made that choice."
Changing student attitudes about cheating
likely won't be easy.
Boulder High and Fairview students generally
agreed that cheating happens when they run out
of time to study or complete an assignment or
aren't doing as well as they hoped in a class.
"School is this big competition of who can get
the best grades and go to the best colleges,"
Boulder High senior Maisie Salinger said.
"You're going to do what you have to do to get
an 'A' in the class."
One of the toughest issues for Julie Wheeler,
an assistant principal at Louisville's Monarch
High School who worked on the new district
policy, is teaching students about plagiarism
at a time when cutting and pasting text from
the Internet takes seconds.
"I have had conversations with students who
don't understand that a sentence from somebody
else is plagiarism, that they can't use
somebody else's words and pass them off as
their own," Wheeler said.
Sharing answers
Another frustration is homework copying.
"Kids don't necessarily see that as being
dishonest," Wheeler said. "I walk through the
cafeteria and see kids copying other people's
homework all the time. You're not learning
anything from that."
When it comes to copying homework, Boulder
High senior Cole Capsalis admitted to
laziness.
"Homework is worth so little and takes so much
time — it's not worth it," he said.
Students said they're less likely to try
plagiarizing essays because teachers are good
at detecting it. Fairview teachers, for
example, use a service called turnitin.com,
which compares students' papers against a
database of online sources, journal archives
and other student papers.
Using cell phones and iPods to cheat is still
rare, students and teachers said, while the
old standbys of writing answers under the bill
of a cap or on the label of a water bottle are
more common. Most frequent, they said, is
copying homework and whispering test answers.
At Fairview High, students said figuring out
what counts as cheating can be difficult.
"If I did a homework problem and got it wrong
and someone showed me how to do it right, is
that cheating?" senior Daniel Weidlein asked.
"It gets tough to know if I'm doing the right
thing or not."
Classmate Jack Olsen added that a friend used
to help him with physics problems, but now
won't because the friend is worried it might
be considered cheating.
Reporting students
Though International Baccalaureate classes are
taught at a college level, students said
getting an "A" is the standard, while a "B"
isn't considered a good score.
"A 'C' is out of the question," senior Faria
Ahmed said. "You might as well just fail."
Fairview students said they wish all teachers
had homework policies that allow for
collaborative work. They also don't like that
the academic honesty policy signed by everyone
in the International Baccalaureate program
encourages reporting other students who are
cheating.
"It's not our place to report students,"
Weidlein said. "I'm not saying I wouldn't
report blatant cheating, but it would be a
very tough decision."
Fairview plans to bring McCabe, the cheating
researcher, to talk to the school this year.
Teacher Jay Stott said he's not looking harder
for instances of cheating, but is talking more
about it with his students this year.
"All teachers are concerned about this because
of the really corrosive effect it has on
student learning," he said. "A transcript with
a bunch of 'A's' is nice, but it's only a
symbol.
"You'll get to a point where you didn't learn
enough and you can't do anything but cheat."
Source: http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/sep/09/boulder-valley-hopes-to-check-cheating-drive/