Cheating the System: A Sign of the Times

By Carol Josel

Cheating seems to be very "in" these days and not just among the married. Not by a long shot. Hollywood teems with the unfaithful and dishonorable, as does the world of politicians and sports figures. Right off the bat I'm reminded of Joe Biden, America's vice president and a plagiarizer, as well; he's right up there in my mind with fallen hero Lance Armstrong, and on I could go. So much for role models.

And then there are our schools.

Take Beverly Hall, for instance. In case you're not sure who she is, here's the lowdown. This former Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent made headlines for her education reform benefits and results. Indeed, as the Wallace Foundation explained, "Hall is credited with transforming the 102-school system through a comprehensive reform agenda. Every elementary school in Atlanta made "adequate yearly progress" in 2008 under the provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind law, and graduation rates at several high schools have risen sharply."

Her reward: She was named Superintendent of the Year and received $365,000 in bonuses. Her underlings were awarded as little as $750, with the average take amounting to $2,600.

But that was then; this is now, as a recent USA Today headline made glaringly clear: "School cheating scandal shakes up Atlanta: A Fulton County grand jury indicted 35 Atlanta educators, including former Superintendent Beverly Hall, in what prosecutors call a huge cheating conspiracy stretching to 58 schools."

And they're not alone in their efforts to boost student performance on standardized tests by changing answers. In fact, such cheating has now been alleged in such places as Philadelphia, D.C., Baltimore, El Paso... Why ever, right? Arizona State University's Audrey Amrein-Beardsley explains it this way: "Educators cheat for different reasons-to boost scores, earn bonuses, or keep enrollment up. But some cheat because the humiliation of not keeping up with peers is stronger than the risk of getting caught."

Kids, too, are gaming the system. While a Josephson Institute of Ethics survey recently found that the number of students who admitted cheating on an exam in the past year fell from 59% in 2010 to 51% in 2012, that's still more than half of them. As for copying homework, the numbers went from 34% to 32%. Neither result deserves bragging rights.

Indeed, as history teacher Christopher L. Doyle says in his "All My Favorite Students Cheat" article, "I have asked about cheating every day... and find kids remarkably candid. Almost everyone does it. They copy homework (the most frequent form of dishonesty), crib on tests (the second-most-favored tactic), and lift text from the Internet (either verbatim or with minor changes in wording."

Now when it comes to copying homework, I suspect it's been going on since the very first school opened. High tech, though, has changed the test cheating game altogether as evidenced by these Online-Education.net statistics:

• 35% of teens admit to using a cell phone at least once to cheat at school
• 65% of teens report that other students use phones to cheat
• 26% of students report using smartphones to store information to look at during a test
• 17% of students report taking pictures of test questions to send to other peers

Moreover, 25% of students don't believe these constitute cheating:

• Checking notes on a cell phone during a test
• Searching the Internet for an answer during a test
• Texting friends with answers during a test

Next up: plagiarizing. The word is derived from the Latin word plagiarius which means kidnapping or abducting. In other words, word theft, and when it comes to writing essays and research papers, plagiarism seems to rule. Says Michael Hartnett, "Indeed, we have to face a simple fact about students today: As tech has evolved to provide a vast wealth of information at anytime, anywhere, cheating has never been easier." He goes on to add, "Just Google 'Hamlet essay,' and you'll receive a listing of 1,460,000 results, the first page of which is teeming with free essays."

Sites such as the well-known turnitin.com have taken on the role of detective, searching for plagiarized passages in submitted papers. In 2012 alone, it processed over 80 million papers and apparently about 4% of them contained at least 80% of copied language. No wonder, then, that it's utilized by some 10,000 schools and colleges.

Add to all that the fact that Common Sense Media found that 52% of students admitted to some form of cheating involving the Internet, with 38% of them acknowledging that they'd plagiarized with the help of the Internet.

So what's the best antidote to this seeming lack of moral grounding? Parents and teachers who guide kids with a steady hand, refuse to compromise their principles, promote hard work, and live honorably. Winning isn't everything, after all, and that's the bottom line.

Carol Josel is a learning specialist who worked with middle school children and their parents at the Methacton School District in Pennsylvania for more than 25 years and now supervises student teachers at both Gwynedd Mercy College and Ursinus College. Along with the booklet, 149 Parenting School-Wise Tips: Intermediate Grades & Up, and numerous articles in such publications as The Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy and Teaching Pre-K-8, she has authored three successful learning guidebooks: Getting School-Wise: A Student Guidebook, Other-Wise and School-Wise: A Parent Guidebook, and ESL Activities for Every Month of the School Year. Carol also writes for examiner.com; you can find her articles at http://www.examiner.com/wise-parenting-in-philadelphia/carol-josel. For more information, go to http://www.schoolwisebooks.com or contact Carol at carol@schoolwisebooks.com.

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