Monday, December 01, 2008

Student Cheating

It's all over the edublogosphere--the Josephson Institute's study that found cheating is not only rampant amongst our students, but is increasingly so.

You need no commentary from me on this topic. What I found most interesting in the survey was this:

As bad as these numbers are, it appears they understate the level of dishonesty exhibited by America’s youth. More than one in four (26 percent) confessed they lied on at least one or two questions on the survey.
at

4 comments:

  1. Forest10:33 PM

    I only know my school, and there cheating is off the charts. I think it has been at least 5 years since I gave any sort of test or quiz that didn't have at least two version.

    My math department has increasingly decreased the percentage of our grades that come from homework because so much of it is copied.

    It is too bad. For too many students, cheating is only a question of whether or not they can get away with it.

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  2. Anonymous11:13 AM

    See here:

    http://rightwingnation.com/2007/06/12/want-to-stop-cheating/

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  3. Anonymous1:12 PM

    Makes perfect sense to me and puts me in mind of an aphorism about the old Soviet Union: they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.

    Between the incoherent edu-fads that periodically sweep public education and rampant grade-inflation the message coming from the public education system is that education - knowing stuff - isn't important.

    If the public education pretends to teach then the appropriate response is to pretend to learn.

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  4. Ellen K3:20 PM

    Disturbing, but not surprising. I have always given multiple test versions. And I have gotten verbatim wrong, copied answers from Student Council reps, cheerleaders, honor students, skaters, punks and nerds. Cheating is so common that I really don't see why we even bother to test anymore except at the end of the course. I have even had kids steal other student's work and turn it in as their own. I have had kids get work from their older sibs and turn it in for a grade. I have had kid get other students to do their artwork for them, which is why they cannot do "work at home" anymore. And this is art. I can't even imagine what it's like in the core classes. I know our kids can text blind and sneak earpieces under flopping hair down the back of their hoodies to waiting cell phones. No wonder these kids seem to know so little, but act like they know so much. No honor at all.

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