Inside Four Walls: Cheating

Cheating happens. It always has and unfortunately, it always will. But what should a school do about it? At our school if a student is caught cheating on a test, sorry "violating test conditions" (we aren't allowed to call it cheating anymore), or copying homework for the first time, nothing really happens to them. In fact, all they have to do is get a piece of paper signed by their parents. Not even a detention. No one really understands why that policy is in place, but it is.

Anyway, I mentioned this story from a couple of months ago about the whole Facebook group/cheating scandal. And now there is some fallout, if you will. There were a total of 70 students in the group, out of about 100-110, at least 29 are on Facebook as cheating. When the teachers took the information to the administration, they didn't get the response they were looking for. At first they were told that the students that created the group, but the others wouldn't be called in for cheating. One counselor said that the teachers would need the assignments to compare answers. That is hilarious that they would take that stance, considering online the student literally said "hey I need the answers to the homework, who wants to help me out?". And then you saw a bunch of responses with the answers. I guess that isn't enough proof.

The group has been shut down and now all of the cheaters are being called in. The sad part is that no one knows what their punishment is yet. It's one of those "you cheated, we know you did, but we don't know what we are going to do yet." and send them back to class. We have only like 9 days of school left, you would think there would be a policy in place as to how to handle this.

One last thought, the teachers drafted a letter to the parents explaining what happened and how they should monitor their kids a bit more. They sent it to the administrators for approval and...they were told to hold off on sending it out. I'm not sure why, but talking to the teachers they feel frustrated at how long it is taking to figure this out.

Worst part, the students don't think they did anything wrong.