Inside Four Walls: This is our future...

A teacher was telling us a story about some senior in her class. Apparently, he ran a Stop sign and missed a day of school to fight the ticket. He took in a picture of the Stop sign and told the judge he couldn't see it because it was blocked by overgrown trees. The judge looked at the picture and agreed with him and dismissed the ticket. Here's the kicker, he told his teacher and friends at school that he just ran the Stop sign, but didn't want to pay the ticket. So he took a picture of the sign and photoshopped in a bunch of trees to make it look like he couldn't see the sign.

So here is a senior going into the real world who obviously sees nothing wrong with lying in court and then bragging about it.

I don't know what is wrong with this generation, but this behavior to me doesn't make sense. Maybe it is our school, because we are hearing rumors that someone broke into the room with the AP exams to steal a test. That's pretty extreme, except we have heard now that this person went through the ceiling to get into that room...true story.

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.

Thoughts Without Words: Online Cheating & other things

I have talked about teacher's rights before and have posted a bunch of stories about teacher's getting fired or suspended for writing something online about a student. We all know about the hypocrisy of students being able to blast us on ratemyteacher.com or Facebook, but what about blatant cheating online?

Some teachers recently found out that their classes have a Facebook group made for them. On it, the students are clearly cheating. Some ask what answers are to homework questions and others ask how to write a paper. I haven't seen any posts relating to tests, but I only looked back a couple of weeks.

We talked about this and they are all going to keep quiet and present the findings at the end of the year to our administrators. I said nothing will happen to them, except a slap on the wrist and some "counseling".

One of my classes mentioned Facebook and I said what's the point of having one. They said they talk about homework and other things. They told flat out they ask for answers to homework questions. I said that was cheating, just like copying at school. Their response? It's not the same. It's not cheating.

But what about online cheating? Are schools responsible for this as well? Or is it covered because it's not on school grounds?  I am sure it goes on a lot more than this, but it just strikes me that students don't think twice about it.

The Last Laugh: High scoring D.C. school probably cheated

When I say probably, I mean most definitely. As one statistician put it;

“The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance,”

It seems that this school which had such high gains also had high erasure marks. When the average erasure mark is less than one per test and this school has over 12 per test...yeah something's not right.

Best part, besides the praise they got, is the bonuses all the teachers and principal received.

Unfortunately, as politicians move to tie a teacher's pay and evaluations to test scores, I think we will be seeing more of these types of incidents.

Thoughts Without Words: Cheating

I was reading over at Questions? today and saw something that caught my eye on cheating. Now, it was brought up because they use standards based grading and allow for re-testing. You can read more about that here.

Here is what David said about it;

If you use standards based grading, do you allow the student to take a re-assessment at a later date? Or better yet, If you use standards based grading, why would a kid cheat in the first place? Do re-assessments encourage poor study skills as kids know they have a safety net in the form of a "do over?"

We all know what a zero does to a final grade. And that grade never reflects what a student actually knows. Should the consequences of cheating show up in the final marks at all?

If you read my thoughts on standards based grading, I think that in itself creates poor study skills. Allowing a do over for cheating would kill whatever study skills the students have.

Am I alone in this thought process?

Thoughts Without Words: Encouraging Cheating

Darren has a nice little story about a principle who told a teacher that by having multiple forms of a test, he is encouraging cheating. This is what the principle said about the different forms;

“You are creating an expectation that students will cheat,” Martel recalls Cahall saying. “By creating that expectation, they will rise to your expectation.”

Wow! I guess there are a lot of us teachers out there encouraging cheating then. Here is the full article from the Washington Post.