Question: What do we do about cheating in
schools?
Suggestion: Don't have the school lawyers handle this issue
Schools tackle the growing practice of cheating
By Marsha Sutton, SDNN
July 15, 2010
San Diego:
Cheating has gotten a lot more complex than simply peering over a classmate's shoulder.
Cheating in high school is as common an occurrence as adolescent acne – and has proven
to be just as difficult to control. Intense competition for slots in highly selective colleges has
contributed to the problem, expanding the practice to include high-achieving students when
decades ago cheaters were mainly D students trying simply not to fail.
“I only cheat off of smart kids because I want to go to UCLA,” stated a student several years
ago in the Torrey Pines High School yearbook.
In last year’s San Diego Jewish Academy yearbook, two pages were devoted to “The Art of
Deception – Inventive Ways to Cheat.” Although content was often tongue-in-cheek (“shave
answers in leg hair, learn Morse code, set up a smoke signal”), other comments rang true.
“I don’t usually cheat, but I was crammed for time. It was a last resort,” said one student who
wrote terminology on her arm hidden under a jacket.
“I often have multiple tests a week, and it was hard for me to remember all the information,”
said a 10th-grade Advanced Placement history student who inserted a cheat sheet inside a
pencil case pocket for a test.
High school students have progressed well beyond the tried and true methods of simply
peeking at another student’s work or giving the test questions to students who have yet to
take the test.
“We’ve caught very clever kids,” said La Jolla High School principal Dana Shelburne. “One
had taken the label off a water bottle and put it through the printer with all the important stuff
on there and then reattached it to the water bottle, so it looked for all the world like a water
bottle. But if you tilted it the right way, you could look right in.”
Shelburne said technology has made it even more challenging for teachers to catch
cheaters. “That makes it very difficult to know what’s going on because kids can text without
looking,” he said.
Shelburne said one student sitting in the front row had his eyes on his teacher but his
hands in his pockets while the teacher was lecturing on the importance of academic
honesty. After class, he told her he had been texting and showed her what he had written: “I
am talking about cheating with [the teacher].” Then he said, “See? I’m two feet in front of you
and you didn’t even know.”
Local cheating scandal
A local cheating scandal last year in two Advanced Placement psychology classes that
involved dozens of students at Canyon Crest Academy presented a challenge for staff at the
San Dieguito Union High School District.
SDUHSD associate superintendent Rick Schmitt said two forms of cheating took place:
those who shared notes and homework assignments and those who cheated on tests.
Students who copied notes and plagiarized were easier to spot because the homework was
identical from one to the next. But the test cheaters proved harder to identify.
It was determined, eventually, that one boy who took the class in the fall term allegedly gave
or sold copies of the answers to students taking the same class in the spring term. The
student, whose father is a criminal defense attorney, was a junior at the time and switched
schools voluntarily, reportedly attending San Marcos High School for his senior year.
“We had enough evidence to suspend but not expel,” said Canyon Crest assistant principal
Elloise Allen, who speculated that the family transferred him from Canyon Crest because
“they could see possibilities of more evidence coming.”
Allen said she’s convinced more than one student was guilty of sharing prior tests but staff
was unable to uncover definitive proof implicating anyone else.
Galling many Canyon Crest students this spring was discovering that this student had been
accepted to the University of California Los Angeles for fall 2010.
“I’m not going to lie – I was upset,” said one CCA student. “I felt it was extremely unfair. Why
should this person get accepted to a really good school? It feels like there were no
consequences to his actions.”
The student, who asked not to be named, said the offender was a “very smart kid” who likely
would have been accepted to UCLA anyway. “But I don’t think he deserves it for doing this,”
the student said. “It’s dishonest.”
The student said it encourages cheating when hard-working, honest students see cheaters
getting ahead. He said many of his classmates were also angry when they heard the news.
Consequences for cheating at San Dieguito schools do not include an “academic
dishonesty” notation on the student’s transcript. “If it was noted on the transcript, it would
save a lot of us the concern and stress about this,” said the CCA student, who added that he
wouldn’t feel as frustrated if UCLA had been made aware of the offense and still accepted
him.
Most colleges and universities do not ask on their application forms if students have ever
cheated, been suspended or expelled. Some students believe colleges should ask,
although they acknowledge that, without reference to any incidents on the student’s
transcript, it’s easy to lie.
The Canyon Crest investigation determined that an estimated 50 percent of the students in
one teacher’s two AP Psych classes – or about 40 to 45 kids – were guilty of cheating. There
were varying degrees of academic dishonesty: sharing the test and providing the answer
keys, receiving those answers, sharing homework notes and collaborating on assignments
that were meant to be completed independently.
Alice Cash, a 2009 CCA graduate who was not involved in the scandal and does not engage
in cheating, said at the time that the discovery of such widespread cheating didn’t surprise
her. “It goes on in every class,” she said. “There’s lots of peer pressure to cheat.”
Some students believe the kids who received the test questions and answers did not
deserve to be punished.
“The students were not at fault,” commented one student in response to an article on the
issue. “The reason that the students were able to cheat on the tests was because the
teacher never changed the tests from year to year. This illustrates pure indolence on behalf
of all the teachers of this generation who ignorantly cannot be bothered to create new tests
from time to time.”
Discipline files
Schmitt said first-time offenders receive a zero on the assignment, quiz or test. If it’s a repeat
offense, then the student may fail the course or be suspended for several days, with no
chance to make up missed work. But there is no notation on transcripts, and all misbehavior
is part of a discipline file that is kept confidential and “never sees the light of day,” he said.
San Dieguito’s policy “is typical of any cheating policy I’ve ever seen in the six different
school districts I’ve worked in,” Schmitt said. He said the zero on the assignment, especially
if it’s a final exam, can be a game-changer, sometimes lowering the final grade a full level,
from an A to a B or a B to a C.
Consequences can be severe. Schmitt mentioned the case of a student years ago at Torrey
Pines who failed a course after being caught cheating and had his acceptance to UC
Berkeley rescinded.
Because the student at CCA last year who was caught distributing tests took the class in a
prior term, there was no assignment, quiz or test to give him a zero for. He was suspended
instead, Allen said, because “we felt that discipline-wise it was important to have a
consequence.”
Both Allen and Schmitt agreed that it can be difficult for honest students to see cheaters
accepted into prestigious universities.
Schmitt said he understands their frustration and sympathizes. “I’d say [to students] … if you’
re bothered by it, then you have to help us,” he said. “Many times there’s that teenage code
of silence, and it’s difficult to crack that culture.”
Most cheating occurs outside the classroom, Schmitt said, making it even more difficult to
detect. “It doesn’t happen under the teacher’s nose, so it’s really hard to police that,” he said.
Schmitt said the schools need hard evidence to charge kids with cheating, which isn’t easy
to get. “The burden of proof is pretty tough,” he said.
“Kids shut down … and [are] not willing to talk,” Allen said. “They are so willing to close
ranks. They’re willing to be upset that he got into a good university, and yet none of them
were willing to come forward and say, ‘I know more information, I have more details, I have
specifics.’”
Allen said the reluctance to speak up stems from social pressures. “Part of it is just a
cultural piece that kids don’t tattle,” she said. “Kids are very much afraid of the social stigma.
But we’re not a court of law where we can subpoena somebody and put them on trial. I don’t
have to share my witness information with another kid.”
Schmitt said the discipline policy, which he calls progressive, is not meant to disqualify a
student from college eligibility or to prevent a student from graduating. “Good kids make bad
choices, and this is just another opportunity for us to help them mature and make better
choices,” he said.
Private schools
Jeff Davis, principal of the Upper School at Carmel Valley’s San Diego Jewish Academy,
echoed Schmitt’s remarks, saying, “The term I use is progressive discipline,” meaning that
students are treated differently if there is a history of offenses.
“I’m not a zero tolerance guy,” Davis said. “You take into consideration, has this kid ever
done that before and what was the nature of the offense.”
The cheating policy at the private Jewish Academy – and at Cathedral Catholic High School,
another private high school in Carmel Valley – is similar to San Dieguito’s: a zero on the
assignment for a first offense, with discretion to enforce suspension or other disciplinary
action if it’s a multiple offense or involves other charges like theft or computer hacking.
Cathedral’s policy reads: “Consequences for cheating, plagiarism or any other form of
academic dishonesty will include, but are not limited to, receiving a zero on the assignment,
quiz or test, and a detention or referral. Lying to the teacher or the dean’s office may result in
further consequences.”
Schmitt said public schools must accept kids who were expelled from private schools, and
often are not told the reason for the expulsion.
“We can’t expel kids for cheating,” he said. “The private schools can, and we end up with a
lot of those kids.”
Several years ago, students came to two San Dieguito high schools, Torrey Pines and La
Costa Canyon, after being forced to leave a private school for plagiarism and hacking into
the school’s computer system and changing grades, Schmitt said.
“They arrived at our campuses, and we had no idea any of that had happened,” he said.
“They did it again at our schools and got caught.”
Schmitt said private schools can dismiss students “at any time, pretty much for any reason.”
He said he’s received kids in the public school system “who broke all kinds of rules at the
private school, whether it was drug- and alcohol-related or issues around plagiarism. The
kid just enrolls and the private schools don’t have to disclose why.”
If the family lives in the neighborhood, they have a right to public school, he said.
“That’s a true statement,” said SDJA’s Davis. “You’re guaranteed the right to a public
education. You’re not guaranteed the right to a private school education.”
La Jolla High’s Shelburne agreed, saying, “Oftentimes we do not get the reasons why a
student comes out of a private school to us. For any number of reasons – dealing drugs,
cheating, fighting, whatever – that kid is removed from the private school and suddenly here
he or she is on our doorstep.”
Davis said no student has ever been expelled for cheating from the private Jewish Academy,
but incidents do happen.
“We have the same things that occur here that occur at all other public and private schools,”
said Davis, who noted that the most common form of cheating at his school is plagiarism.
Davis said the school tries to address the issue in ways that ensure it never happens again.
First-time offenders are generally not suspended unless the cheating involves some crime
like stealing or vandalism. “Kids sometimes make mistakes, and we want them to learn
from it,” he said.
Schools tackle the growing practice of cheating,
Part Two
By Marsha Sutton, SDNN
July 15, 2010
In Part One, we discussed the prevalence of cheating and the difficulty schools have in
catching cheaters. This installment, Part Two, discusses various methods schools use to
curb the practice, including a unique “Report Cheating” Web site.
Staff at La Jolla High School, part of the San Diego Unified School District, decided several
years ago to take a pro-active stance against cheating, forming a committee composed of
teachers, parents and students to tackle the problem.
“We catch the irregular person, but the question is what are we missing that we don’t know
about,” said LJHS principal Dana Shelburne.
The committee investigated the extent of the problem and looked into what’s being done at
the college level to curtail cheating. Shelburne said they discussed what it means to cheat
and what it means to have authorized collaboration.
Group work, it was determined, must be specifically approved by the teacher. “You can’t turn
in somebody else’s work as your own,” he said.
Shelburne said the school pays to belong to an Internet-based plagiarism detection service
called turnitin.com that monitors the recycling of content. This site is used by other high
schools as well.
“When they write essays, they submit them to the teacher via turnitin.com, and that service
runs the paper through its database,” Shelburne said. The service can recognize any text
from some other source, and if there’s a match it will identify the passage and the source.
Elloise Allen, assistant principal at Canyon Crest Academy, estimated that San Dieguito
Union High School District schools catch 10 or fewer cheaters each year. Shelburne said he
catches about half that. Both Allen and Shelburne said the number of kids caught
represents the tip of the iceberg.
Allen said it was quiet this year at Canyon Crest, after last year’s major cheating scandal
involving dozens of students, and she speculated on the reasons why.
“You ask yourself if it’s because the teachers are being really pro-active about explaining to
kids,” she said. “Or is it because kids are afraid? Or is it because kids are becoming more
sophisticated in it?”
Shelburne said the number caught is so low because “it’s completely contingent upon a
teacher catching the student in the act with something that’s tangible.”
To focus attention school-wide on the matter and provide honest students with the ability to
report cheaters anonymously, a new Web site was created last year at La Jolla High called
Report Cheating.
Bee Mittermiller, who was LJHS PTA president from 2006 to 2008, said so many parents
wanted the issue addressed that the committee was formed to work on solutions, and the
Web site was one idea.
“It has been a slow, painstaking process,” she wrote in an email last year when the Web
site’s pilot program began. “The idea behind this is to raise awareness of the problem and
to allow students to alert individual teachers about the cheating methods going on without
giving names. …
“With a Web site, we are hopeful that the students who are thinking about cheating might
reconsider if they know that other students are watching and have a tool available to inform
teachers of cheating activity.”
The Web site does not ask for either the identity of the person reporting the activity nor of the
cheater. “Students on the committee said if the students have to self-identify they will never
report,” Shelburne said. “They don’t want to be seen as the snitch.”
Even the identity of the accused cheater is not disclosed on the site, because students
could lie and falsely accuse someone.
“We don’t know who sent it in and we don’t know the offending student, because we know
that’s going nowhere,” Shelburne said. “So it’s a heads-up to the teacher that on that date
somebody believes that some folks were cheating.”
The Web site asks what class the cheating occurred in, when, the number of students
involved, what activity (test, quiz, homework, essay, project, lab, other), the method of
cheating (advance copy of test, calculator, cell phone or texting, other technology, notes,
discussion of test outside of class, plagiarism, talking during test, team-cheating), and why
the student is reporting the incident (grade curve, it’s the right thing to do, fed up with
cheating, trying to help the teacher, want to improve the school, respect for teacher, other).
Shelburne said kids are using the Web site, but the system is still being tweaked and it’s
difficult to say if it’s made a difference yet.
Why smart kids cheat
La Jolla High School, Canyon Crest Academy and Torrey Pines High School have similar
demographics, located in affluent neighborhoods with high-achieving students competing
for top spots in elite universities. This makes some students feel cheating is worth the risk,
administrators say.
“The pressures are enormous,” Shelburne said. “Kids are panicking. I’ve got a lot of highly
intellectual students … and they’re so frazzled.”
“They are competing with each other both for grades in classes as well as slots in the
universities,” said San Dieguito associate superintendent Rick Schmitt. “Over my career, in
my experience, most of the kids who get caught cheating are the most competitive kids.”
“In any community where kids are high-achieving, worried and stressed about college, my
guess is that cheating is rampant,” said Allen. “It’s never the kids afraid of failing. It’s the
kids trying to get into highly selective universities. It’s the kid who wants to make sure he
keeps his A, it’s the kids who want to make sure they go to Berkeley, it’s the kid who’s
feeling pressured by their parents.”
Allen said the students who cheat are often the ones who are strong students but are
socially at risk. They are vulnerable when, for example, the star lacrosse player asks them
for help.
“The kid says sure because they hope this is a way to feel accepted,” she said. “And the next
thing you know, you’re in trouble because you showed somebody your biology lab report.”
Shelburne blames the intensity of the college application process for the increased
acceptance of cheating by students. In an effort to reduce stress, he’d like to eliminate
weighted grades, so “kids would then be out from under the onus of having to take only
weighted courses,” he said.
Since colleges recalculate grade point averages anyway, based on their own criteria,
weighted grades provide a false sense of accomplishment, he said. “For some of these
kids, getting an A in a regular old class lowers your GPA,” he said. “So they won’t take these
courses, or they try to avoid them.”
Eliminating the weighted grade would reduce the incentive to cheat, Shelburne said,
“because you can get an A without having to get the super-A. It would also allow you not to
have to feel that you have to take four AP courses every year and get overloaded.” Over-
extended students may feel they have to cheat because they can’t keep up, he said.
What students say
Vince Gumina, former Associated Student Body president at La Jolla High School who just
graduated this year, said cheating is rampant, especially among high-achieving kids.
“It’s ironic that a lot of the kids who seem to ‘have all the answers’ really just ‘have all the
answer sheets,’” he wrote in an email. “The college application process is hard. Kids are
afraid that if they don’t bulk up schedules with tons of AP classes, then they won’t get into the
college of their dreams. And if they don’t make it to the college of their dreams, there’s a part
of us that pictures ourselves on the side of the road as a homeless person.”
Gumina said parental pressure also contributes to the cheating epidemic, which drives their
children to cheat “to gain self-worth and acceptance.”
“Tons of my friends and peers cheated regularly on tests, quizzes, homework,” he wrote.
“How do they get the answers? Teachers are lazy and reuse the same tests over and over
again, year after year, without changing the questions/answers. … Some sell these
answers. Some give them away for free.”
Gumina said he had many opportunities to cheat but “would rather fail honestly than
passing dishonestly.”
“Kids coasted through high school due to cheating,” he said. “Although ‘ratting’ them out is
the right thing to do, students as you may guess frown upon a tattletale. So most observers
stay silent. It bothers a lot of them, but going behind a peer’s back too feels like cheating in
its own respect, and subjects kids to harsh peer criticism.”
Gumina suggested stronger consequences to curtail the practice. “All I could recommend to
cut down on the cheating would be a zero tolerance policy across the board,” he said. “If you
are caught cheating, you fail the class. Plain and simple. Without harsh repercussions,
students won’t take other precautionary measures seriously.”
First-time cheaters at La Jolla High receive a zero on that particular work, but it must be
averaged into the total points for the class because some teachers drop the lowest test, quiz
or homework assignment, Shelburne said.
“Our policy is [that] you don’t get to drop this one,” he said. “You can drop the next one. This
one you have to suffer.”
Shelburne said if a teacher is certain that a student was cheating and is able to describe the
activity convincingly, then the administration will follow through with consequences, despite
protestations by the student or parents.
“That gets dicey sometimes,” he said, but added that often the student admits guilt
“because the kid knows that the teacher wouldn’t report there was cheating unless
something pretty overt was taking place.”
A second occurrence of cheating in that class during the same school year means the
student must drop the class and an F appears on the transcript. Students are not expelled
for cheating, he said, nor are they labeled with academic dishonesty on their transcripts.
Teacher resistance
La Jolla encountered resistance to the Report Cheating Web site, but not from students.
Rather, some teachers were opposed, fearful that the data would be used against them in
performance evaluations, regardless of Shelburne’s assurances to the contrary.
Shelburne said four or five teachers contacted the union representative. “The union rep
squawked and was told by our legal office that there’s not a thing wrong with this Web site,”
he said. “You can’t claim contractual violations.”
The union was invited to participate in designing the site, and initially agreed, but then never
showed up, according to Shelburne.
The district’s legal office supported the school’s Web site but suggested that teachers be
allowed to opt out, which several have done, to Shelburne’s disappointment. He said
teachers could simply delete the reports or filter them out and they’d never see them.
“A couple said, ‘No, I don’t even want to get a notification that there’s been a report of
cheating,’” he said. “What message are we sending to the kids?”
Shelburne said some of the teachers “couldn’t get their arms around the fact of an
anonymous tip saying there’s cheating in your class. Some of them said, ‘You can’t prove
that. That could be some kid messing around.’
“The answer is, ‘Yeah, it could be.’ But if you get enough of them saying there’s texting on
cell phones in your class, look around and see if there’s texting on cell phones. Be a little
more alert to that.”
Shelburne believes the Web site is making a difference “because it’s on the lips of kids,” he
said. “And we made them part of the process of trying to develop a Web site. The kids want
to let the information out. They just don’t want to be identified as the snitch.”
Honest students are frustrated with cheaters, he said, and want cheating to cease. “They
see the inequity of it and they want a way to make it stop,” he said.
Shelburne said students say cheating decreases when teachers develop good rapport with
students and take a firm stand against cheating from the start. Those teachers have fewer
problems because students have respect for the teacher and don’t want to disappoint them.
“If they don’t care about the teacher and the teacher’s a jerk, that’s a whole different story,”
he said.
Shelburne said La Jolla High is the only school in the district that offers a Web site that
allows cheating to be reported. “By and large everybody said this is great,” he said.
Canyon Crest’s Allen said the Web site is a useful beginning and that it empowers kids,
even though it is anonymous on both ends. “Giving the teachers a heads-up that cheating is
going on in their classroom is still good even if you don’t know who the cheater is,” she said.
But no one is under any illusions that cheating will disappear.
“Every year kids get caught and every year kids don’t get caught,” said San Dieguito’s
Schmitt. “Since the beginning of my career kids have cheated. Kids have always found ways
to beat the system.”
This story first appeared in the Carmel Valley News and Rancho Santa Fe Review. Click
here to read Part One. Marsha Sutton can be reached at: SuttComm@san.rr.com.
Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-07-15/education/schools-tackle-the-
growing-practice-of-cheating-part-two#ixzz0trilM61C
schools?
Suggestion: Don't have the school lawyers handle this issue
Schools tackle the growing practice of cheating
By Marsha Sutton, SDNN
July 15, 2010
San Diego:
Cheating has gotten a lot more complex than simply peering over a classmate's shoulder.
Cheating in high school is as common an occurrence as adolescent acne – and has proven
to be just as difficult to control. Intense competition for slots in highly selective colleges has
contributed to the problem, expanding the practice to include high-achieving students when
decades ago cheaters were mainly D students trying simply not to fail.
“I only cheat off of smart kids because I want to go to UCLA,” stated a student several years
ago in the Torrey Pines High School yearbook.
In last year’s San Diego Jewish Academy yearbook, two pages were devoted to “The Art of
Deception – Inventive Ways to Cheat.” Although content was often tongue-in-cheek (“shave
answers in leg hair, learn Morse code, set up a smoke signal”), other comments rang true.
“I don’t usually cheat, but I was crammed for time. It was a last resort,” said one student who
wrote terminology on her arm hidden under a jacket.
“I often have multiple tests a week, and it was hard for me to remember all the information,”
said a 10th-grade Advanced Placement history student who inserted a cheat sheet inside a
pencil case pocket for a test.
High school students have progressed well beyond the tried and true methods of simply
peeking at another student’s work or giving the test questions to students who have yet to
take the test.
“We’ve caught very clever kids,” said La Jolla High School principal Dana Shelburne. “One
had taken the label off a water bottle and put it through the printer with all the important stuff
on there and then reattached it to the water bottle, so it looked for all the world like a water
bottle. But if you tilted it the right way, you could look right in.”
Shelburne said technology has made it even more challenging for teachers to catch
cheaters. “That makes it very difficult to know what’s going on because kids can text without
looking,” he said.
Shelburne said one student sitting in the front row had his eyes on his teacher but his
hands in his pockets while the teacher was lecturing on the importance of academic
honesty. After class, he told her he had been texting and showed her what he had written: “I
am talking about cheating with [the teacher].” Then he said, “See? I’m two feet in front of you
and you didn’t even know.”
Local cheating scandal
A local cheating scandal last year in two Advanced Placement psychology classes that
involved dozens of students at Canyon Crest Academy presented a challenge for staff at the
San Dieguito Union High School District.
SDUHSD associate superintendent Rick Schmitt said two forms of cheating took place:
those who shared notes and homework assignments and those who cheated on tests.
Students who copied notes and plagiarized were easier to spot because the homework was
identical from one to the next. But the test cheaters proved harder to identify.
It was determined, eventually, that one boy who took the class in the fall term allegedly gave
or sold copies of the answers to students taking the same class in the spring term. The
student, whose father is a criminal defense attorney, was a junior at the time and switched
schools voluntarily, reportedly attending San Marcos High School for his senior year.
“We had enough evidence to suspend but not expel,” said Canyon Crest assistant principal
Elloise Allen, who speculated that the family transferred him from Canyon Crest because
“they could see possibilities of more evidence coming.”
Allen said she’s convinced more than one student was guilty of sharing prior tests but staff
was unable to uncover definitive proof implicating anyone else.
Galling many Canyon Crest students this spring was discovering that this student had been
accepted to the University of California Los Angeles for fall 2010.
“I’m not going to lie – I was upset,” said one CCA student. “I felt it was extremely unfair. Why
should this person get accepted to a really good school? It feels like there were no
consequences to his actions.”
The student, who asked not to be named, said the offender was a “very smart kid” who likely
would have been accepted to UCLA anyway. “But I don’t think he deserves it for doing this,”
the student said. “It’s dishonest.”
The student said it encourages cheating when hard-working, honest students see cheaters
getting ahead. He said many of his classmates were also angry when they heard the news.
Consequences for cheating at San Dieguito schools do not include an “academic
dishonesty” notation on the student’s transcript. “If it was noted on the transcript, it would
save a lot of us the concern and stress about this,” said the CCA student, who added that he
wouldn’t feel as frustrated if UCLA had been made aware of the offense and still accepted
him.
Most colleges and universities do not ask on their application forms if students have ever
cheated, been suspended or expelled. Some students believe colleges should ask,
although they acknowledge that, without reference to any incidents on the student’s
transcript, it’s easy to lie.
The Canyon Crest investigation determined that an estimated 50 percent of the students in
one teacher’s two AP Psych classes – or about 40 to 45 kids – were guilty of cheating. There
were varying degrees of academic dishonesty: sharing the test and providing the answer
keys, receiving those answers, sharing homework notes and collaborating on assignments
that were meant to be completed independently.
Alice Cash, a 2009 CCA graduate who was not involved in the scandal and does not engage
in cheating, said at the time that the discovery of such widespread cheating didn’t surprise
her. “It goes on in every class,” she said. “There’s lots of peer pressure to cheat.”
Some students believe the kids who received the test questions and answers did not
deserve to be punished.
“The students were not at fault,” commented one student in response to an article on the
issue. “The reason that the students were able to cheat on the tests was because the
teacher never changed the tests from year to year. This illustrates pure indolence on behalf
of all the teachers of this generation who ignorantly cannot be bothered to create new tests
from time to time.”
Discipline files
Schmitt said first-time offenders receive a zero on the assignment, quiz or test. If it’s a repeat
offense, then the student may fail the course or be suspended for several days, with no
chance to make up missed work. But there is no notation on transcripts, and all misbehavior
is part of a discipline file that is kept confidential and “never sees the light of day,” he said.
San Dieguito’s policy “is typical of any cheating policy I’ve ever seen in the six different
school districts I’ve worked in,” Schmitt said. He said the zero on the assignment, especially
if it’s a final exam, can be a game-changer, sometimes lowering the final grade a full level,
from an A to a B or a B to a C.
Consequences can be severe. Schmitt mentioned the case of a student years ago at Torrey
Pines who failed a course after being caught cheating and had his acceptance to UC
Berkeley rescinded.
Because the student at CCA last year who was caught distributing tests took the class in a
prior term, there was no assignment, quiz or test to give him a zero for. He was suspended
instead, Allen said, because “we felt that discipline-wise it was important to have a
consequence.”
Both Allen and Schmitt agreed that it can be difficult for honest students to see cheaters
accepted into prestigious universities.
Schmitt said he understands their frustration and sympathizes. “I’d say [to students] … if you’
re bothered by it, then you have to help us,” he said. “Many times there’s that teenage code
of silence, and it’s difficult to crack that culture.”
Most cheating occurs outside the classroom, Schmitt said, making it even more difficult to
detect. “It doesn’t happen under the teacher’s nose, so it’s really hard to police that,” he said.
Schmitt said the schools need hard evidence to charge kids with cheating, which isn’t easy
to get. “The burden of proof is pretty tough,” he said.
“Kids shut down … and [are] not willing to talk,” Allen said. “They are so willing to close
ranks. They’re willing to be upset that he got into a good university, and yet none of them
were willing to come forward and say, ‘I know more information, I have more details, I have
specifics.’”
Allen said the reluctance to speak up stems from social pressures. “Part of it is just a
cultural piece that kids don’t tattle,” she said. “Kids are very much afraid of the social stigma.
But we’re not a court of law where we can subpoena somebody and put them on trial. I don’t
have to share my witness information with another kid.”
Schmitt said the discipline policy, which he calls progressive, is not meant to disqualify a
student from college eligibility or to prevent a student from graduating. “Good kids make bad
choices, and this is just another opportunity for us to help them mature and make better
choices,” he said.
Private schools
Jeff Davis, principal of the Upper School at Carmel Valley’s San Diego Jewish Academy,
echoed Schmitt’s remarks, saying, “The term I use is progressive discipline,” meaning that
students are treated differently if there is a history of offenses.
“I’m not a zero tolerance guy,” Davis said. “You take into consideration, has this kid ever
done that before and what was the nature of the offense.”
The cheating policy at the private Jewish Academy – and at Cathedral Catholic High School,
another private high school in Carmel Valley – is similar to San Dieguito’s: a zero on the
assignment for a first offense, with discretion to enforce suspension or other disciplinary
action if it’s a multiple offense or involves other charges like theft or computer hacking.
Cathedral’s policy reads: “Consequences for cheating, plagiarism or any other form of
academic dishonesty will include, but are not limited to, receiving a zero on the assignment,
quiz or test, and a detention or referral. Lying to the teacher or the dean’s office may result in
further consequences.”
Schmitt said public schools must accept kids who were expelled from private schools, and
often are not told the reason for the expulsion.
“We can’t expel kids for cheating,” he said. “The private schools can, and we end up with a
lot of those kids.”
Several years ago, students came to two San Dieguito high schools, Torrey Pines and La
Costa Canyon, after being forced to leave a private school for plagiarism and hacking into
the school’s computer system and changing grades, Schmitt said.
“They arrived at our campuses, and we had no idea any of that had happened,” he said.
“They did it again at our schools and got caught.”
Schmitt said private schools can dismiss students “at any time, pretty much for any reason.”
He said he’s received kids in the public school system “who broke all kinds of rules at the
private school, whether it was drug- and alcohol-related or issues around plagiarism. The
kid just enrolls and the private schools don’t have to disclose why.”
If the family lives in the neighborhood, they have a right to public school, he said.
“That’s a true statement,” said SDJA’s Davis. “You’re guaranteed the right to a public
education. You’re not guaranteed the right to a private school education.”
La Jolla High’s Shelburne agreed, saying, “Oftentimes we do not get the reasons why a
student comes out of a private school to us. For any number of reasons – dealing drugs,
cheating, fighting, whatever – that kid is removed from the private school and suddenly here
he or she is on our doorstep.”
Davis said no student has ever been expelled for cheating from the private Jewish Academy,
but incidents do happen.
“We have the same things that occur here that occur at all other public and private schools,”
said Davis, who noted that the most common form of cheating at his school is plagiarism.
Davis said the school tries to address the issue in ways that ensure it never happens again.
First-time offenders are generally not suspended unless the cheating involves some crime
like stealing or vandalism. “Kids sometimes make mistakes, and we want them to learn
from it,” he said.
Schools tackle the growing practice of cheating,
Part Two
By Marsha Sutton, SDNN
July 15, 2010
In Part One, we discussed the prevalence of cheating and the difficulty schools have in
catching cheaters. This installment, Part Two, discusses various methods schools use to
curb the practice, including a unique “Report Cheating” Web site.
Staff at La Jolla High School, part of the San Diego Unified School District, decided several
years ago to take a pro-active stance against cheating, forming a committee composed of
teachers, parents and students to tackle the problem.
“We catch the irregular person, but the question is what are we missing that we don’t know
about,” said LJHS principal Dana Shelburne.
The committee investigated the extent of the problem and looked into what’s being done at
the college level to curtail cheating. Shelburne said they discussed what it means to cheat
and what it means to have authorized collaboration.
Group work, it was determined, must be specifically approved by the teacher. “You can’t turn
in somebody else’s work as your own,” he said.
Shelburne said the school pays to belong to an Internet-based plagiarism detection service
called turnitin.com that monitors the recycling of content. This site is used by other high
schools as well.
“When they write essays, they submit them to the teacher via turnitin.com, and that service
runs the paper through its database,” Shelburne said. The service can recognize any text
from some other source, and if there’s a match it will identify the passage and the source.
Elloise Allen, assistant principal at Canyon Crest Academy, estimated that San Dieguito
Union High School District schools catch 10 or fewer cheaters each year. Shelburne said he
catches about half that. Both Allen and Shelburne said the number of kids caught
represents the tip of the iceberg.
Allen said it was quiet this year at Canyon Crest, after last year’s major cheating scandal
involving dozens of students, and she speculated on the reasons why.
“You ask yourself if it’s because the teachers are being really pro-active about explaining to
kids,” she said. “Or is it because kids are afraid? Or is it because kids are becoming more
sophisticated in it?”
Shelburne said the number caught is so low because “it’s completely contingent upon a
teacher catching the student in the act with something that’s tangible.”
To focus attention school-wide on the matter and provide honest students with the ability to
report cheaters anonymously, a new Web site was created last year at La Jolla High called
Report Cheating.
Bee Mittermiller, who was LJHS PTA president from 2006 to 2008, said so many parents
wanted the issue addressed that the committee was formed to work on solutions, and the
Web site was one idea.
“It has been a slow, painstaking process,” she wrote in an email last year when the Web
site’s pilot program began. “The idea behind this is to raise awareness of the problem and
to allow students to alert individual teachers about the cheating methods going on without
giving names. …
“With a Web site, we are hopeful that the students who are thinking about cheating might
reconsider if they know that other students are watching and have a tool available to inform
teachers of cheating activity.”
The Web site does not ask for either the identity of the person reporting the activity nor of the
cheater. “Students on the committee said if the students have to self-identify they will never
report,” Shelburne said. “They don’t want to be seen as the snitch.”
Even the identity of the accused cheater is not disclosed on the site, because students
could lie and falsely accuse someone.
“We don’t know who sent it in and we don’t know the offending student, because we know
that’s going nowhere,” Shelburne said. “So it’s a heads-up to the teacher that on that date
somebody believes that some folks were cheating.”
The Web site asks what class the cheating occurred in, when, the number of students
involved, what activity (test, quiz, homework, essay, project, lab, other), the method of
cheating (advance copy of test, calculator, cell phone or texting, other technology, notes,
discussion of test outside of class, plagiarism, talking during test, team-cheating), and why
the student is reporting the incident (grade curve, it’s the right thing to do, fed up with
cheating, trying to help the teacher, want to improve the school, respect for teacher, other).
Shelburne said kids are using the Web site, but the system is still being tweaked and it’s
difficult to say if it’s made a difference yet.
Why smart kids cheat
La Jolla High School, Canyon Crest Academy and Torrey Pines High School have similar
demographics, located in affluent neighborhoods with high-achieving students competing
for top spots in elite universities. This makes some students feel cheating is worth the risk,
administrators say.
“The pressures are enormous,” Shelburne said. “Kids are panicking. I’ve got a lot of highly
intellectual students … and they’re so frazzled.”
“They are competing with each other both for grades in classes as well as slots in the
universities,” said San Dieguito associate superintendent Rick Schmitt. “Over my career, in
my experience, most of the kids who get caught cheating are the most competitive kids.”
“In any community where kids are high-achieving, worried and stressed about college, my
guess is that cheating is rampant,” said Allen. “It’s never the kids afraid of failing. It’s the
kids trying to get into highly selective universities. It’s the kid who wants to make sure he
keeps his A, it’s the kids who want to make sure they go to Berkeley, it’s the kid who’s
feeling pressured by their parents.”
Allen said the students who cheat are often the ones who are strong students but are
socially at risk. They are vulnerable when, for example, the star lacrosse player asks them
for help.
“The kid says sure because they hope this is a way to feel accepted,” she said. “And the next
thing you know, you’re in trouble because you showed somebody your biology lab report.”
Shelburne blames the intensity of the college application process for the increased
acceptance of cheating by students. In an effort to reduce stress, he’d like to eliminate
weighted grades, so “kids would then be out from under the onus of having to take only
weighted courses,” he said.
Since colleges recalculate grade point averages anyway, based on their own criteria,
weighted grades provide a false sense of accomplishment, he said. “For some of these
kids, getting an A in a regular old class lowers your GPA,” he said. “So they won’t take these
courses, or they try to avoid them.”
Eliminating the weighted grade would reduce the incentive to cheat, Shelburne said,
“because you can get an A without having to get the super-A. It would also allow you not to
have to feel that you have to take four AP courses every year and get overloaded.” Over-
extended students may feel they have to cheat because they can’t keep up, he said.
What students say
Vince Gumina, former Associated Student Body president at La Jolla High School who just
graduated this year, said cheating is rampant, especially among high-achieving kids.
“It’s ironic that a lot of the kids who seem to ‘have all the answers’ really just ‘have all the
answer sheets,’” he wrote in an email. “The college application process is hard. Kids are
afraid that if they don’t bulk up schedules with tons of AP classes, then they won’t get into the
college of their dreams. And if they don’t make it to the college of their dreams, there’s a part
of us that pictures ourselves on the side of the road as a homeless person.”
Gumina said parental pressure also contributes to the cheating epidemic, which drives their
children to cheat “to gain self-worth and acceptance.”
“Tons of my friends and peers cheated regularly on tests, quizzes, homework,” he wrote.
“How do they get the answers? Teachers are lazy and reuse the same tests over and over
again, year after year, without changing the questions/answers. … Some sell these
answers. Some give them away for free.”
Gumina said he had many opportunities to cheat but “would rather fail honestly than
passing dishonestly.”
“Kids coasted through high school due to cheating,” he said. “Although ‘ratting’ them out is
the right thing to do, students as you may guess frown upon a tattletale. So most observers
stay silent. It bothers a lot of them, but going behind a peer’s back too feels like cheating in
its own respect, and subjects kids to harsh peer criticism.”
Gumina suggested stronger consequences to curtail the practice. “All I could recommend to
cut down on the cheating would be a zero tolerance policy across the board,” he said. “If you
are caught cheating, you fail the class. Plain and simple. Without harsh repercussions,
students won’t take other precautionary measures seriously.”
First-time cheaters at La Jolla High receive a zero on that particular work, but it must be
averaged into the total points for the class because some teachers drop the lowest test, quiz
or homework assignment, Shelburne said.
“Our policy is [that] you don’t get to drop this one,” he said. “You can drop the next one. This
one you have to suffer.”
Shelburne said if a teacher is certain that a student was cheating and is able to describe the
activity convincingly, then the administration will follow through with consequences, despite
protestations by the student or parents.
“That gets dicey sometimes,” he said, but added that often the student admits guilt
“because the kid knows that the teacher wouldn’t report there was cheating unless
something pretty overt was taking place.”
A second occurrence of cheating in that class during the same school year means the
student must drop the class and an F appears on the transcript. Students are not expelled
for cheating, he said, nor are they labeled with academic dishonesty on their transcripts.
Teacher resistance
La Jolla encountered resistance to the Report Cheating Web site, but not from students.
Rather, some teachers were opposed, fearful that the data would be used against them in
performance evaluations, regardless of Shelburne’s assurances to the contrary.
Shelburne said four or five teachers contacted the union representative. “The union rep
squawked and was told by our legal office that there’s not a thing wrong with this Web site,”
he said. “You can’t claim contractual violations.”
The union was invited to participate in designing the site, and initially agreed, but then never
showed up, according to Shelburne.
The district’s legal office supported the school’s Web site but suggested that teachers be
allowed to opt out, which several have done, to Shelburne’s disappointment. He said
teachers could simply delete the reports or filter them out and they’d never see them.
“A couple said, ‘No, I don’t even want to get a notification that there’s been a report of
cheating,’” he said. “What message are we sending to the kids?”
Shelburne said some of the teachers “couldn’t get their arms around the fact of an
anonymous tip saying there’s cheating in your class. Some of them said, ‘You can’t prove
that. That could be some kid messing around.’
“The answer is, ‘Yeah, it could be.’ But if you get enough of them saying there’s texting on
cell phones in your class, look around and see if there’s texting on cell phones. Be a little
more alert to that.”
Shelburne believes the Web site is making a difference “because it’s on the lips of kids,” he
said. “And we made them part of the process of trying to develop a Web site. The kids want
to let the information out. They just don’t want to be identified as the snitch.”
Honest students are frustrated with cheaters, he said, and want cheating to cease. “They
see the inequity of it and they want a way to make it stop,” he said.
Shelburne said students say cheating decreases when teachers develop good rapport with
students and take a firm stand against cheating from the start. Those teachers have fewer
problems because students have respect for the teacher and don’t want to disappoint them.
“If they don’t care about the teacher and the teacher’s a jerk, that’s a whole different story,”
he said.
Shelburne said La Jolla High is the only school in the district that offers a Web site that
allows cheating to be reported. “By and large everybody said this is great,” he said.
Canyon Crest’s Allen said the Web site is a useful beginning and that it empowers kids,
even though it is anonymous on both ends. “Giving the teachers a heads-up that cheating is
going on in their classroom is still good even if you don’t know who the cheater is,” she said.
But no one is under any illusions that cheating will disappear.
“Every year kids get caught and every year kids don’t get caught,” said San Dieguito’s
Schmitt. “Since the beginning of my career kids have cheated. Kids have always found ways
to beat the system.”
This story first appeared in the Carmel Valley News and Rancho Santa Fe Review. Click
here to read Part One. Marsha Sutton can be reached at: SuttComm@san.rr.com.
Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2010-07-15/education/schools-tackle-the-
growing-practice-of-cheating-part-two#ixzz0trilM61C
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Why This Website
Stutz Artiano Shinoff
& Holtz v. Maura
Larkins defamation
SDCOE
CVESD
Castle Park Elem
Law Enforcement
CTA
CVE
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& Holtz
Silence is Golden
Schools and Violence
Office Admin Hearings
Larkins OAH Hearing
Why This Website
Stutz Artiano Shinoff
& Holtz v. Maura
Larkins defamation
SDCOE
CVESD
Castle Park Elem
Law Enforcement
CTA
CVE
Stutz Artiano Shinoff
& Holtz
Silence is Golden
Schools and Violence
Office Admin Hearings
Larkins OAH Hearing
Justice
Department
reviewing reports
of FBI test cheating
By Carol Cratty
CNN
July 28, 2010
The Justice
Department's Office of
Inspector General has
launched an
investigation into
whether large numbers
of FBI agents may have
improperly taken a test
on guidelines for
agents, according to FBI
Director Robert Mueller.
During a congressional
hearing Wednesday,
Mueller was asked
about reports hundreds
of agents may have
cheated on the exams,
which focused on
guidelines that limit
surveillance, and he
responded he did not
know the precise
number and is not
certain the inspector
general knows that
number.
Mueller said the
inspector general has
told him about certain
FBI offices where testing
problems were
"widespread, and it may
be attributable to a lack
of understanding and
confusion about
procedures."
...Reports about
test-taking problems
include instances where
agents finished the
exams much more
quickly than would be
expected, and instances
in which agents might
have taken the test
together, law
enforcement officials
said...
Department
reviewing reports
of FBI test cheating
By Carol Cratty
CNN
July 28, 2010
The Justice
Department's Office of
Inspector General has
launched an
investigation into
whether large numbers
of FBI agents may have
improperly taken a test
on guidelines for
agents, according to FBI
Director Robert Mueller.
During a congressional
hearing Wednesday,
Mueller was asked
about reports hundreds
of agents may have
cheated on the exams,
which focused on
guidelines that limit
surveillance, and he
responded he did not
know the precise
number and is not
certain the inspector
general knows that
number.
Mueller said the
inspector general has
told him about certain
FBI offices where testing
problems were
"widespread, and it may
be attributable to a lack
of understanding and
confusion about
procedures."
...Reports about
test-taking problems
include instances where
agents finished the
exams much more
quickly than would be
expected, and instances
in which agents might
have taken the test
together, law
enforcement officials
said...
48% cheat among teachers,
administrators working on
degrees
Cheating their way
into business?
By Emily Sachar
Bloomberg News
September 27, 2006
Seattle Times
Students pursuing master's degrees
in business administration (MBA)
cheat more than other U.S. graduate
students, according to a study for the
Center for Academic Integrity at Duke
University.
The study found 56 percent of MBA
students acknowledged cheating,
compared with 54 percent in
engineering, 48 percent in
education and 45 percent in
law school.
"Business schools have a significant
problem that should be addressed,"
said Donald McCabe, the study's lead
author and a professor at Rutgers
University.
Cheating is a problem at all schools,
"even if deans at leading schools don't
want to concede it," he said.
The study offered two main
explanations for the cheating: The
pressure-cooker atmosphere of
business school leaves many
students willing to compete by any
means available, and corporate
scandals have distorted the standards
of many business students. The study
also said faculty members at the
schools don't do enough to stop
cheating.
The survey, conducted from 2002 to
2004, asked 5,300 students at 54
institutions, including 623 students at
32 graduate business schools, if they
ever cheated. The findings will be
published this week in the journal
Academy of Management Learning &
Education.
Officials at top business schools such
as Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford and
Wharton said they didn't see much
cheating. Honor codes that require
students to sign a statement on each
test saying they had not cheated —
and some requiring students to report
cheating by others — are a powerful
deterrent, as are frequent classroom
discussions about ethical behavior,
they said.
Student participation in writing honor
codes and serving on discipline
committees also helps, they said.
At the Wharton School at the University
of Pennsylvania, Vice Dean Anjani Jain
said cheating is "quite rare." Each
student fills out an evaluation at the
end of each class that includes a
question about whether cheating has
been observed. Philadelphia-based
Wharton, with 2,000 MBA students,
has three to seven violations reported
to its ethics committee each year, Jain
said in an e-mail.
The Tuck School was
ranked highest in the
nation by recruiters for
its students' academic
integrity in a Wall Street
Journal/Harris Interactive yearly survey
of business schools published last
week.
The study also suggested that faculty
members sometimes enable cheating
by not creating multiple versions of
take-home exams and by sending
mixed messages to students. For
example, students are encouraged to
participate in teams but told they
cannot work together on some
assignments, the report said.
Earlier studies found a high incidence
of cheating among undergraduate
business students. In 1997, McCabe,
a professor of management and
global business who is regarded by
ethics professors as a leading
researcher on cheating and
plagiarism, found 84 percent of
undergraduate business students
said they cheated at least once,
compared with 72 percent of
engineering students and 66 percent
of all students.
In a 1964 study, a Columbia University
researcher reported that 66 percent of
business students surveyed at 99
campuses said they cheated at least
once.
administrators working on
degrees
Cheating their way
into business?
By Emily Sachar
Bloomberg News
September 27, 2006
Seattle Times
Students pursuing master's degrees
in business administration (MBA)
cheat more than other U.S. graduate
students, according to a study for the
Center for Academic Integrity at Duke
University.
The study found 56 percent of MBA
students acknowledged cheating,
compared with 54 percent in
engineering, 48 percent in
education and 45 percent in
law school.
"Business schools have a significant
problem that should be addressed,"
said Donald McCabe, the study's lead
author and a professor at Rutgers
University.
Cheating is a problem at all schools,
"even if deans at leading schools don't
want to concede it," he said.
The study offered two main
explanations for the cheating: The
pressure-cooker atmosphere of
business school leaves many
students willing to compete by any
means available, and corporate
scandals have distorted the standards
of many business students. The study
also said faculty members at the
schools don't do enough to stop
cheating.
The survey, conducted from 2002 to
2004, asked 5,300 students at 54
institutions, including 623 students at
32 graduate business schools, if they
ever cheated. The findings will be
published this week in the journal
Academy of Management Learning &
Education.
Officials at top business schools such
as Yale, Dartmouth, Stanford and
Wharton said they didn't see much
cheating. Honor codes that require
students to sign a statement on each
test saying they had not cheated —
and some requiring students to report
cheating by others — are a powerful
deterrent, as are frequent classroom
discussions about ethical behavior,
they said.
Student participation in writing honor
codes and serving on discipline
committees also helps, they said.
At the Wharton School at the University
of Pennsylvania, Vice Dean Anjani Jain
said cheating is "quite rare." Each
student fills out an evaluation at the
end of each class that includes a
question about whether cheating has
been observed. Philadelphia-based
Wharton, with 2,000 MBA students,
has three to seven violations reported
to its ethics committee each year, Jain
said in an e-mail.
The Tuck School was
ranked highest in the
nation by recruiters for
its students' academic
integrity in a Wall Street
Journal/Harris Interactive yearly survey
of business schools published last
week.
The study also suggested that faculty
members sometimes enable cheating
by not creating multiple versions of
take-home exams and by sending
mixed messages to students. For
example, students are encouraged to
participate in teams but told they
cannot work together on some
assignments, the report said.
Earlier studies found a high incidence
of cheating among undergraduate
business students. In 1997, McCabe,
a professor of management and
global business who is regarded by
ethics professors as a leading
researcher on cheating and
plagiarism, found 84 percent of
undergraduate business students
said they cheated at least once,
compared with 72 percent of
engineering students and 66 percent
of all students.
In a 1964 study, a Columbia University
researcher reported that 66 percent of
business students surveyed at 99
campuses said they cheated at least
once.
Marsha Sutton on:
Lawyers in schools
Brown Act
Lawyers in schools
Brown Act
Students suspended for
changing grades at
Rancho Bernardo HS in Poway
BUT student sued by Guajome
Park Academy for reporting
that teachers changed grades!
(link: blog post)
changing grades at
Rancho Bernardo HS in Poway
BUT student sued by Guajome
Park Academy for reporting
that teachers changed grades!
(link: blog post)
District protected teachers who
changed grades
Guajome Park Academy--Vista
Unified School District
has the same law firm as PUSD:
Dan Shinoff/Jack Sleeth of Stutz
Artiano Shinoff & Holtz)
changed grades
Guajome Park Academy--Vista
Unified School District
has the same law firm as PUSD:
Dan Shinoff/Jack Sleeth of Stutz
Artiano Shinoff & Holtz)
Cheating scandal at [CRESCENDO] charter
schools leads California association to withdraw
support
Los Angeles Times
March 3, 2011
The association representing California’s charter schools has withdrawn
support for a group of Los Angeles-area schools that cheated on last year’s
state standardized tests.
“Cheating is completely unacceptable and inexcusable in any school," wrote
Jed Wallace, the chief executive of the California Charter Schools Assn., in a
letter to the Los Angeles Times.
The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Tuesday to begin the process of
revoking the charter of six schools operated by the Crescendo organization.
The campuses likely would be forced to close by the end of the school year.
"We are in complete support of the LAUSD board’s decision,” Wallace wrote.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the association’s representative had supported a
milder response advanced Monday by incoming L.A. schools Supt. John
Deasy. That plan would have given a one-year charter extension for the two
Crescendo schools nearing the end of their current charter authorization.
Four other Crescendo schools, which also participated in the cheating, would
not have been immediately affected.
In a story Monday, The Times disclosed that Crescendo founder and
executive director John Allen had, according to school district documents and
officials, ordered principals and teachers to cheat by breaking the seal on the
state tests and using the actual questions to prepare students for the test...
schools leads California association to withdraw
support
Los Angeles Times
March 3, 2011
The association representing California’s charter schools has withdrawn
support for a group of Los Angeles-area schools that cheated on last year’s
state standardized tests.
“Cheating is completely unacceptable and inexcusable in any school," wrote
Jed Wallace, the chief executive of the California Charter Schools Assn., in a
letter to the Los Angeles Times.
The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Tuesday to begin the process of
revoking the charter of six schools operated by the Crescendo organization.
The campuses likely would be forced to close by the end of the school year.
"We are in complete support of the LAUSD board’s decision,” Wallace wrote.
At Tuesday’s meeting, the association’s representative had supported a
milder response advanced Monday by incoming L.A. schools Supt. John
Deasy. That plan would have given a one-year charter extension for the two
Crescendo schools nearing the end of their current charter authorization.
Four other Crescendo schools, which also participated in the cheating, would
not have been immediately affected.
In a story Monday, The Times disclosed that Crescendo founder and
executive director John Allen had, according to school district documents and
officials, ordered principals and teachers to cheat by breaking the seal on the
state tests and using the actual questions to prepare students for the test...
San Diego
Education Report
Education Report