Caveon has a new Cheating in the News newsletter out. One of the big articles linked this week is Newsweek International's "The Perfect Score," which focuses on the prevalence of cheating in student communities outside the US. A must-read.
Closer to home, there's the cheating episode in Texas that shows why schools should confiscate cell phones before handing out test booklets. I'm actually a bit surprised to discover that some states are only now developing policies regarding the use of devices such as cell phones during exams.
Scott of the Daily Ablution has thoughts on a recent Guardian article that advances a novel theory about "the culture of cheating" in the UK.
From the article:
...Tragically this culture of cheating afflicts children from a very early age. Children as young as seven or eight arrive at school showing off polished projects that have benefited from more than a little help from parents.But parents are not entirely to blame. From day one in primary school they are told that the performance of their children is intimately linked to how much support they get at home. In a desperate attempt to improve standards of education, parents' concern for their children is manipulated to draw them in as unpaid teachers. The outsourcing of education by schools encourages a dynamic where many parents become far too directly involved in producing their children's homework.
Scott notes that the researcher who advances this theory, Prof. Furedi, is "correct that the internet is not a sufficient moral force to create a society of cheats." However, is it correct to assume that parental overinvolvement is a sufficient enough force? Scott says no:
...I think the answer is no - something deep, systemic and much more unfortunate has happened to the society at large, with ramifications that go beyond those of cheating in universities...What has brought about the moral change in question is precisely this attitude: that immoral actions are no longer the responsibility of the individual concerned, who is perceived as an innocent let down by the system's deficiencies - deficiencies which can be corrected by social expenditure of resources.
This philosophical position, a mainstay of the academic left, is also prevalent among left-leaners in general; working together, such groups and individuals have largely succeeded in the creation of a society based on the principle of individual blamelessness.
A society, in other words, in which media coverage of cheating teachers always include quotes from "experts" explaining that this is the fault of our "testing culture;" the poor teachers just can't help themselves.
A "sneak peek" sounds like an innocuous thing - but not when it comes to the Maryland State Assessment:
Two fourth-grade teachers have been removed from their classrooms after Carroll County school officials found that the pair had given copies of questions from a state achievement test to other teachers and pupils before the exam.A teacher at Linton Springs Elementary School in Sykesville acknowledged that she had taken notes from the fourth-grade Maryland State Assessment reading exam last year while working at another school, Carroll schools Superintendent Charles Ecker said Monday. The teacher used the notes to create worksheets for her pupils for this year's tests, Ecker said. The tests were administered from March 13-22.
Interesting that the names are being withheld from the press. And it's interesting, but not the least bit surprising, that the quoted experts rush to blame the current culture of testing for this mess, rather than a lack of ethics on the part of the teachers involved. And this despite the fact that the teachers would have not been penalized had their students not done well. I don't think our "culture of testing" forces teachers and students to cheat. I think our culture of cheating is aided by all the testing criticism in the media today. Everything said by the "experts" quoted by this article would absolve a teacher of personal responsibility if they succumbed to the urge to leak test items to students.
Oh, and why was copying last year's exam such a helpful cheating tool?
After they noticed similarities between the worksheets and this year's test, the Mount Airy teachers alerted the principal.
Emphasis mine. If we really think teachers are so helpless against the temptation to cheat, it might be better to, you know, not use the same test form twice in two years.
(via the Education Wonks)
Well, I suppose this is good news for the College Board - pushes the SAT off the front pages - but it's terrible news for quite a lot of other people:
Almost from his first day as principal at Charles Brimm Medical Arts High in Camden, Joseph Carruth found himself sounding an alarm over grade fixing and test-score rigging - allegations that have embroiled the district in scandal. He and another administrator at the school discovered an alleged grade-fixing scheme within weeks of Carruth's arrival in July 2004, according to court documents. Twelve seniors at the school for high performers had apparently graduated with failing grades.Six months later, Carruth has told state education and local prosecutors, an assistant superintendent pressured him to alter the 2005 state High School Proficiency Assessment after students finished it, giving him step-by-step instructions on how he was to cheat. Carruth has said he refused to take part, according to sources familiar with the allegations. He even strapped on a wire for criminal investigators trying to implicate that district official.
It's uglier, and it's not going to get better soon:
The New Jersey Department of Education is investigating irregularities in standardized testing. One investigation involves allegations by the principal of Charles Brimm Medical Arts High, Joseph Carruth, that he was pressured to rig math scores on the state High School Proficiency Assessment last year. Carruth refused to join in the alleged scheme.The other involves dramatic improvement in the test results of at least two Camden elementary schools. The state began that investigation after The Inquirer asked the state to verify results. One city school had the highest fourth-grade math score in the state. That investigation has expanded to a dozen schools outside Camden.
Camden (NJ) school administrators get a public spanking:
The nearly 18,000-student system has long been plagued by a high dropout rate, low test scores, and violence. The district has been under state oversight since 1999. Superintendent Annette Knox has been criticized for everything from her handling of racial tension to her $185,000 salary in a city where nearly half the children live at the poverty level.With so much holding them back, is it possible for so many Camden kids to surge so far ahead so fast? That's what my colleagues Melanie Burney and Frank Kummer wondered as they reviewed statewide standardized tests results from 2004-05. Crunching the numbers, they noticed dramatic performances at two Camden elementary schools, H.B. Wilson and U.S. Wiggins.
Wilson posted the highest average fourth-grade math scores in the state, besting more than 1,300 elementary schools. Wiggins placed sixth.
In fourth-grade science, both schools posted 100 percent proficiency, ranking far ahead of the district average and putting them in the ranks of traditionally high-performing schools in wealthy suburbs......my colleagues' questions sparked a state inquiry and the discovery that education officials already had been looking into a related issue at Charles Brimm Medical Arts High School brought up by a most unlikely tattletale: principal Joseph Carruth. A high-ranking district administrator reportedly pressured Carruth to help rig scores of last year's 11th-grade tests. Carruth resisted and reported the incident to state education officials...
...would they really be so stupid as to fake success so grand even Camden cheerleaders would doubt it? Much as he'd like to believe them, Angel Cordero said, he thinks the numbers are just too good to be true. And that makes the Camden education activist (and frequent Knox critic) both sad and mad.
As well he should be.
Boy, is THIS ever an inventive excuse:
A Bosnian university's decision to clamp down on widespread cheating by installing surveillance cameras has sparked complaints from students, a professor said. "We have already received complaints from some students who claimed it is difficult to concentrate on their exams while being filmed" a week after the cameras were put in place in the economics faculty, said Banja Luka University's Goran Radivojac..."Cheating in exams is a part of our Balkan mentality and it will take years to change students' mentality, but I believe that corruption in our faculty will be minimised by this," he added.
Is that really something you want to mention to a reporter?
Caveon's Cheating in the News has been updated. Featured is the Wall Street Journal's article on students hiring experts to do their homework.
I finally found a sound bit to go with cheating news - a snippet from Mystery Science Theater 3000's coverage of an old 1950's short on how bad it is to copy test answers from your friends. When the hapless cheater gets caught in this film, Crow, Tom Servo, and Mike sound the alarm as follows.
(Note - I have no idea how to best store sound files to allow people to easily access them online. If you have any tips, let me know).
Caveon's Cheating in The News feature has been updated. I had heard about the GMAT updating of test security measures, and it's about time; neither fingerprints nor digital photographs are unheard of in the testing biz.
Also featured is a story of an ex-teacher who helped a principal become an ex-principal by revealing secret taped converstations about cheating on state exams, and a worrisome tale of would-be nurses who took advantages of items on the Internet.
My question for the day: If you're training your students to respond to test items that aren't even asked, is that still considered "teaching to the test"?
Indiana is not buying the "testing-with-high-stakes-means-we-have-to-expect-that-some-poor-teachers-will-be-forced-to-cheat" line:
The consequences for Indiana teachers who help students cheat on their federally mandated tests are about to get much stiffer. From now on, teachers caught in the act could lose their credentials and, as a result, their jobs.The policy shift underscores the state's resolve to stop educators from trying to manipulate scores on the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus, which starts today. Until now, educators caught corrupting the system were not punished by the state. Instead, discipline was left up to local school systems and most violators went unpunished. The threat to revoke a license is one in a number of measures the state has adopted.
Good.
And in other cheating news, check out Caveon's latest cheating roundup. Doug Craigen's list of "Worst Cheaters Ever" is classic.
What happens to teachers who help their students cheat? Well, in at least one California case, the result was a new job:
The Vista Unified School District has reprimanded and transferred a teacher at Mission Meadows Elementary School after a district investigation found that the teacher provided improper help to students and caused "irregularities" on state standardized tests, according to a letter district officials sent to the state......the district said that its investigation into a teacher's handling of the 2005 Standardized Testing and Reporting exam or STAR test found:
* The teacher admitted to having multiplication tables hanging on the wall during the math portion of the standardized test.
* In response to a specific allegation, the teacher said a misunderstanding may have led to one student's perception that she reviewed the standardized test and had students change their answers. The teacher said she reviewed each test to ensure that answers were filled in and that there were no stray marks.
* However, eight out of 17 students interviewed individually about the math portion of the STAR test said they were told which answers to correct when the teacher reviewed the tests.The district's investigation concluded that testing irregularities did occur on the STAR tests...
The letter said the district reprimanded the teacher by placing her on administrative leave for the last two weeks of the school year that ended in June. The district also transferred the teacher from Mission Meadows to another school for this 2005-06 school year. Cowles declined to name the teacher or where she was transferred to, and said he had no comment on any personnel matters.
At least one parent is unhappy with the way the situation has been handled, in part because she didn't hear the outcome until she read about it in the papers.
Test security expert Professor Greg Cizek has submitted his report on test security to the Texas Education Agency, and it's definitely worth a read. I've had the pleasure of meeting Greg in person, and I can't recommend his work enough.
Caveon's Cheating in the News has been updated as well. Apparently, some Russians have learned from the errors of their peers and are presumably stuffing their shirts less enthusiastically.
Apparently polygamy and fraud go together, at least when it comes to allocating school funds:
Arizona officials already have seized a truckload of records, computers and other material in a criminal investigation of the school district serving an isolated polygamist community in northwestern Arizona. Now, the state is preparing to take over the district itself...That came after the district missed deadlines to file budget reports to the state and ran out of money, leaving teachers unpaid for several months last year. The paychecks resumed after an insurer began to cover the district's IOUs...The district is located in Colorado City, Ariz., where a polygamist sect - the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints - controls the town and the schools...
...There are indications the district's money has been misdirected, with district facilities and equipment used for personal gain...there also are allegations that adults filled out standardized test forms last spring.
Misusing the funds sound like it was the last straw for the Arizona government.
Oh, man, I don't even know where to start with this clown.
A young Russian man who dressed in women’s clothes to sit an exam for his sister was caught after his oversize bust gave him away, Interfax news agency reported.The youth’s “unusually prominent female features”, and heavy make-up drew security guards’ attention and they stopped him sitting the paper, Yasen Zasursky, dean of Moscow State University’s journalism faculty, told the agency. A thorough check revealed that the girl was in fact a young man trying to pose as a girl to pass the exam for his sister. The dean said that security were especially suspicious because the applicant’s breasts were of “incomparable proportions”.
They thought that cheat notes could be hidden inside her clothing. However, it turned out that the breasts were fake. The young man was barred from the entry exam and his sister was also struck off the university entrant list for cheating.
Thoughts:
1. There must not be a lot of breast implant surgeries at Moscow State, not if having breasts of "incomparable proportions" is enough to warrant suspicion.
2. Moscow State has a journalism program?
3. How dumb do you have to be to dress in drag to cheat on an exam, and get caught because you made your fake breasts too big? Does anyone else find it creepy that this clown pumped his "breasts" up because that what he thought his sister's chest looked like?
4. "Heavy makeup" also aroused suspicion? Just how bad did this guy look? Has he ever actually seen a real woman? Other than his sister, I mean?
5. The sister is obviously none too bright either, not only because she needed her brother to sit for her exam, but also because she apparently let him walk out the door looking like a cross between Dolly Parton and Tammy Faye Bakker.
6. There's GOT to be a photo on the Net soon. If anyone finds it, send it to me. (Is there a Russian equivalent of The Smoking Gun?)
Jay Mathews discusses the dishonorable (but long-standing) practice of fudging the numbers:
Many states are finding creative ways to misinterpret the rules for reporting their statistics so that their school children seem to be doing wonderfully even though that often is not the case.This is the latest version of a game that has been popular since Alexander Hamilton and James Madison created the federal system as a playground for generations of political mischief makers like themselves...
Now there is a new report on how states are hiding their feeble high school graduation rates under thick glops of statistical nonsense. It is "Getting Honest About Grad Rates: How States Play the Numbers and Students Lose," by Daria Hall of the Education Trust, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that works for higher academic achievement, particularly for low-income and minority children. The report is available on the Education Trust website.
No Child Left Behind tries to encourage high schools to improve their graduation rates, but unlike its test score improvement provisions, it does not threaten much action if they don't. It turns out this is like telling all the thieves in the neighborhood that you have turned off your burglar alarm. No Child Left Behind was passed in 2001 because many states ignored similar rules in the 1990s that had no muscle behind them. That is happening again with graduation rates, Hall said.
The report is here. It makes for eye-opening reading, especially when you realize that some states don't count pre-senior-year dropouts when calculating graduation rates, and other states don't report graduation rates at all.
It's bad enough when kids cheat on the NY Regents exams; it's worse when parents - who happen to be school administrators - are willing to help their kids do so:
Long Island school officials say they caught a sophomore cheating on a Regents examination last week and were quickly able to trace the cribbed answers - written on his hand - to the student's father, an assistant superintendent in charge of exams and answer sheets in another district.The alleged scheme was disclosed yesterday when the father, Isben Jeudy, 40, of East Northport, was charged with official misconduct in First District Court of Nassau County, in Hempstead. He pleaded not guilty and was released on his own recognizance. His lawyer did not return a call seeking comment.
How many things are wrong with this picture? First off, the father's willingness to help his son cheat is not only sending the wrong message, but is also an admission that he doesn't think his son has what it takes to pass the exam. Next, the father jeopardized his own career to do so. Finally, the exam form that father was in charge of is now suspect - if he gave answers to his kid, maybe he (or his kid) gave them to other students as well.
Update: The Education Wonks, for whom this topic hits close to home, are asking the right questions:
One question that needs to be asked is this: Why would the answers to such a high-stakes assessment be in the unsupervised custody of any school site or district administrator? Common sense would seem to indicate that those who would have an inherent interest in an examination (such as school site/district administrators) should never be in the possession of test answers....Considering the high-stakes nature of these examinations, security should be a priority...This whole sad episode (and possibly others that have gone unreported) should have been avoided.
Reader S. notes that administrator's penchants for cheating have extended beyond tests to student elections (and no, we're not talking about the movie Election here):
His opponent was known throughout school as "the perfect kid," Scott Dubnoff said. Smart. Athletic. Popular. Even Dubnoff liked Dave Dobrosky. But Dubnoff had thrown his hat in the ring for student government president of Mountain Lakes High School, and he planned to win.The votes were cast, but who won for sure is now a matter of dispute. School administrators say Dubnoff lost, but they can't prove it because the ballots were thrown away. Dubnoff says he won and insists he can prove it -- because his father dug the ballots out of the school's trash bin.
Hoo-boy. Sounds like the educrats didn't appreciate Dubnoff's sense of humor:
Dubnoff said he knew that to defeat his opponent, he would have to be creative. Instead of delivering a standard, straightforward speech -- the kind he expected from his competitor -- he would be different."Different" meant walking on stage in a generalissimo-style uniform, flanked by two friends dressed as Secret Service agents, and riding the joke for all it was worth. "The spirit of our collective mass has made it known that I am the Chosen One, the manifest of our destiny here in Mountain Lakes," said Dubnoff, who often goes by "Mitch." "Under me, the Mitch Coalition will march into the dawning of a new era: A utopia where homework, tests and punctuality are henceforth irrelevant."
He made his classmates promises -- some sincere, others intentionally ludicrous..."I was up against the best guy," Dubnoff said. "I wanted it to be big and I wanted it to be funny and I wanted people to talk about it."
The school has since made Dubnoff and Dobrosky co-presidents, which sounds like an admission that someone fudged the numbers, or that the school admins can't count.
We keep hearing about how awful all these mandatory standardized tests are for today's youth. Why, then, are most of the episodes of cheating we hear about based on adult misbehavior? Are the teachers really cheating the most? Some say yes - depending on how broadly we define "cheating:"
Last week, Esther Jones, the principal of Santa Ana's Saddleback High School, circulated a memo asking teachers to reassess the failing grades of 98 students in hopes of helping the school meet the federal No Child Left Behind Act's standards. The note read, "please review your records for these students and determine if they would merit a grade of 'D' instead of a failure."Sadly, this isn't surprising. Instead it unfortunately reaffirms an increasingly common practice: from graduation rates to test scores to violence stats, schools across the country are painting a false picture of their performance.
Take Wesley Elementary in Houston. From 1994 to 2003, Wesley won national accolades for teaching low-income students how to read and was featured in an "Oprah" segment on schools that "defy the odds."
It turned out that Wesley wasn't defying the odds at all; the school was cheating. The Dallas Morning News found...severe statistical anomalies in nearly 400 Texas schools.
If schools don't want to cheat on the tests, they get rid of poor students. Oak Ridge High School in Florida boosted its test scores after purging its attendance rolls of 126 low-performing students...
Misrepresenting the dropout rate is another common way to make a school's performance look better than it is. The New York Times described an egregious example. Jerroll Tyler was severely truant from Houston's Sharpstown High School. When he showed up to take a math exam required for graduation, he was told he was no longer enrolled. And he never returned.
Funnily enough, for every case of misbehavior like this that's uncovered, the testing critics rush to blame the tests. They say that all of these cheaters are just hapless teachers/administrators with their backs to the wall, forced to fudge the numbers. I say every instance of this behavior is evidence that real, standardized, objective evidence of student performance is necessary. These sorts of crimes are proof that too many in the education world are willing to resort to fakery to make their students look better, and if it weren't for these tests, we'd be willing to believe them when they claimed the K-12 system was working just fine.
A clever kid finds a way to use a "clever" calculator:
Texas Instruments is replacing thousands of calculators issued to students in Virginia after a sixth-grader discovered that pressing a certain two keys converts decimals into fractions. That would have given students an unfair advantage on Virginia's standardized tests, which require youngsters to know how to make such conversions with pencil and paper.At the request of the state education department two years ago, Texas Instruments had disabled the decimal-to-fraction key and left it blank on calculators intended for middle school students.
But in January, Dakota Brown, a 12-year-old at Carver Middle School in suburban Richmond's Chesterfield County, figured out that by pressing two other keys on his state-approved TI-30 Xa SE VA, he could change decimals into fractions anyway...
Calls to the boy's school and his parents to arrange an interview with the youngster were not immediately returned. But Chesterfield County school officials held a low-key ceremony to honor him, and Texas Instruments sent him a graphing calculator, "which he loved," said Lois Williams, the state administrator in charge of middle-school math.
Perhaps Dakota's looking at a possible future in the testing and QA departments at Texas Instruments. After all, no one there caught this.
(Hat tip: Mike Z.)
Cactus Shadows (where could it be but Arizona?) High School Social Studies Teacher L. Mark Sweeney, recognized for his intellect and his teaching skills, spoke at the 2005 graduation ceremony. By all accounts, Sweeney's speech was excellent.
Last Wednesday, a CSHS graduate, who did not wish to be identified, stopped by the Sonoran News with a document he said “might be of interest” to the paper. Typed across the top in big, bold type was, “The Dean of Plagiarism Brings You ...” The following line contained the title: “Look at the view ...” The next line, which was crossed out, read, “Anna Quindlen’s Villanova Commencement Address, 1999,” was followed by, “L. Mark Sweeney’s Cactus Shadows High School Graduation Address, 2005.”Sonoran News Sportswriter Pete Mohr attended the graduation ceremony. He even took notes during Sweeney’s address. And, the notes Mohr took during Sweeney’s address were verbatim from Quindlen’s 1999 Villanova Commencement Address...After asking Mohr if Sweeney’s graduation address was the same as Quindlen’s Villanova address, [the anonymous graduate ] bee-lined down to CSHS to see if he could get a copy of Sweeney’s address from CSHS Principal Gaye Leo...
During his conversation with [Sonoran News Publisher/Editor Don] Sorchych, Sweeney said Leo told him Sonoran News had a copy of the speech. Sweeney explained that his sister found the commencement address a long time ago and sent it to him and he just filed it away. Sweeney said he recently located the file, made a few changes and while he admitted he gave no attribution, Sweeney cited he didn’t know who penned the piece.
A rather cursory Google internet search, using, “Look at the view. You’ll never be disappointed,” yields a plethora of results revealing Quindlen’s name as the author of the 1999 Villanova Commencement Address.
Ooopsie. Isn't it interesting how Google trips up so many sneaky folks these days?
(Hat tip: Michael B.)
I think this professor can just write off his student evaluations this year:
A community college professor has been charged with using his students' names and Social Security numbers to obtain department store credit cards. Bradley Neil Slosberg, 49, of Winter Haven, was arrested Friday on charges of criminal use of personal identification and scheming to defraud, the Polk County Sheriff's Office said.Slosberg and his girlfriend, Deborah Hafner, stole the identities of at least three of the students from his anatomy and physiology class at Polk Community College, sheriff's office spokeswoman Carrie Rodgers said.
I never would have worred about this when I was a student, nor would I ever have thought of it when I was an adjunct. Yet another example of stupidity going hand in hand with poor ethics: if he were going to take this big a risk, I'd say applying for a Visa and immediately buying something big he could sell for some serious cash (or a one-way ticket to France) would have been smarter. Instead, it seems he seriously violated his students' trust in order to obtain a card from the likes of Sears.
One enterprising would-be surgeon is described in this article as a "rectal specialist." I agree with the description, as anyone that steals high-stakes test items, only to offer them for relatively low dollars ona public forum like eBay, can be safely said to have his head planted firmly in his...
The American Board of Surgery has revised its testing policies after a doctor who failed a certification exam went back to review his test, wrote down the answers to dozens of questions and then put them up for sale on an Internet auction site. The Philadelphia-based board, which has certified tens of thousands of surgeons nationwide, found out last summer that 86 questions used on its 290-question multiple-choice exam were listed on eBay. Questions used on the exam are rotated from a large pool each year...Craig Edward Amshel, a rectal specialist out of St. Augustine, Fla., failed the 2002 exam. But, as was the practice at the time, he was later allowed to review his test, alone, at the board's offices in downtown Philadelphia for several hours.
"I was able to take notes very quickly and wrote down about 100 questions with the correct answer," Amshel wrote in an e-mail to a person posing, on the board's behalf, as someone preparing to take the 2004 exam. "Believe me, I was quite thrilled when I took the test last year as some questions were verbatim."
Amshel, who passed the 2003 test, has had his board certification revoked. Last fall, the board sued Amshel in federal court in Philadelphia, alleging copyright infringement and civil theft.
Helpful advice for would-be cheaters: Should you decide to steal items, please note that the value of the items includes the entire cost of developing, proofing, assembling, scoring, and using such items, not only on that particular exam but on future exams. For example, stealing a printed item form that cost over half a million dollars to develop will mean that you could be charged with stealing something worth over half a million dollars. Stealing expensive items and selling them for a paltry couple hundred per item bunch thus reflects an astonishing lack of economic sense to go along with the astonishing lack of intelligence and ethics.
Helpful advice for testing companies: Learn from the ABS's mistake and don't allow examinees to review complete test forms in private - not if you ever plan to use those items again.
More allegations about academic dishonesty and Prince Harry:
Prince Harry was a "weak" student at school whose final work for an art examination was completed by a member of staff, a former teacher at his prestigious private school alleged. Sarah Forsyth, who is claiming unfair dismissal by Eton College, also told an employment tribunal that she wrote virtually all the accompanying text for an art project submitted to external examiners by the prince, now 20.She considered this to be "unethical and probably constituted to cheating", Forsyth -- a former art teacher at the elite school which charges more than 22,000 pounds a year -- said in a statement on Monday.
When the case began in October last year -- it was later adjourned -- Forsyth alleged she had been ordered by a school administrator to help the young royal pass his art exam.
I've blogged about this before. A scoundrel of a student, or a disgruntled dismissed teacher? Or both?
A University of Delaware student tries the oldie-but-goodie, "Ignorance IS an excuse!" defense:
A University of Delaware student who was suspended after he was caught cheating on a test in a corporate ethics class is suing the school to be reinstated. Frank Tenteromano, a senior, contends in his Chancery Court lawsuit filed last week that he did not know the quiz in the class Seminar in Corporate Governance was, in fact, a quiz.He claims the class was not told it was a quiz, other students were "collaborating" and that the seminar "by its very nature, encouraged collaboration and discussion," according to the lawsuit.
Neither Tenteromano, who is a resident of Brooklyn, N.Y., according to a campus directory, nor his attorney, Jason Powell, of Wilmington, could be reached for comment Friday. University officials would not comment. In the school's response to the lawsuit, however, attorneys said it was clear the professor was administering a quiz on March 10.
Tentoramano's choices at this point are to be (A) so corrupt that he cheats on ethics exams, or (B) so dumb that he doesn't realize when an exam IS an exam. He's obviously gone with Plan B.
Before the university judicial system reviewed the matter, Tenteromano "boasted that he 'look(ed) forward to seeing (the University) in court' " in an e-mail, the university said...While the other student involved received a lesser punishment, Tenteromano had three previous violations of the school's code of conduct, including for alcohol, and had been put on "deferred suspension" until graduation, according to court papers.
Verdict: Corrupt and dumb. What a winning combination.
I'm trying to figure out exactly what happened here:
Iowa Science test results for a seventh grade class have been invalidated and a teacher has resigned after administrators discovered he quizzed students on materials found in the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. That's according to Tim Hoffman, Adel-DeSoto-Minburn's superintendent.Hoffman says teacher Gene Zwiefel, who had worked for the district for nearly two decades, resigned last month.
David Frisbie is director of the Iowa City-based Iowa Testing Programs Incorporated, which develops the tests. He said it's not the first time such a situation has happened. He said similar things have occurred at four other Iowa schools. He declined the name the schools.
It seems the teacher gained advance knowledge of the items and was able to coach students on them. If this problem is widespread, that suggests a real security lapse on the part of Iowa Testing Programs. On the other hand, perhaps for this exam, teachers are provided with test materials well ahead of time, and expected to refrain from using the materials in class. This suggests that ITP needs to revise its assumptions about how teachers are using this material.
In Chester, PA, a principal cheats, and the students turn her in:
Jayne Gibbs, a principal and administrator with the for-profit education company Edison Schools, was suspended Thursday after some eighth-graders reported that she had given them the correct answers to questions on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment test...The alleged irregularities on the tests were reported by students at the Edward E. Parry Edison Junior Academy, according to the district's director of assessment, Wayne Emsley. "We were made aware of it by students," Emsley said. "I think that's to their credit. They were uncomfortable with some of the things they were asked to do and they brought it to a staff member's attention."
Sounds like some teachers at Wai'anae Intermediate School don't have faith in their students:
The Department of Education has halted standardized testing at Wai'anae Intermediate School and launched an investigation after learning that eighth-graders apparently were given some test questions and answers in preparation for the high-stakes exams, schools superintendent Pat Hamamoto said yesterday...Hamamoto said she knows there has been a lot of talk about how difficult the tests are, as well as the possibility they may be too hard. "We know that when tests get rigid and tests get difficult, these things occur, but that doesn't make it acceptable," she said. "It's unacceptable. Cheating in any form on the HSA is unacceptable."
The 2003-04 NCLB state summary shows that 53% of Hawaiian schools did not meet performance targets; percent proficient on reading and math are at 45% and 23%, respectively. Regardless, cheating is unacceptable, and I'm glad to see the superintendent state this so clearly.
I can't improve upon this NY Daily News headline - "Schooolhouse Crock." The zinger here is how the cheater got caught:
A Bronx teacher who repeatedly flunked his state certification exam paid a formerly homeless man with a developmental disorder $2 to take the test for him, authorities said yesterday. The illegal stand-in - who looks nothing like teacher Wayne Brightly - not only passed the high-stakes test, he scored so much better than the teacher had previously that the state knew something was wrong, officials said.
This might seem like an indictment of the exam except for the fact that the homeless man, Rubin Leitner, has more college degrees than Brightly, and was already in the process of tutoring him for the exam. Brightly, who has flunked the exam before, apparently figured he'd have a better shot at keeping his $59,000 yearly salary if he forced an overweight white man (Brightly is neither of those) who wasn't even a teacher to take the exam for him.
If the purpose of the exam is to flunk the hopelessly dumb, I say it's been validated here.
A former school superintendent has been indicted for "tampering with government records" in an investigation of misdeeds that include cheating on standardized tests:
The indictment of Charles Matthews on a single count of tampering with government records was announced Tuesday by the Dallas County district attorney's office. On Monday, the Texas education commissioner decided to take full control of the school district after a report that confirmed extensive cheating on the state's standardized tests...Cedric Davis, former chief of the district's police force, appealed for fairness in the ongoing investigations of the school district's woes. Davis, who is credited as a whistle-blower in the case, asserted that wrongdoings were probably committed "from top to bottom." He noted that clerks reportedly participated in the alleged tampering of attendance records and teachers reportedly fudged test scores...
Matthews was also indicted in October for allegedly destroying records sought by investigators who are investigating the school district's finances. Matthews was subsequently fired.
These preliminary report findings are just stunning:
According to a preliminary state report, two-thirds of educators involved in giving the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills last year were involved in "testing irregularities," The Associated Press reported.Investigators found that some students who finished the test early were told to correct answers on other students' answer sheets and some educators prepared answer keys for students. In some classrooms, students were told to raise their hands so their answers could be checked before they moved to the next question.
Every time educators participate in cheating like this, several myths come to seem more like fact:
1. Educators cannot handle pressure
2. Students cannot be expected to learn basic skills and take tests on them.
3. All testing is flawed because educators are willing to cheat.
I don't know about you, but those are three myths that I'd love to see shot down. Events like the recent ones in Texas aren't helping with that.
Wow, the distribution of scores on this exam ought to be interesting:
A group of student activists opposed to international standard testing launched another effort this week to foil a national mathematics examination. They almost succeeded, with the help of the Internet. The activists got hold of the math exam Monday and put it out on the Internet, thus enabling a sneak peak at what 10th graders were supposed to see for the first time in class on Tuesday. State officials immediately said the test would be administered anyway.The student activists tried to foil the examination attempt because they want state authorities to postpone the national math exam until next year. They also don't want to see exam results publicized on a school-by-school or township-by-township basis....[they] also...want the content of the exam to reflect Norwegian teaching plans, not those of researchers at the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)...
The test was to be administered to around 60,000 10th graders on Tuesday. At least 10,000 of them are believed to have seen the test by early Tuesday morning.
Time for the Norweigan Education Ministry to up its security. They might not want to use this year's scores for any comparisons purposes, either.
Caveon's Cheating in the News roundup is back, though I can't seem to find the link to the most recent version. You can also see the whole Caveon crew here at the 2005 Association of Test Publishers conference; Don Sorensen (who alerted me to Caveon's existence) is the gentleman in the blue shirt, front right.
The CITN copy in my inbox contains a link to a Yale Herald article calling for a better policy on academic honesty:
Three students approached their professor after they witnessed a student copying from their tests on multiple occasions. The professor said he didn't want to know the student's name; rather than investigate the situation or hand the case over to the Yale Executive Committee, the professor simply moved subsequent exams to a larger room without addressing the specific allegations of cheating. A senior in the class said that he wasn't offended that a peer was cheating and didn't care that his professor did not punish the student. "All people have the same motive," he said. "The people who cheat and the people who study all just want good grades. Cheating is just a more efficient way of doing it, and no one's against efficiency."
Uh, really? Those who really study aren't actually pursuing knowledge, but just good grades? Cheating is just a "more efficient" way of getting good grades, and isn't shortchanging cheater, other students, and professor in the process? What are these students planning to know, and do, after they graduate college, I wonder? And could a more explicit honesty policy really help someone who is this thoroughly jaded of, and disgusted with, the quest for knowledge?
Or someone who has professors like this one?
Professor of Psychology and Linguistics Paul Bloom, this year's ExComm chair, agreed that faculty should not tempt students, but still feels strongly that cheating is a person's own choice. "You don't want to put [people] in a situation in which a student has to force him or herself not to look at another paper," he said. "On the other hand, you wouldn't take that excuse seriously if it were raised as an excuse for sexual assault, or arson, or anything like that."
Why mention the student having to "force" himself not to cheat if you're not considering it as any excuse? And why, exactly, is it a bad thing to put a student in a situation in which they are expected to, no matter what, keep their eyes to themselves and do their own work? Is that sort of stressful situation too much for Yale undergrads?
For that matter, having to put all personal items aside during an exam, and having to mark a page to show the blue book is new, has no relation to "police state" conditions. The article's author should be embarassed to use that phrase, even in double-quotes.
N2P reader Jim Parsons has an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle about the recent TAKS cheating scandals:
Suburban districts like Humble are not exempt from problems. If there is one thing we have learned over the past several years, it is that anything can happen anywhere. We are, however, dedicated to reducing the likelihood of cheating in Humble ISD. But all of the procedures, safeguards and after-the-fact analysis we might employ are not the only keys to preventing test cheating, nor are they the most important.
The most important is perspective, which comes from a proper understanding of the purpose and use of assessment information. Even more important is a district culture that sees testing data as a tool for improvement, and not a final goal.
It is clear that the HISD lost perspective, and its board and top administrators did not understand the proper purpose and use of assessment...
While I support the concept of merit pay for educators, to base a bonus on any single criterion is a mistake. Making that primary criterion the results of the TAKS test proves ignorance of the meaning of test validity and principles of good personnel management.
However, it is not just the money. Texas school districts are under tremendous pressure and unblinking scrutiny by so many people and organizations to improve student performance...
Sometimes it is easy to confuse test scores with learning, just as we often confuse looking good with being good.
A grandmother unburdens her conscience:
GYPSUM, Colo. - An high school graduate has confessed to cheating on an English literature test — 47 years ago. Eagle Valley High School Principal Mark Strakbein said he got a one-page, handwritten letter from a 65-year-old grandmother of five who admitted she and a friend stole the answers to a Shakespeare test in the fall of 1957.
"I know it makes no difference now (after 47 years), except maybe this will keep some student from cheating and help them to be honest — conscience never lets you forget — there is forgiveness with God, and I have that, but I felt I still needed to confess to the school."
Strakbein didn't release the woman's name but said he confirmed she graduated in 1958 from Eagle County High School, which has since been consolidated into Eagle Valley High.
My favorite part is this:
Strakbein said he read the letter aloud to every homeroom class as a lesson in following your conscience.
"You could have heard a pin drop," he said.
It's very sweet, and charitable, of Strakbein to assume that the silence on the part of the teenagers was due to sober reflection. I think it's quite possible, though, that at least some of them were thinking, "She's HOW old? And she still REMEMBERS taking a test on Shakespeare? Man, I don't plan to remember this test NEXT WEEK." And so on.
An enterprising young hacker gets nabbed:
A high school student is facing criminal charges for allegedly hooking a device up to a teacher's computer to steal test information to sell to other students, Local 2 reported Tuesday. The student attended Clements High School, 4200 Elkins Dr., in the Fort Bend Independent School District.
Officials said the 16-year-old boy hooked up a keystroke decoder to a teacher's computer and downloaded exams in November. "Sometime in mid-December, we got a tip that this student was selling test exams that had apparently come from a teacher's computer, so that's when the investigation began," said Mary Ann Simpson, with the Fort Bend School District.
The student confessed when he was confronted, officials said.
The keystroke decoder is widely available at computer stores and on the Internet. It records every keystroke in data that can be downloaded later. It attaches between the computer and the keyboard. "It's surprisingly simple -- to the point our police department is now on alert to other district area police departments to make them aware," Simpson said.
Yet another example of students putting more thought and effort into the act of cheating than of studying, although this one had the twist of making a little profit on the side. Wonder if they're going to go after the students who bought those exams as well?
Caveon's biweekly Cheating In the News feature is up, and it features some doozies.
I particularly like this article, in which teachers blamed that dratted Internet for a rise in student cheating:
The Roosevelt High School literature assignment, an analysis of three works by American authors, was composed of awkward sentences full of clumsy grammar — except for the occasional flawless paragraph with complex syntax and striking observation.
The teacher, David Ehrich, suspected an Internet cut-and-paste job. When he confronted the student, the boy broke down and admitted to copying whole sections of his essay from the Web.
The widespread use of the Internet as a research tool has given rise to another phenomenon — widespread cheating among high-school students.
Hmm. Think the fact that high schooler haven't been taught anything past clunky grammar and awkward sentences also might have something to do with it?
Educators say a generation of tech-savvy students, raised on the hacker's mantra that "information wants to be free" and accustomed to downloading copyrighted music, may not realize that copying even a few sentences from the Web and weaving them into their papers, without crediting the original source, constitutes plagiarism and is grounds for suspension from many schools.
Isn't that where the teachers come in? Don't they make this clear to the students in each and every class? And do they really believe all these cheaters who claim that, "Gee, I just didn't know that copying someone else's work was wrong"?
Last year, an editor of the Roosevelt student newspaper touched off a firestorm when she wrote that cheating was a way of life for many high-school students.
"Cheating is certainly an art and once you get good at it, you begin to feel proud of some of the genius cheating plans you have developed. Why would you waste your time working when you can spend it coming up with 20 different ways to cheat?" asked Hanna Lirman, who is now in college.
Lirman's article was accompanied by a poll of 460 students. Ninety percent said they'd cheated within the past several years; 71 percent admitted to copying material from the Internet to complete assignments.
Yes, the Internet makes it easy. But if the Internet were to disappear tomorrow, somehow, I doubt all the cheating would disappear, too.
Of course, the Internet also makes it easier to catch cheaters, but some teachers believe the solution lies beyond better technology:
Some educators, however, say detection services only inspire more ingenious cheaters. They argue that carefully crafted assignments and more creative teaching is a better deterrent to plagiarism.
"Students often resort to cheating because they can, not because they have to," said Greg Van Belle, an English instructor at Edmonds Community College. Van Belle said assigning an essay on the same topic year after year invites cheating. Better to vary assignments, link classic texts to current events, ask students to work in groups or to write about how a work of literature relates to their own lives, he said.
Follow-up to last week's cheating hullabaloo in Texas:
The state education agency is launching an effort to catch cheating on standardized tests, officials announced Monday. Officials will hire an outside expert to review security measures and build a tracking system to monitor test scoring irregularities that could signal cheating...
The changes are in response to a Dallas Morning News investigation that found strong evidence that educators at nearly 400 schools statewide helped students cheat on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. The newspaper study identified schools whose test scores swung wildly from poor to stellar.
TEA's announcement breaks with a previous policy of trusting districts to police themselves. TEA officials had said they investigated cheating allegations only when a district requested it or when they received credible eyewitness evidence of cheating.
The Dallas Morning News, not surprisingly, has more:
Dr. Neeley said the agency had not yet decided how exactly it would analyze test scores to search for cheaters. The News methodology examined the average scale scores of students in each grade at every school. TEA officials have access to more detailed data on individual students, which could allow for more precise detecting of unusual gains.
Search the DMN site for a wealth of related articles, including more detailed coverage of suspicious scores at "the most celebrated elementary school in Texas:"
...a Dallas Morning News investigation has found strong evidence that at least some of the success at Wesley and two affiliated schools come from cheating.
"You're expected to cheat there," said Donna Garner, a former teacher at Wesley who said her fellow teachers instructed her on how to give students answers while administering tests. "There's no way those scores are real."
The News ' analysis found troubling gaps in test scores at Wesley, Highland Heights, and Osborne elementaries, which are all in the Acres Homes neighborhood in Houston. Scores swung wildly from year to year. Schools made jarring test-score leaps from mediocre to stellar in a year's time...
In 2003, fifth-graders in the three elementaries fared extremely well on the reading Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Collectively, they ranked in the top 10 percent of all Texas schools – outscoring high-performing suburban schools in places such as Grapevine, Lewisville and Allen. The fifth-graders' math scores were less spectacular but still slightly above the state average.
But a year later, the scores of those same students came crashing down. When they were sixth-graders at M.C. Williams Middle School, they finished in the bottom 10 percent of the state in both reading and math.
Emphasis mine. Sheesh. It's hard to understand why it took the district this long to consider a tracking system and external review.
Quite a bombshell story shaping up in Houston this week:
A Houston teacher's union official says school district officials ignored a middle school teacher who tried to report cheating on standardized tests last spring. The Houston Federation of Teachers says the teacher told union representatives last year that a school administrator gave her advance copies of the 2004 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
The teacher's school is one of 25 Houston Independent School District campuses under investigation because of uncharacteristically high scores on the TAKS.
Union president Gayle Fallon says the union offered to have the teacher give a statement in return for immunity. She says the district's attorney declined and — as far as she knows — nothing was done.
HISD spokesman Terry Abbott declined to comment.
So what's going on here? It seems that teachers in Houston schools, as is their custom, used last year's exam sheets to prep for this year's exams - which is perfectly kosher on exams that don't re-use items. Only, somehow, in certain schools, what got used for this year's prep was this year's exam, and all the hullaballoo has to do with WHO got ahold of those test forms ahead of time. Teachers aren't too happy that the finger of suspicion is now pointed their way:
There are now 23 schools in the Houston School District suspected of having problems with test scores. Those problems may be tied to cheating on the statewide TAKS test...
Some Houston teachers say they are being targeted in the HISD cheating investigation. There is anger and frustration as the publicity keeps pointing to teachers as the ones helping kids cheat. The local teachers union says it has files of complaints that prove otherwise.
Key Middle School is one of the schools targeted as having huge gaps in test performance. The union describes a complaint last fall involving TAKS review sheets. "Last year's test is this year's review sheet, and that's perfectly legal," says Gail Fallon, Houston Federation of Teachers president.
Only, the practice sheet was not last year's test.
"Someone at Key handed out the sheets that the teachers were led to believe were the review sheets from last year's test. Then they realized when they gave the test they were this year's," says Fallon.
The union complained to the district, but Fallon says the investigation went nowhere when she asked for the teachers to be protected.
"Here we now have members that are in possession of the test they didn't know it to be the test, but they still, you know, it's like having the stolen money in your hand when the police arrive," says Fallon.
The union says it also received complaints last year by minimum wage office clerks, claiming principals were asking them to change grades.
SOMEBODY's been very bad here. Be interesting to see how that press conference on Monday turns out.
From Caveon's biweekly Cheating In the News roundup, we have a tale of creepily horrific over-reactions to cheating:
Separatists in India's north-eastern state of Manipur have shot six male teachers in the leg for allegedly helping students cheat in exams. Two women teachers were beaten with sticks for the same offence, the rebels of the Kanglei Yana Kan Lup group said.
The teachers were abducted from their homes after an exam on Thursday.
The rebels said the teachers took up to 5,000 rupees ($110) for helping students cheat and warned of further punishment if the cheating continued.
But then there's this Nebraskan, who doesn't have a problem with cheating at all:
Conor Schultze cheats. And, if asked, he’ll say he doesn’t mind doing it. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln freshman advertising major said he hasn’t been caught cheating, and he thinks professors don’t take cheating seriously.
Schultze said he hasn’t seen any students get in trouble. And because they don’t get caught, he said he thinks more students feel safe enough to try to get away with it...
Schultze said he doesn’t see anything wrong with cheating and he may cheat on tests throughout college. He said he would cheat in his general education classes, but he wouldn’t cheat in his major’s classes because he said he wants to learn from them.
“When I cheat for tests, I write the answers on my leg or my arm,” he said. “If I cheat, it’s in classes that I don’t care about.”
Ironic, isn't it, that the body part he's using to help him cheat is the same one that's getting shot off of cheaters in India? Surely, there's got to be a happy medium in here somewhere
From Devoted Reader Ashley comes this tale of cheating with style - and lots and lot of of Old Money (in the US, having rich grandparents qualifies for that):
When they named a University of Missouri sports arena after their daughter, billionaire Wal-Mart heirs Nancy and Bill Laurie pronounced themselves "very proud parents." But this week, they found themselves stripping Paige's name from the building - after allegations that she paid a roommate $20,000 to do most of her coursework at the University of Southern California.
Elizabeth Paige Laurie, 22, graduated from USC this year. But her first-semester roommate, Elena Martinez, said Paige hired her to write her papers, prepare her oral reports and even exchange e-mail with her professors in nearly every class she took for four years.
Nearly every class? Good Lord. I can understand students who buckle to the pressures of one tough professor, but if you're not going to do anything the entire four years, why go to school?
Meanwhile, USC has opened an investigation into the alleged cheating. In 25 years in academia, vice president for student affairs Michael Jackson said, "I've never heard of possible cheating of this magnitude."
Martinez said this week she never intended the fraud to go so far. She helped Paige with a paper first semester of their freshman year, she said, and happily pocketed $25 as thanks. But soon, she said, Paige was asking her to take over almost all her schoolwork - even after Martinez dropped out for financial reasons.
Martinez said Paige continued sending her books and assignments - and e-mails critiquing the work she sent back.
"I rarely got a bad grade, but if I did, she'd say 'This was horrible.' She was pretty picky," Martinez said. "She was a very demanding, expect-the-best boss." She said she collected about $20,000 over four years.
Only $5K a year for someone who's broke and doing all your schoolwork - and forced to adhere to high standards, to boot? The drive to get the most product for the least amount of money must run in the Wal-Mart heir's veins.
Sounds like this school is "troubled" in more ways than one:
A student at the troubled Wilmer-Hutchins school district says his teacher helped him with answers on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills standardized test last year.
"The teacher would walk around the class during the test and be like, 'Hey, that's wrong,"' James Wright, now a 12-year-old sixth-grader at Kennedy-Curry Middle School, told The Dallas Morning News for its Sunday editions. "You'd go through the answers and you'd say, 'Is this the right one?' They'd say 'nope.' And you'd say, 'Is this the right one?' And they'd say 'nope' until you got the right one. Then they'd say 'Yeah' and nod their head."
Sounds like someone needs to say to this teacher, "Hey, that's wrong."
An analysis by the newspaper first raised suspicions that cheating took place on the TAKS tests in the district. It found that despite a history of poor academic performance, one elementary school in the district posted the state's highest scores on the third grade reading TAKS test last year.
The district has been investigated in recent months by the Texas Rangers, two grand juries, the FBI and others on alleged misappropriation of funds and other accusations.
The Texas Rangers got involved? Whooo, that's heavy. And good for the newspaper for poking around in the data.
Damm said he has told district principals that if any of them knowingly allowed cheating at their schools, they will treated as if they did the cheating themselves. Falsifying testing documents is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison...
The newspaper did not find evidence of cheating on other tests in other grades at the school. Another school in the district, Alta Mesa Elementary, scored highly in all grades and on all tests. Some students said cheating was widespread.
"When the test started, some people didn't know the answers, so they'd raise their hand and the teacher would come up to them. The teacher read the question and then gave us the answer," said Guyler Easter, who attended Alta Mesa in the fifth grade and is now a seventh-grader at Kennedy-Curry Middle in Wilmer-Hutchins.
If it's that widespread, maybe it is a job for the good guys in the white hats.