Stuyvesant High School caught in cheating scandal on Regents exams - Page 12

DoinSchool · 07-10-2012, 07:10 PM

Yep, I'm thinking the same thing mini. That attitude should just not be tolerated.

zoosermom · 07-10-2012, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Preparing for careers as Wall Street bankers..

Did you think that ethically-challenged adults hatched from duck eggs?

GCmom · 07-10-2012, 08:52 PM

CTTC,

I am pretty sure many (most?) states do not have standardized tests that are the equivalent to NYS's Regents.

jonri · 07-10-2012, 11:25 PM

I'm way out of date, but back in the day, Regent's scores were counted in SUNY admissions and the difference in scores could be the difference between attending SUNY Geneseo or SUNY New Paltz...and I'm not knocking NP, just saying it's easier to be admitted.

Has that changed?

cobrat · 07-10-2012, 11:43 PM

Quote:

I'm way out of date, but back in the day, Regent's scores were counted in SUNY admissions and the difference in scores could be the difference between attending SUNY Geneseo or SUNY New Paltz...and I'm not knocking NP, just saying it's easier to be admitted.

Has that changed?

In the '90s, while Regents scores were considered, they were a very minor component compared with overall GPA and SAT scores.

Only area I recalled Regents scores being important was in the awarding of Regents Scholarships. However, considering the funding of those scholarships were so sketchy that some older classmates ended up receiving scholarship checks for $0.00, most classmates sought out other scholarships/funding sources which were more substantial and reliable.

GCmom · 07-11-2012, 06:16 AM

Well, the Regents scores are on the transcript. So, while SUNYs don't come right out and say that they use the scores, it's hard to feel completely confident that they don't come into play.

zoosermom · 07-11-2012, 10:03 AM

Some of the SUNYs now give such preference to out of state applicants that it really doesn't even matter how one does on the Regents. However, a reference to an August test day will raise red flags for high-achieving students.

GCmom · 07-11-2012, 10:08 AM

For those in NYC, Brian Lehrer, on WNYC, is going to talk about the Stuy incident. Show is on now, not sure when he'll get to it.

4thfloor · 07-11-2012, 10:27 AM

^^^ I am not familiar with his show; does he talk about things all by his himself, or will be be discussing with someone directly involved with the incident, like Dennis Walcott, the "furious" chief at the Department of Education, Stanley Teitel, the Stuyvesant principal, the test proctor at this particular test session, Nayeem Ahsan (or his lawyer), the alleged ringleader, etc?

GCmom · 07-11-2012, 10:41 AM

He doesn't usually talk by himself, but they didn't mention at the beginning who would be talking with him. 93.9 FM

mathmom · 07-11-2012, 02:18 PM

It was a call in show, several former students called and a parent, it was pretty chilling to hear a young man say he knew about (and may have himself) cheating, but it just didn't seem wrong at the time. There was also the implication that there was a huge amount of competition between students, confirmed by one recent Stuy grad who posts here. At one time I wondered if my older son would have been better off if we had lived in the city and he had attended one of the exam high schools. Now I am very glad we didn't make that choice. Here's a link to the podcast of that segment it's about 18 minutes: The Brian Lehrer Show: Open Phones: Stuyvesant Cheating Double-Standard? - WNYC

4thfloor · 07-11-2012, 04:44 PM

^^^ Thanks for the link (and thanks GCmom for letting us know about it). Very interesting.

Sure, competition may exacerbate the cheating, but I don't believe there is no cheating in schools that minimize competition ...

(I also don't believe cheating and dishonesty is limited to corporate America, as seems to be the knee-jerk reaction ...)

cobrat · 07-11-2012, 05:12 PM

Quote:

Sure, competition may exacerbate the cheating, but I don't believe there is no cheating in schools that minimize competition ...

Indeed. While my undergrad LAC minimized competition due to the neo-hippie ethos of the campus culture during my time there, cheating still occurred according to some classmates who were student reps on the J-board.

mini · 07-11-2012, 05:21 PM

My experience is a LONG TIME AGO. Stuy students were extremely competitive with each other - and that was the way colleges viewed us. They knew they were going to take x number of Stuy students, and they ranked us against each other. But I remember very, very little cheating.

At my LAC (#1), students were much less hypercompetitive with each other (and, I might add, while extremely well-prepared, overall less intelligent), but I saw much more cheating.

Of course, that's just me, and I may simply not have noticed as much in the first case - too busy "competing".

xiggi · 07-11-2012, 05:31 PM

Mini, only you could know, but I think that your STUY is quite different from what it is today. And this is in more than one aspect.

And, fwiw, I do not believe for a second that Stuy is unique. I happen to believe that for a certain type of student, the quest for excellence and its purported rewards is so important that no rules are immune. Again, parental pressures play a role. And so does the moral compass that is skewed by visions of social climbing through ediucation. And, we all know where and when that originated!