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10th Grader Falsely Accused of Cheating
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Replies to: 10th Grader Falsely Accused of Cheating
Sometimes students cheat. Sometimes teachers mistakenly believe a student cheated. Were it my kid, I wouldn't assume guilt or innocence. I would want to be present in conversations about the incident, and I'd want to see the evidence.
If my kid were to come home and say he was in a 3 vs 1 meeting like the one OP described, I would be very disturbed. Regardless of whether or not the student cheated, IMO, the meeting was inappropriate.
Sure there is some writer's embellishment in my take. But it wasn't a simple "confessed to cheating." The evidence we do have is that they were getting "angry" with his denials. And that they continued to accuse him after his denials. That's how you coerce a confession. Why would they do that? I don't know. But what I do know is that some do. The OP also states that the Principal disagrees with the punishment but the teacher won't "budge." That tells me something. Why won't the teacher budge? Maybe his ego is in the way?
My kid was accused. I was accused. The same tactics where used 40 years apart. Both cases were BS.
I trust the student when he said he was unable to explain how his answer was derived and that he cheated. I look at motivations.
The student had everything to gain by cheating and denying it to his parents who apparently believe him blindly. The teacher and school have nothing to gain by accusing a highly regarded student.
This is a very inexperienced teacher, and may already have switched jobs prior to arriving at this school. As to ability, that is an open question. This is a high school, not the NSA or Google, and talented math degree holders have many options. This is a red flag to me. Appealing to some unnamed authority figure who was not present at the meeting suggests a lack of confidence or incompetence, combined with a desire to justify actions to the principal, who didn't understand the math:
It does not appear likely that the student got the questions wrong, at least to me: It seems the absence of supporting steps underlay the belief that the student cheated, not the identical answers, implying that both students' answers were correct (if both problems were wrong, then there would be no question of cheating, no need to "consult a colleague," etc.) Again, we do not know what sort of questions, but if we are talking simple things like computing the definite integral of a simple function or a simple u-substitution integration - roughly where we might be in BC in Feb - yeah, plenty of kids could do those in their heads with no work.
Finally, it appears that the principal has some doubts about the teacher too: I have personally seen new and inexperienced teachers get defensive when challenged and dig in their heels. One at my kid's school last year was dismissed mid-semester, and I played some role in having another teacher's policies put under the microscope, which resulted in multiple grade changes for multiple kids. I hope OP comes back and comments further.
But this is not what happened. Work was shown. It is alleged that the work couldn't lead to the answer. The kid had a hard time explaining himself during interrogation.
Maybe, just maybe what you do is call little johnny in after class and ask him how he got his answer without any allegation of cheating. Let him explain. If he can fine. If he can't, fine. Now you have some corroborating evidence and you can move on from there.
And, you see, to me, this suggests due diligence, as in a check to make sure this is probably cheating before I accuse a student.