<p>As a parent, I am wondering if I have done the right thing. My daughter talked to me after school yesterday about blatant cheating in one of her AP classes. They were assigned a take home test which was open note, open book, due today. Evidently two of the students in her class divided the test up, with one student doing the mc questions on the front of the page, the other doing the questions on the back. They were then copying their answers during another class period. One of the copiers indicated that they would get the same results “eventually”…but it just took so long to do. D has resolved to speak to the teacher today about the situation. She’d be furious with me if she knew I was posting this. I am guilty, I suppose, of always encouraging my children to take the moral high road, and telling them that an honest “D” is always better than an “A” not earned on your own. I am just fearful of the consequences for her if she turns these students in! I told her before pointing fingers she should clarify with the teacher that this type of conduct is not acceptable and not permitted under the HC before naming names. How would you have handled this differently? Why do kids think this type of thing is okay to do? It’s not just this class— it’s throughout the school!</p>
<p>Teachers who give “open note, open book” tests deserve whatever happens. Just my opinion.</p>
<p>While the students are violating the honors code, the prof seems to me to be quite clueless as to what a proper take-home exam should consist of. A take-home exam should never include MC questions for which the answers can easily be found mrely by reading the appropriate works (e…g. when did the Battle of Hastings take place?). It should have questions that need synthesizing of information that can be found in texts and involve analysis and writing.</p>
<p>S had a final for which a list of potential questions (essays) were distributed beforehand. The actual final included only some of the questions. This was a good way of forcing the students to review materials from the whole course since they did not know which questions would appear on the exam.</p>
<p>I think the issue of the exam format should be a topic of discussion throughout the whole school if cheating is so easy and pervasive. I don’t condone cheating; but I deplore dangling the temptation in front of students, too.</p>
<p>I’m not a fan of that test format by any stretch of the imagination. How that measures what students have learned is beyond me. However, I’m even less of a fan of students blatantly copying from each other and it seemingly being accepted and tolerated by the majority of students. I told my d they are only cheating themselves in the long run and their lack of preparation and learning will come out on AP test day. Or at least I hope that’s the case.
Marite- I looked at my daughter’s test. The MC was not simple facts you could easily find in the text- it was more conceptual in nature- but I agree on your point regarding appropriate exam format.</p>
<p>I’m a little confused here. Why are we debating whether the teacher made up a good test or the format of the test was worthwhile? </p>
<p>The bottom line is that those kids cheated. Yes they are only cheating themselves and all that but I still agree with sabaray that her daughter should speak to the teacher. </p>
<p>Seems all too common that people who are doing the right thing question themselves while those that do the wrong thing never question what they are doing.</p>
<p>ebeeee:</p>
<p>I agree about the wrongness of cheating. But profs who make it easy to cheat, then don’t try to curb it are doing a huge disservice to students who don’t cheat. Furthermore, they are not helping the students learn.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, when it comes to applying to grad school or some job, a student won’t be able to say: I only got a GPA of… but I got it honestly.</p>
<p>I agree that sabaray’s daughter should speak to the teacher. I like her idea of having d find out if this behavior was indeed forbidden, and then naming names if so. Otherwise, we’re teaching our children to obey the “code of silence”. If no one reports wrongdoing, or is willing to step up and admit what they’ve seen, then where are we? If they won’t speak up in high school, will they then speak up in college when there’s an honor code that requires it? Or are we saying, “Only speak up if it’s required and if there’s no possible cost to yourself”?</p>
<p>This will be one of those life lessons your daughter learns on her way to adulthood. The problem is you have no idea which life lesson she will be learning as you have no idea as to the outcome. But she will learn something from this and as the parent your role would be to make sure she understands all the possible outcomes you can imagine. Ideally this would be before she decides to tell on her classmates.</p>
<p>In the perfect world she would tell, students would be punished and she would not experience any repercusions. However we all know this is not how it works. Ask any whistleblower about their experience in the “adult world”.</p>
<p>So I would let her make the decision of whether or not she wants to tell and then help her with the consequences afterward. </p>
<p>I believe we all have our own compass as to when something is important enough to make a stand. Help her find hers.</p>
<p>I think the issue is the test, not the individual cheating incident. Chances are, there were many other students who shared answers and helped each other. But they won’t get caught, unless your daughter knows about everyone.</p>
<p>We had a similar incident at our school, when a teacher gave an important take home test. Probably MOST of the kids in the class got help, either by IM-ing (“where did you find the answer?”), collaborating in groups at each others homes, or outright copying answers. It was a very difficult test, and worth a lot. Ended up that only ONE kid was caught and brought up before the honor council, even though all the kids knew he was a scapegoat. The whole thing was ridiculous- teachers should know better.</p>
<p>We talked through several scenarios last night. One, nothing happens to the cheaters. Two, the entire test is thrown out. Third, the culprits discover she turned them in and retaliation follows. Fourth, she does nothing. Our school’s Honor Code is pretty specific as to what they’ve done is a violation - student sign a pledge that they’ve neither given or received help on any take-home exam. I guess I’m just really naive. She’s complained of these student’s behavior before to me-- I guess she’s just finally had enough of it. We’ll see what happens.</p>
<p>Sabaray…this will be a long day for you as you wonder about the outcome. There is one thing that you know for sure though. You raised an honest, ethical kid who is concerned about doing the right thing! Good luck!</p>
<p>As a teacher my attitude toward open-book, open-note, take-home exams is that it is impossible to control how the students complete the exam. I’m not referring to take-home essays where plagiarism is much easier to detect. I think though that with other types of exams if you give them in this format you’re basically giving the students carte-blanche. Whether or not that’s your intent is irrelevant, in actual fact that’s what you have done. </p>
<p>As for justification for such an exam, maybe a teacher is trying to help boost their students’ grades or maybe you’re trying to make up ground and cover content with a minimum of class time.</p>
<p>When my kids had take home exams in their AP classes, the teacher hoped that they would work together to find the answers. The reasoning, the goal was to learn the materials, methods and what not, not just the score of the take home. These take homes were a major factor in grading. </p>
<p>Some kids never crack a book UNLESS there’s a grade implied. </p>
<p>I guess if you were concerned, you might talk to the teacher and ask if they know this happens or even expect it. Hmmm? How do you motivate some kids to do their homework? Call it a take home test…
I can’t say his teacher did this, I can say with certainty, my kids teachers did this and knew exactly what was going on. </p>
<p>The reason… our school the kids are expected to take the national exam. The letter grade in class is one thing, the 4’s and 5’s on the national exam are another. Our HS teachers teach the class to do well on the national exam. They were very flexible on the class grading. Some allowed tests to be tossed, extra credit and such. Their goal was for these students to score well enough in the sciences and math AP for college. Any trick in the book to get as many on task as possible. There wasn’t too many days where my kids weren’t together with classmates or on the phone working out problems together. </p>
<p>As I said, maybe this guy doesn’t know, but maybe he does. Whatever works…</p>
<p>A couple of comments on Opie’s post:</p>
<p>For juniors taking APs, the exam score will be important, especially if it gets incorporated into the class grade. For seniors applying to college, what will be seen by adcoms is the class grade, not the exam score.</p>
<p>S has been taking a number of classes where students are urged to form study groups and work together. In fact, one of his classes had a specific area of the website for students to contact one another to form the study groups. But the exam was drawn up in such a way that the kind of cheating reported by Sabaray was not possible. In other classes, students are expected to come to study groups with half-formed solutions to problems, then use the study group time to formulate more complete or more elegant solutions. Then, they go home and write their own. Still another example, S had an exam where the questions were given out ahead of time. S and friends got together to brainstorm how they would answer the questions. On the day, some of the questions appeared on the exam, others did not. </p>
<p>It IS possible to work in groups without cheating.
This same S has the experience, while in elementary school, of doing the work of the other 3 kids in his group; they’d let him get on with it and copied what he’d done. He learned a lot. They didn’t.</p>
<p>My son’s AP teachers often included a certain portion of multiple choice questions on their exams because that is part of the AP format and they need to get used to it. They generally pulled questions from past exams. I’d think though that if they were copying short answer questions from each other that the copying would be pretty obvious. You can often spot cheating on mult. choice exams too - see Freakonomics on the subject.</p>
<p>I have no problem with the cheating being reported. I don’t think that any blame whatsoever should be placed on the teacher for making it “tempting”.</p>
<p>My point is ask the teacher first if he/she is trying to encourage group work with the takehomes? From the answer, you have the basis for making or not making the cheating comment.</p>
<p>My point is, if you jump off the deep end of the pool immediately, you could end up all wet. It might be better to wade in to see how cold or deep the water is. </p>
<p>Sometimes we kneejerk based on incomplete information or hearsay. To avoid the embarrassment of what could be a false accusation, get a few innocent questions out of the way. </p>
<p>I’ve parents jump off the deep end only to find the pool has no water. All they do is make themselves and their child look bad. </p>
<p>Now understand I’m not saying don’t tell, I’m saying make sure before you imply anything. Sure would include talking directly to the teacher.</p>
<p>"These take homes were a major factor in grading. "</p>
<p>Sorry they were NOT a major factor in grading. My bad.</p>
<p>I’m a former classroom teacher. Is it possible that the teacher would not consider this cheating? On a take-home, open-book, open-note test
a case could be made that wherever students find the answers–including doing the test as a group with other students–would be OK. Did the teacher specify that each student should complete the test individually? If your daughter reports this to the teacher, I think it is possible that the teacher won’t care and might have expected “group work.” (That’s how I would feel if I gave a take-home test. I would not consider this cheating). And then your daughter will look like a tattler. IMO, your daughter should say nothing.</p>
<p>Opie and atomom make a good point. It depends on what the teacher expected the take-home exam to accomplish and how much it weighed in the grade.</p>
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<p>I do. If the exam was expected to be done individually, at the very least, the teacher displayed laziness. As well, the teacher displayed a very poor sense of psychology.</p>
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<p>So did my Ss’. But these were not take-home exams.</p>
<p>Moral of the story: Be discreet when participating in any activity that could be construed as wrong. Whether or not they were “cheating”, they were either stupid or naive in thinking that others would not desire to punish them.</p>