How to Address Classroom Cheating

April 5th, 2010 By: Diane Trim in Articles, Teachers' Corner

The other day, my daughter’s middle school teacher caught my kid cheating. My daughter was finishing up a test, had moved to the classroom’s back tables, and was working when the next class entered the room. The bell rang and teacher began to teach. My kid quietly returned to her stack of books, removed the top layer, and took out a piece of paper that had writing on it.

Cheating isn’t new with the 21st century; according to Justin Crozier, it’s been around since the invention of the standardized test in China (Han dynasty, 206BC-23AD). The tests were for people who wanted to enter into government service and they were amazingly hard. Test takers had to memorize Confucius’ Four Books and Five Classics. The amount of the material was so vast and the incentive for success was so large, that cheating flourished. Scholars could purchase miniature books that they could conceal in their palms, shirt lapels often had crib notes in tiny stitching, fans contained cheat sheets, and scholars-for-hire could be rented to take the test under someone else’s name.

Today, according to the authors of Cheating in School, cheating is pretty common in our schools. They cite a study from the Josephson Institute of Ethics, which surveys American high school students about their cheating habits every two years. In 2004, here’s what they found:

• Sixty percent of teens cheated on tests at least once and 38 percent cheated twice or more
• Over one-third of high school students had plagiarized and 18 percent had done so repeatedly
• Eighty-three percent of your students are copying one another’s homework. Well over half (64%) are doing it more than once

These same kids, the study found, value honesty and ethics. Ninety-three percent believe that integrity and good character were important qualities. However, two-thirds of these students also said that successful people did what they had to do to succeed, even if some people might consider the methods to be cheating.

So, while she was finishing up a test, my kid left her seat, took a piece of paper out of her binder, and went back to her chair. The teacher stopped talking to the class and stared at her. In front of the class, he asked her what she was doing. My daughter was so flustered, she didn’t respond. He asked her again, still in front of the class. She stammered something. The teacher approached her and gave her, and the class, a lecture about cheating and how he should give her a zero.

Students cheat for a variety of reasons. Sometimes, like their ancient Chinese counterparts, the kids just find the subject matter too overwhelming. They also cheat because:

• They’re afraid of failure
• They didn’t have enough time to study
• They found the material too difficult
• They found the material unimportant and not worthy of study
• They think the teacher doesn’t care
• They feel pressure from friends to share their answers
• They don’t manage their time well
• They think that everyone does it, so they should, too
• They don’t respect/like the teacher
• They don’t like the subject
• They think that cheating doesn’t hurt anyone
• They think it’s easy to cheat, so they should do it

After the teacher confronted my daughter in front of the whole class, my daughter showed him the piece of paper. It was the overflow answer sheet from her test. In other words, she’d been using an additional sheet of paper to record answers that didn’t fit on the test sheet. She mistakenly put it under her books when she moved to the back of the room. Embarrassed and flustered, she left her test unfinished, fled the room, and sobbed in the bathroom.

It’s now April. Even the newest teachers among us have witnessed cheating, but how have you handled it? My theme was: low key. My goal: interrupt class as little as possible and try to keep the kid’s dignity intact. I’ll tell you how I used to do it.

Catching a kid with a cheat sheet. It’s a good habit as a teacher to circulate among your students when they’re completing assignments or taking a test. It’s good practice to do it all the time so that no one thinks your wandering is an unusual occurrence. When you wander, it’s easy to have a quiet word with a student who is off-task, answer a question for a shy student, or observe the kid who is copying answers from the bottom of her sneaker.

I allow the cheating student to finish the test and return to her seat. At the end of class, in private, I pull her aside and ask for her sneaker or her crib sheet. I explain that I understand that she wants to do well in the class, but this isn’t the way to do it. We make a telephone call to her parents and she explains what happened. I offer to give her another test that same day after school and make arrangements with the parents for a ride home. I explain that a second cheating episode will result in a note in my grade book and a report to the office where they can handle the disciplinary action. This technique also works for kids who are texting in their sweatshirt pockets or under the desk. Walking around and being vigilant will alert you to students who aren’t moving a pen, but are texting covertly instead.

Catching a kid with wandering eyes. This one’s relatively easy. Quietly bend down and ask the student with the good paper, the cheatee, to move to a seat away from the cheater. Usually this kid won’t protest; after all the cheatee has studied. The wandering eyes phenomenon is difficult to prove, so I pull the cheater aside and say, “I noticed some behavior that wasn’t usual for you. Did you feel unprepared for today’s test?” I listen to the student. After all, this is a kid who is trying to succeed, even though she’s going about it in the wrong way. I direct the conversation to options the student has before a test to get extra help. I return to my desk and document what happened.

I’m not a perfect teacher. I’ll admit that in my early days in the classroom, I didn’t know what to do with cheaters. I’d yell. That just built resentment. I’d send them to the office to finish their work. I’d hold them after class or I’d tell the football coach. It took me a while to land upon this calm, quiet method of dealing with cheating.

I guess that’s why I expected more of my daughter’s teacher. I left word for him to call me and we spoke on a Saturday morning. I asked him what happened. He said that he was maybe a little upset and over-the-top. I asked him if he verified that my kid had been cheating before he called her out in front of his class. I asked him if she had actually been cheating. Then I asked him how he’d make it right on Monday. I was nice on the phone, because I’ve been on the other end of the line myself. However, I confess that I wanted to make him squirm.

The teacher gave my daughter time to complete her test on Monday. He never apologized for his behavior, either to me or to my daughter. I didn’t force the issue on the phone, but I am disappointed. He passed up an opportunity to win me over and to earn back my daughter’s respect. Instead, he saved his pride and reinforced her resentment. Studies show that a personal connection between teacher and student, a bond of trust and respect, helps students learn. He didn’t just pass up a teachable moment, he passed up an academic one, too.

References:
Crozier, J. (2002) “A Unique Experiment.” China in Focus Magazine. (online) Accessed March 30, 2010 from http://sacu.org/examinations.html.

Davis, S.F., Drinan, P.F. and Bertram Gallant, T. (2009) Cheating in School: what We Know and What We Can Do. San Francisco: Wiley-Blackwell.

What do you think? How do you handle cheating in the classroom? Am I not taking cheating seriously enough? Am I being way too judgmental of my daughter’s teacher? Should I take additional steps? Should I have let it go after that Saturday phone call? Am I being way too dramatic and should let it go already? Let’s discuss.

Tags: assignments, cheating, grades