more about students cheating on exams

When a student is confronted about cheating on an exam, they usual response is that everyone does it and it is no big deal. According to several studies, about 75 percent of high school students admit to cheating, and if you include copying another person's homework, that number climbs to 90 percent. As a future science teacher, I do not mind that students help each other on homework assignments, but cheating on the assignments?

In the past, the weaker students tend to cheat so that they would not get bad grades in their classes. Only a few number cheated in high school. But now, it is accepted as a normal part of school life, and is more likely to be done by the good students, who are fully capable of getting high marks without cheating. It is the students with very good grades that are cheating. The students are under so much pressure to get admitted to the good colleges that they resort to cheating in order to keep their grades up to par. Nationally, 75 percent of all high school students cheat. But the ones who cheat more are the ones who have the most to lose, which is the honors and AP (advanced placement) students. Eighty percent of honors and AP students cheat on a regular basis. Wow!! This is absolutely nuts. Some students claimed that if they get one B average, their application is tossed into the reject pile. So they have to perfect in every way in order to get into the good colleges. As a result, cheating is like their safety net to be successful in life.

Top 5 Ways to Cheat

-- Copying from another student

-- Plagiarizing by downloading information or whole papers from the Internet

-- Cell phone cheating - text-messaging answers to another student, taking a picture of the test and e-mailing it to another student, or downloading information from the Internet

-- Getting test questions, answers or a paper from a student in a previous period or from a previous year

-- Bringing a permitted graphing calculator into the test loaded with answer material previously input into the computer portion of the calculator

Top 5 Ways to Curb Cheating

-- Create an honor code with student input so they're invested in it

-- Seriously punish cheaters according the academic integrity policy

-- Create multiple versions of tests to make purloined answer keys useless

-- Ban electronic devices in testing rooms

-- Develop multiple modes of assessment so the grade is not determined primarily on tests