Upfront
Cheating (continued from page 5)
Gunn High School, wrote in a letter to the editor published July 11 in the Palo Alto Weekly. Work on Paly’s new academic honesty policy began more than a year ago, well before the cheating incident in May. Diorio said discussion about the school’s culture in terms of encouraging cheating will be considered as part of a selfassessment Paly will undertake this fall in preparation for renewal of its seven-year accreditation with the Western Association of Schools & Colleges. “We as teachers can say that (‘don’t cheat’) to our kids, but the students just feel there’s so much pressure to go to the elite universities. It’s a shame,” she said. Zhou said certain forms of cheating — such as verbal exchanges of information about contents of a test — are a common practice that’s not even considered cheating by some students. Zhou said in a phone interview that students don’t necessarily share a common understanding of what, exactly, constitutes cheating and that they hear incomplete and inconsistent messaging from the schools. “Before a test teachers will say, ‘We don’t want cheating; we’re all honest here,’ but there’s actually very little discussion about what exactly it is,” Zhou said. “There’s the handbook, but we don’t go over it in school or anything. They try to discourage us from being dishonest, but it’s not a complete discussion.” She suggested that a mandatory online class covering the specifics of academic integrity and penalties for cheating could be helpful for all students, particularly so for English-language learners who are new to the country. More importantly, steps to ease Palo Alto’s high-stakes academic culture — for example, by having teachers coordinate test schedules, as they do in middle school — could make a difference, Zhou said, citing research by Stanford University senior lecturer Denise Clark Pope. “She (Pope) talks about how we have this thing where results are the most important and the means to get there are not as important,” Zhou said. “We’ve got to have perfect test scores and a great transcript, and to get there sometimes the means get a little murky.” Pope, who has extensively researched the culture of highachieving high schools, said studies indicate between 80 percent and 95 percent of high school students admit to some form of cheating. She cites multiple studies, including a 2010 Josephson Institute of Ethics survey of 43,000 public and private high school students in which 59 percent said they’d cheated on a test in the past year and more than 80 percent admitted to having copied another student’s homework. In 2011, David Wangaard and Jason Stephens of the School for Ethical Education surveyed 3,600 high school students and found that 95 percent
reported engaging in some form of cheating during the previous year. The most common forms of cheating are copying another student’s work, allowing another student to copy work, getting questions or answers from another student prior to a test and working collaboratively when asked not to, Pope said. “If you ask students, they’ll say ‘We know it’s wrong to cheat,’” Pope said in an interview. “Everybody knows it’s wrong, but they feel that getting the A is more important, so they compromise their values. “They’ll even say to us, ‘My parents would be really upset to know that I cheated, but they’d be more upset if I didn’t get an A.’ That’s how the kids are perceiving the parents’ value system because of the messages they’re receiving from their families, the schools, the colleges and the system writ large,” Pope said. “They have this sort of continuum, where they’ll say, ‘I know that buying an exam or breaking in and changing grades are really egregious, but if someone just happens to tell me a question on the test, I can live with that.’ It literally is this continuum, where kids will say, ‘I’d never do that, but I’d do that’ — they’re making these granular value choices on a daily basis,” Pope said. How schools teach and assess “has a big impact on cheating,” she said. There’s less motivation to cheat
with project-based learning done in the classroom, where students cannot download answers from the Internet and the teacher can see all the iterations of the work. “More frequent, lower-stakes assessments and performancebased assessments also help,” she said, “and parents need to do the same. They need to explain to the kid that it’s more important to be honest and have integrity, even if that means you’re not going to get as high a grade. Most parents, if you ask them, will say, ‘of course,’ but that’s not necessarily the message they’re sending.” She pointed to Saint Francis High School in Mountain View as a model of a school that has taken steps to “make the honor code part of its culture,” including clearly defining cheating, being transparent about enforcement and discipline and allowing students to learn from their mistakes. Students sign the honor code on all major exams and large assignments, which reinforces the culture, she said. “It starts with education,” Pope said. “When students are aware of the issues and consequences and feel well-supported, many infractions can be prevented and, when it happens, students can learn from their mistake instead of having a fear-based system that results in lying.” Q Staff Writer Chris Kenrick can be emailed at ckenrick@ paweekly.com.
2014 Athena Award Nominations for a woman who has attained and personified the highest level of professionsal excellence in business and the community
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Juniper’s
2014 Annual Meditation Retreat October 2 -4, 9AM to 5PM daily Led by acclaimed meditation master Segyu Rinpoche, the retreat will focus on meditation as a means to gain deeper levels of calm, well-being and satisfaction in life. This year we will emphasize insight, a series of practices that help us identify and go beyond the inner stories that limit our experience. No prior experience is required. Cost $375 (including lunch) For more information and to register please visit www.juniperpath.org or call 650-299-9333.
Juniper | meditation tradition for modern life
Twilight Concert Series 2014
Saturdays thru the Summer Free Admission All concerts 7pm
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