E-Cheating: Answers to test, quizzes spread faster than COVID

By Eduardo Andrade, Editor-in-Chief

While the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has made almost every aspect of student life more difficult, the nature of online class has allowed for a proliferation of cheating.

“I don’t want to flat out say, ‘Well, everyone cheats,’” sophomore Samantha Bernstein said. “(But) I think everyone knows people take advantage of resources.”

Through technology, cheating has become, quite literally, effortless. Class group chats which are popular among students make it easy to quickly spread answers for all sorts of assignments and tests, and joining these chats is often as easy as just having a phone.

“I just opened Snapchat one day, and there was, like, six different group chats,” senior Imahri Johnson said.

While many students use these chats as an honest way to keep up with what’s going on in a class, they can quickly devolve into a way to get an edge on an assignment.

“I have a group chat for every single class … Most times it’s checking about what’s going to happen in a class,” Bernstein said. “But the times that there are quizzes and tests, people take advantage of that and use the group chats for everything they possibly can if they have the opportunity.”

Teachers have tried a number of strategies to curb cheating, including putting significant time restraints on tests, requiring students to

have cameras and microphones on while testing, using secure testing windows and many others. However, none of these have been able to completely solve the issue.

“You’re just not, as a teacher, going to be able to eliminate all cheating, and that’s just a symptom of online learning,” social studies teacher Michael Lichtenstein said.

Students have found simple workarounds to these tactics, and often teachers are lenient and understanding when kids say they have technology issues. As a result during a test where cameras are “mandatory,” a class can find itself with only half of its students complying.

“If you put any senior in charge ... I swear to God no kid is gonna get away with cheating,” senior Juan Catoni said. “They can be like, ‘It’s mandatory to have your camera on,’ and make kids provide specific reasons and show proof if they say it isn’t working. They would rope so many kids.”

Assessment coordinator Arif Mumtaz said that because teachers can’t do much to stop cheating, the focus must shift to making sure class time is used as effectively as possible to prepare students for standardized assessments.

“It is a challenge,” Mumtaz said. “Testing is not a number one priority right now, and it shouldn’t be. Right now we are trying to get the best out of online education and are seeing if we can try to do the best we can as though we were in person. Our teachers are working extremely hard, most of them are working longer hours to accommodate our students. So testing is not a priority.”

While AP scores remained at about normal levels during online tests at the end of last year, other standardized tests given at home indicated that students were getting outside help.

“I’m telling you, from last year to this year, (in) elementary (students), dramatic increase. I mean it was such an increase that you’re 100% sure that Mommy and or Daddy or older brother or sister (helped out). There’s just no way that kid goes from … barely having phonetic knowledge, to being able to write four paragraphs. We’ve seen that, and we talk about. But unless we put the camera on the whole time … there’s kinda not too much we can do about it,” school board member Nora Rupert said.

The same issue has been seen here, as tests and classwork have become essentially a formality for some students.

“(I have) never seen so many students getting these high scores on the tests, but hey, maybe this is my lucky year and I have all of the awesome hard workers in my classes,” social studies teacher William S. Strachan said.

The ease of cheating has left some worried about the return to in person learning and to the long-term effects of being handed easy grades.

“People are becoming dumber, and people are not giving a (care) about school. Yeah, things need to change,” Catoni said

While cheating has become especially easy this year, the issue is not unique as schools have dealt with it for as long as they have been around.

“You cannot be naive and say, ‘Cheating would not have happened if this was in person or if we are back to normal,’” Mumtaz said. “It happens all the time. Yes, it probably happens more often now, we are hoping students will not do that.”

How to ace midterms (without cheating)

“Study but make sure to get a decent amount of sleep and food. Focusing on passing is important but so is your health.” — sophomore Shannon Hughes

“Keep telling yourself that it’s not that bad, and once you finish each exam you’re done, and you got a whole break ahead of you. All you gotta do is those tests --, nothing too long or too hard, so don’t stress too much.” — sophomore Valeria Ferrari

“Exempt the core classes and the ones you are not sure about. Focus more than you think you should on the test when you think you can pass it easily, just in case. If it’s a language class, study hard for it but just try to pass.” — sophomore Brian Tang