Cheating In Schools

Polk School Officials Told to Look for FCAT Cheating

Local officials have been asked by the Department of Education to investigate a possible high number of erasures on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Tests taken at the school.

Wilma Ferrer, senior director of assessment, accountability and evaluation for the district, declined to release the name of the school.

She said the district has 15 days to conduct an investigation before the report is sent to the state.

"We are going to examine the data multiple ways and run multiple statistical analyses on the number of erasure changes from wrong to right, wrong to wrong and right to wrong and total number of erasures," Ferrer said Thursday in an email.

Ferrer said the school will be given a school grade of "I" for incomplete until a decision is made.

School grades are expected to be released in mid-July.

Thomas Butler, a ­spokesman with the DOE, said the state by law cannot identify the schools or any personnel involved until after the investigation is complete.

The Polk school isn't alone.

The Department of Education revealed the names of 13 additional districts with schools that may have cheated.

Those districts are Broward, Miami-Dade, Duval, Flagler, Gadsden, Hillsborough, Jefferson, Lee, Leon, Manatee, Orange, Palm Beach and Seminole.

In all, 21 schools are under investigation.

FCAT scores will be a key element of a new merit pay system that will be put in place over the next few years.

Caveon Test Security was hired earlier this year to identify highly unusual test results in two areas: Students with extremely similar test responses and schools with improbable levels of similarity, gains and erasures.

In a memo sent to school districts in March, DOE said it would use Caveon's work to flag schools and then ask districts to conduct internal investigations. DOE officials said that "extreme incidents" could lead to sanctions.

In 2009, a handful of fourth-graders at Lincoln Avenue Elementary and Crystal Lake Elementary schools were accused of memorizing sentences or phrases to use on the writing portion of the FCAT.

The state called it "template writing" because they used similar phrases or exact sentences in their essays.

The district cleared them of any wrongdoing after reviewing more than 100 essays.

District Superintendent Sherrie Nickell, who was associate superintendent of learning at the time, said children were taught phrases and styles but there was "no evidence of improper action.

Hungarian Spectrum: Cheating in Hungarian schools and universities

Joel wrote a comment the other day in which he mentioned that in Hungary "university students are allowed to cheat and consequently do so." He seems to be talking from personal experience. Hungarians don't like to talk about this "problem" or, if the topic comes up, they usually make light of it. Because after all cheating is a universal game that is being played by students and teachers all over the country. The teachers are trying to catch the cheaters and the "clever" students do everything in their power to fool them. But there are times when the teacher actually closes his/her eyes to the fact of cheating.

Cheating in school is part and parcel of Hungarian culture, and some people in Hungary simply cannot understand why cheating or plagiarism is taken so seriously in other countries. I can speak only about the situation in Canada and in the United States, but the attitude in these two countries would most likely be incomprehensible to the majority of Hungarians who completed their studies in Hungary. Or at least this was my experience. For years I was a member of an internet Hungarian-language political discussion group where those of us who lived in Canada and the United States made the mistake of expressing our disapproval of student cheating. The discussion between those who had been socialized in the West and those who lived in Hungary became very heated. One member actually left the list in disgust because the "westerners" labelled cheating a crime. Surely, she didn't consider herself a criminal just because she spent hours plotting how she could outfox the teachers. Her leaving didn't change my mind.

Hungarian students who engage in this widespread cheating are generous boys and girls. They are quite ready to help each other out. Individual achievement doesn't seem to play such an important role in Hungarian schools as it does here. Actually there were several studies that tried to measure Hungarians' competitive spirit and the results were disappointing. Individual achievement within the class or the department should matter, but I was astonished to learn that once someone has finished university and has a diploma in hand, future employers don't seem to be terribly interested in the particulars of his or her university career. But it does matter, doesn't it, whether someone received a bachelors degree in three years or in six? Or let's say you want to hire a university graduate to be part of a chemical research team. Wouldn't you prefer someone who got decent grades in chemistry as opposed to one who barely squeaked by?

Cheating in school, what we know and what we can do

Cheating in schools, proceedings of the symposium "Cheating in Schools" : UST Center for Ethics, December 6, 2007

Cheating in schools, are high-stakes tests to blame?

Cheating in schools

Issues in K-12 Education, Selections from CQ Researcher