... A kid in Stuyvesant should be able to pass a Regents exam cold in a class they haven't taken.
It seems likely that there is also cheating to get into Stuyvesant.
And being smart is no guarantee of being honest particularly when cheating appears easy and widespread. Many schools effectively tolerate cheating as there are strong incentives for people in authority to look the other way. Cracking down on cheating isn't the way to raise your school's test scores.
I have found no correlation whatsoever between the difficulty/importance of a task and whether students cheat on it. If anything, there is a negative correlation.
Like I said in the post, it's not the dishonesty that shocks me, it's the idea that the Regents are worth cheating on. When I was in high school a kid who found the Regents challenging wouldn't have been able to function in a demanding high school.
I wonder what's changed, exactly.
I suspect per AWB that the cheating was not because the Regents were "challenging".
2
... If anything, there is a negative correlation.
People often find it easier to rationalize minor offenses.
Madeline S. Rivera, 18, who graduated from Stuyvesant this year, said the culture of cheating was not specific to her school but was a sign of the current age, "especially with social networking," which she said made breaches easier. "I can assure you it is pretty much the same at every other high school."
With generalization skills like that, this girl has the makings of a first-class pundit.
3
... it's the idea that the Regents are worth cheating on. ...
This could be a sign cheating is so pervasive that (at least some) students don't think twice about it. Is it "worth" it to steal a coke from a broken machine?
At a place like Stuyvesant High School any time you spend studying for something is time you don't have available for playing the oboe or going to Math Olympiad practice or volunteering for resume-building service projects.
At our school it also counted as part of your class grade, which meant it affected your GPA, which meant it had an impact on class ranking.
I wouldn't say I cheated, but I got... unsolicited advice. If I remember correctly, there were some number of sections about particular topics and you got to choose some subset that would count- maybe 5 out of 8, in case your class hadn't covered one of the topics in detail. I was trying to decide which section to keep, my teacher was supervising, and I asked him a question about the wording of one of the problems. He said I understood it correctly, and seeing what answers I had in that section, said something to suggest that I make that section be one that counted. I did so and ended up with a perfect score.
RWM has been confused about this for exactly the same reason. She adds the fact that regents are actually significantly easier now than they were 15 years ago.
I can think of two theories. Perhaps *rank* rather than score is being used for GPA. Alternately maybe these kids are immigrants and don't understand (or have parents who don't understand) that these aren't actually analogous to high stakes exams in other countries.
I can think of two theories. Perhaps *rank* rather than score is being used for GPA. Alternately maybe these kids are immigrants and don't understand (or have parents who don't understand) that these aren't actually analogous to high stakes exams in other countries.
Let's see ... Wikipedia reports that in 2010 Stuyvesant High School's student body was 72% Asian.
Also doesn't your school not do regents?
You mean Hunter? We didn't take the English Regents, if I recall correctly, because they were too far beneath our dignity (or something. I don't actually know the rationale for the exception). Took all the rest, though.
I saw that article and grinned. Not my year, but the year after mine, some third of the graduating class got busted for cheating on a major exam.
My year, a dude was selling SAT scores (by sitting and taking them for other people, in high schools where the proctors couldn't tell Asian-Am kids apart --so he could only do this for other Asian-Am dudes.). He could guarantee you the score he sold you, and wouldn't sell any scores higher than a 1500, so as to protect the value of his own high score.
Regarding Stuyvesant's actual cheating: how do students manage to use hidden smartphones during the exam? There are proctors, I imagine; perhaps the proctors just tend to sit at the front of the room and pay little attention to what the exam-taking students are doing? Are there too many students sitting the exam in the room to be able to notice what each of them is doing?
These young whippersnappers with their smartphones.... Back in my day, when you wanted to cheat on an exam, you used a calculator-watch.
Helll, back in my day, we wrote teeny-tiny crib notes, which we stuck in the back of our calculators. That only worked for sciencey exams, though.
In my day some kids smuggled cheat sheets in the slide of the slide rule.
Before that, you just wrote notes on the inside cuff of your sleeve.
In any case, these things are an order of magnitude different from actually emailing/texting/whatever each other answers to the actual questions that are on the test before you. That's CHEATING.
I'm pretty sure that (a) I've never cheated on a test, certainly not to any meaningful degree, and (b) there was not a widespread culture of cheating at my HS. Maybe people sneaking in some miniaturized crib notes, pace 17, but that on a very individual or small-group basis. Limited enough that I never saw it from my vantage.
My guess is that it's mostly a question of paranoia about getting some easy questions wrong due to stress or overwork, not necessarily fear of not knowing an answer.
Of course, I'm the sap who felt I was too good to even think about preparing for the SAT or PSAT, and thus only got into the 98th percentile.
Those miniature crib notes in the back of the calculator (done only once for a calculus exam!) weren't even needed anyway, since by the time I'd determined what I'd need and written them in tiny fashion on a little slip of paper, I already knew them. Fancy how that works.
20.last: I did that for the GRE (don't remember the SAT). I wound up taking them a second time, I'm afraid, 'cuz it was kind of dumb not to have tried to study for them.
I miss the days when success or failure was measured by a standardized-test score. The SATs were way easier than life...
I cheated on a state capitals test in 5th grade. Lincoln, Nebraska.
24: You'll want to update your note card. Lincoln is now either its own state or part of Greater Plainsia, or whatever we decided to call it in the federalism thread.
IN SEVEN KINGDOMS OF WESTEROS, REGENT CHEATS ON YOU!