Are Schools Cheating Kids?

Larry Magid: Appalling That Kids Using Technology To Cheat, But Schools Should Change Testing

(CBS)  The results of a survey showing that 35 percent of middle school and high school students with cell phones have used them to cheat at school is indeed alarming. And perhaps more alarming is the finding that nearly a quarter of the students don't even think it's cheating.

Cheating is cheating regardless of whether you use technology or old-fashioned paper notes. I'm appalled that kids may be using technology to cheat in school, but I'm just as appalled at how schools are cheating kids when it comes to technology.

But in addition to admonishing kids about why it's wrong to cheat, perhaps it's also time to rethink what it means to evaluate students in the age of the Internet and omnipresent mobile devices.

The survey, which was conducted by Benenson Strategy Group for Common Sense Media, found that "41 percent (of seventh- to 12th-graders) say that storing notes on a cell phone to access during tests is cheating and a serious offense, while 23 percent don't think it's cheating at all." Similarly, 45 percent say "texting friends about answers during a test" is cheating, while 20 percent do not consider it cheating. More than a third (36 percent) said that downloading a paper from the Internet to turn in was not a serious cheating offense and nearly one-fifth didn't consider it to be cheating at all. Just more than half the kids admitted to using the Internet for some form of cheating,
As a parent and former educator, I am strongly opposed to any type of cheating. And there is no way that anyone--not just students--should get away with claiming authorship on a paper they didn't write. But this survey might also present an opportunity for educators to re-evaluate the type of tests they're giving. I think there is a role for tests that measure a student's ability to quickly acquire and interpret information through mobile devices, even if they know nothing about the subject prior to sitting down for the test.

I'm not making a universal declaration that every kid should be issued a smart phone or iPod Touch to help them with every test they take. But I do think that the emergence of cheap mobile technology and--eventually--omnipresent connectivity offer educators an opportunity to incorporate the technology into their classrooms and even testing.

As Peggy Sheehy, a library media specialist from Suffern, N.Y., put it: "We can't teach 21st century literacy and assess with 19th century methodology. We have to look at what we really need students to be able to do when they leave us" and we must ask, "what is my student learning outside of school and how can I get them just as engaged?"

Right now, it's a valid point to say that letting kids access mobile devices may discriminate against those who can't afford the phones or the service. Yet that will change, just as it did with electronic calculators, as these devices become even more affordable, especially if students can access free wireless networks at school.

In the work force, what's important in most situations is not so much the facts you can pull out of your head but your ability to acquire information when you need it and--most importantly--your ability to make sense of it.
I'm not saying being able to recall facts from memory is never important. I have to do that nearly every day when I go on live radio. And I often use the Internet to acquire facts only moments before the broadcast and have occasionally had to look up a fact while taking on live radio. What's most important is not my regurgitation of the facts but my interpretation. The ability to put things into context is hard to measure with the types of multiple choice tests that are commonly used in schools.

Of course, the ability to use a search engine is no substitute for kids learning how to critically evaluate the information they do acquire. Knowing how to judge the authority of a source and being able to interpret the meaning of information--in the long run--is more important than the ability to remember it.

A few years ago I participated in a conference with educators from the U.S. and Japan. Both groups had their gripes about their country's educational system, but what I heard from several of my Japanese colleagues was the concern that their system concentrated too much on rote memory and not enough on creativity and critical thinking.

David Ricky Matsumoto, author of "The New Japan," said the same thing those educators told me: "In my experience," he wrote in the book, "the typical Japanese student excels at learning facts and figures. "...what many Japanese students lack is the ability to think about problems creatively, critically, and autonomously."

So, while we should continue to discourage cheating of any kind, we should also encourage schools to find creative ways to use technology, including cell phones, in the learning process and in the testing process. It's called adaptation. And besides, progress should always be a part of a progressive educational system.

This post is adapted from a column that appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.

[johnrusselll]

The cheating also includes students sending images of California State tests to their friends while they are taking the test. Teachers using the same test year after year invites cheating. As a substitute, rather then be allowed to make a new test, I was given the test to administer 5 minutes before a class [12th grade pre-algebra]. About a third of the class already had the multiple choice answers.

Many students cannot recognize bad data. There is a lot of incorrect data on the internet. You cannot separate good knowledge from bad knowledge without an understanding of causal relationships. Understanding is sacrificed in this era of sound bytes where too many believe everything presented on the internet, TV or radio to be true.

Part of this inability to recognize bad data is too many graduate without an solid foundation in measurement.

[aChangeOfIdeas]

I agree with everything this author says, but just try being a teacher and giving an assignment that allows the students collaboration with classmates and use of any resources possible to come up with something other than an informational report with a highly detailed grading rubric preventing creativity. You would not believe the fuss the parents give you over the grading because their darling is absolutely the smartest kid in the school and how is he going to get into med school with an 85 on that assignment?!?!? Grading how "creative" or "unique" something is very difficult given our grading systems. I think a lot of the memorization tests are given to make sure that the teacher has some solid evidence as to the child's ability to study and not be a leech off of other kids. Look close in your child's classroom, probably a small percentage of their grade is actually based on memorization (in mine it is 25% or less).

[omnibus66]

The dumbing down of America is under a full head of steam at full throttle. Todays graduates are poorly equipped to do anything except pass multiple choice tests, but only after months of tutelage aimed at each specific test. Of course they are expert at texting and video games, but those skills are hardly marketable in todays world.

Cell phones, lap tops, and all of forms of PDAs should be banned in schools. Taking notes with pen and paper is a terrific teaching tool, because before you can do it you must learn to read and write. These two skills seem to be severely lacking in todays students.

For a glimpse of where we are heading, watch the movie "Idiocracy".

[quapawsix]

The old fashion method of teaching reading writing and arithmetic are over, in this new world with the amount of knowledge they need the old ways don't get it and the 3 months of in the summer needs to go as well the rest of the world has year round school and their education system seems to work better than ours. The idea of teaching children how to pass a test, makes you wonder if the next step is telling them who to vote for.

[clancy49]

I agree completely with the portion of this article that says we cannot teach our 21st century children with 19th century methodolgy. Our educational system is archaic to say the least and is leading the world no where. If America wants to continue to lead the world, it must restructure education completely, and I am not refering to technology teaching alone. We must look at different ways of teaching sociologically, psychologically, and physically. This is a different society and we are teaching classes the way of the 1800s. We need to teach science, sociology, pyschology, math, environment, reading, and life community in a completely restructured way. Putting our students into stalag like cubicles or letting them fend their own way in video un reality is not the way. It is time to look again at education and perhaps restructure learning in a way of apprenticeship or interest skills.

[rhs648]

New York state has used Regents Exams for many years. Yes, teachers often "teach to the exams." In spite of that, New York state has produced many scholars and well educated people for generations. Standarized test are an invaluable tool for evaluating student performance, teacher accountability, and a school system's effectiveness. "No student left behind" has forced many school systems to provide a better education as shown by many tests around the country. This is something every parent should favor.

[rhs648]

Both facts and concepts are important to succeeding in life. Colleges and graduate programs generally base their admissions on a combination of classroom performance, test scores, interviews, and essays. The well rounded person knows both many facts and can think conceptionally. My skills include a very broad vocabulary thanks to several teachers who made me memorize words, spellings, and definitions and I will forever be grateful to them. Good test scores and grades enabled me to get into a good college and a good career. Until better evaluation tools are designed, we have no choice but to use test scores to evaluate students and teacher performance.

[krotec54]

We have four elementary schools in DeKalb county including three in metro Atlanta are being investigated over changed answers on the high- stakes CRCT.
Preliminary audit results by the Governor's Office of Student Achievement reveal that someone at the schools deliberately changed students' answers last summer on fifth-grade standardized math retests.
One principal resigned.

[albert571]

me hoppe wif mi edumacatin.

[tmittelstaed]

in Oregon it used to be all about the CIM and the CAM. Thank god that they were finally repealed.

The problem with standardized, multiple choice testing is that it is completely foreign to how Real Life works. When the kid grows up and becomes a doctor or lawyer, they would be engaging in malpractice to do their jobs entirely from memory. The same goes for engineers, computer designers, technical repair people, dietitians, writers, and anyone else working in a job requiring them to use their brains. It is only the lowest jobs in the economic spectrum - burger flipping, gas pumping and the like, where the employee is working a job so simple that they are expected to memorize it.

The fact is that all testing in education is designed and graded on a curve - sure, it might be scored linearly, but the difficulty level of the questions are always set to the median of the class knowledge level. Because of this it makes absolutely no difference if all testing in school is open-book or not. The fact of the matter is that if a teacher allows open book testing and merely revises up the difficulty level of her testing, she is going to get the same distribution of grades as for closed-book testing. All that happens is the kids who didn't study, thinking that they will rely on finding the answer in the book at the last minute, will discover that without a working knowledge of the material they will not be able to locate what they need in time to complete a test. Whereas the kids that did study will merely take a short amount of time to confirm answers that they were uncertain on, and this will prevent them making dumb mistakes that would sabotage their grades. Open-book is exactly how it works in the real world, at work, and it is really about time that the schools got a clue about this.

The reason so much educational testing is closed-book is historical, and dates back to the Victorian era where the fad started of people memorizing long tracks of Shakespeare's plays, or poetry, or similar things to recite in polite company at the drop of a hat, to amaze their friends. This later crossed into the religious mindset who would measure piety by the total amount of memorized Bible passages that the unfortunate subject could spew out on demand. Other than being of value for entertainment purposes, such rote memorization is almost utterly worthless. It is only in the very lowest of the grades in Elementary school where rote memorization has any legitimate use - memorization of the multiplication tables, alphabet, common algebraic formula, and suchlike - but by the time the student has hit 5th grade they should be mostly beyond this. Unfortunately, U.S. educators don't feel they are actually doing anything unless they can put the student up on a stand and have them squawk out an hours worth of memorized drivel on some pointless topic or other, so we will continue to see hand-wringing on "test cheating"

[riob678]

Creative teaching as the norm won't happen until there are creative, non-linear thinking, non-textbook-bound teachers who constitute the majority of school faculties. Today's creative teachers are shunned and ostracized by their colleagues-not embraced-due to the unfounded fears of increased work and personal job loss. Thinking outside the box is nothing more than a catchphrase. If a teacher actually thinks and ventures outside the box, trouble will often follow. Sadly, real educators and useful education, receive little positive attention in public schools. It is so much easier to methodically feed students a diet of prescribed pablum followed by multiple-choice, machine-scored exams: presto, instant grade. Therefore, until teaching and testing practices change, it makes little or no real difference, except for personal integrity, whether students use assistive devices during the testing process.

[rsamuels67]

Here is Charlotte,NC its all about the EOG testing. As my children are moving up in CMS school systems it is showing that teaching children how to past the EOG is more important than teaching children.