Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Dealing with "cheating" on tests

Hi,

Not quite sure how to best deal with this. My daughter sat (along with 5 other students in her year) a high level maths competition some months ago. Well, it was really tough, and my daughter came home and told me one of the other girls who sat must have copied her answers. The first 35 questions were multiple choice, and the final five required written answers, and were worth a lot more points. My daughter only managed to have time to work out 2 of the last 5 hard questions (it was the same competition for years 5-7 and she is year 5). The other 3 questions, she wrote totally random 3 digit answers, figuring an answer was better than none.

Well, afterwards, the girl who was sitting next to her had written her answers on her paper as they were told they could, and she had coincidentally written the exact same answers? Even the randomly chosen ones my daughter had?

Well, results come out yesterday, and my daughter achieves in top 1% which she is thrilled with.........only high distinction in her year. But this other girl scores just below (distinction) whilst the other 3 chosen to do the competition received no awards.

What to do.? Just let it go? My DD is well known for being way beyond any other kids in maths in her year, and always achieves way beyond anyone else. What really worries me about this, is the other 3 kids, who now appear way below "the girl who copied".

My DD wants to say nothing (I guess she still got the best score.....her copying obviously wasn't perfect!) and this girl is a friend.

Somehow doesn't seem right to me though.......anyone BTDT and have any advice?

So the other girl having the same answers is the only reason why your DD thinks she cheated - it wasn't clear to her at the time? What kind of table arrangement did they have? A competition should always have people sitting far enough apart that students can't copy one another's answers without it being obvious; perhaps that wasn't followed in this case?

I don't think you can "do" anything about it in this instance, really; cheating needs to be detected while it's going on. Pointing our the coincidence of answers at this point is going to incriminate your own DD just as much as the other girl (and particularly as they're friends, they'd both come under suspicion).

Also, it's difficult to pick truly random numbers in the context of a maths question; it's not out of the question that, in fact, your DD's choice was subconsciously influenced by something in the question or around, and the other girl might have been similarly influenced - seems unlikely they'd come up with exactly the same answers [and is there a possibility that your DD is exaggerating and only e.g. one of her random nos was the same?] , but not impossible. (If the numbers in question truly were random 3-digit integers, I'd be inclined to ask your DD what she thought the probability of just happening to be correct was, and whether she thought that was worth the time it took to write the numbers down, when compared to the alternative use of that second or two to doublecheck a non-random answer!!)

I would suggest pointing out to your DD that it's in everyone's interests to make sure copying is impossible, and making sure she realises that if her answers are copied she too is going to come under suspicion. Another time, she might request that tables be further apart if she thinks participants seeing one another's answers is going to be inevitable (it's offputting in a test to have to be thinking about keeping your eyes away from other people's work, so she could phrase this as wanting to be sure she didn't accidentally see anyone else's answers). Or she could perhaps choose her own position with care, and/or guard her answers. Unless they were actually sitting at the same table (which would be crazy in an externally run competition!) it shouldn't be hard for her to keep her answers from being copied without being obvious about it.

Other than that, I'd just treat it as a learning experience. Nothing can be proved at this point, and casting suspicion that can't be proved is just poisonous.

Yes, I tend to agree. No, they were all sat at tables, 4 on each. No separate tables. Easily could see each others papers. DD said she had her head down doing hers, so really didn't see the other girl looking at her paper during the test. No, I can tell you, the questions she gave random answers to were so so hard that they really were totally random...............I saw the paper, and her answers............there was no sense to the random answers,! And no, all 3 random answers were copied for each digit.........the results sheets had them there identical. I saw them. I agree, waste of time my DD writing them, but there you go. First time she has done a competition with anything but multiple choice answers, which she knows "a guess is better than a blank", so I guess she just thought the same for the written answers. As I said, my only concern is the
other kids who did the test. This is a highly respected competition, and their results are used in folios, getting into programs etc. But yes, you are right, what is done is done............say nothing.

I agree it's a shame that it could affect the relative impressions of that group. Yet personally I would say nothing. It's not appropriate to read other people's work/notes even after a test is over, in order to see that so many written out answers were the same she was not minding her own business (though I fully understand that once a accidental glance shows a similar pattern one would be alarmed and naturally look more closely). And it's clear that not every answer was the same, or the same score would have been obtained. A cheater often will intentionally keep answers from being identical, but it does make proof more difficult.

If you think it essential then an anonymous note in a teacher's box saying there was a concern of copying by the girl, without specific reference, would alert school staff to watch her in the future. And it might globally serve to make them rethink their test seating arrangements.

This is a good opportunity to show your DD how to protect her own tests from view by use of scratch paper on top of the questions she is not currently working on, her own hair if it is long, or non-dominant arm blocking view of the paper, etc. Some of those things in conjunction make cheating much more difficult. Yes this should not be necessary but as a smart kid she will always be a target for people to cheat. Preventing copying in the first place protects her from accusations of, "no she cheated off of me", which is often what a cheater will say in their defense. That clever retaliation flips suspicion onto your daughter and needs to be avoided.

Polly

No, no one looked at anyone else's notes secretly after the test. They did it back in class to compare answers..............the whole group who did it in her year did this, with the teachers knowledge (my daughter had asked if she could write on her testbook for this reason). These kids like to discuss the questions after......as results take months. She also asked if she could write on it so she could bring it home to show me, and we could estimate her score! But thinking about it now, maybe the answers were copied from her testbook answers rather than answer book . Yes, she has learnt from lessons from this. But yes, as this is such a hard competition (compared to statewide testing etc), the really top math students are usually identified at the competition. Yes, it is the rest of the group that I am concerned about. Their relative strength in math has been corrupted, which will effect everything from class placement, to grades, pacademic prizes, and even subject acceleration........

I think this concern is misplaced. If it were an in-school competition, maybe... but since there's a much wider population that they're being compared with, what matters is where they fall in comparison to that, not how they fall in comparison to one another. If the child who cheated (it seems) has something decided just on the basis of this one thing, then yes, she may get some honour she doesn't deserve, but she's one person, and in any case it would be incompetence on the part of the teachers to base a judgement of a child on just this one piece of information.

Are you sure you're not just displacing your righteous and understandable indignation, that someone else did nearly as well as your DD and didn't deserve to, onto this concern? TBH at the end of the day, it's annoying, but it doesn't matter. Does it?

You are right, it doesn't matter, to my daughter. And no, her result was significantly enough above anyone else's in her year, that it is not important for her. On a school wide basis this result will make a difference for this girl however, and the others she seemingly "beat". Unfortunately, as we all know, most school tests are simplistic, and this group of kids will all score nearly all right, and appear the same. So, when the time comes to choose the 3 person math team for the school, this girl will be chosen. Does she deserve to be chosen? No doubt, after such success with cheating last time, she will try it again in the future. These are my concerns, but I have decided to say nothing. Cheating is annoying, and wrong, but something we must accept it seems when it happens.

If the other girl really did cheat so egregiously, it stands to reason that she had no idea how to do the problems on her own. This, in turn, implies that the next time she does a competition like this one, she'll do poorly. I would say that your job is to ensure that she sits on her own. You may want to ensure that she sits far from your daughter during regular tests during the school year. You could always try to have a quiet word with her teacher, without making an accusation, but just by voicing a concern that maybe something happened but you're not sure....

It's a tough problem. When I have tough problems, I try to break them down into smaller parts. In this case, they may be:

• The girl appears to have cheated and appears to have got away with it. What kind of lesson does this teach her?
• The other children's rankings were pushed down as a result of the alleged cheating. If the girl really did cheat, how will this situation affect them?
• If word gets out that she cheated and got away with it, how will class morale be affected?
• Other.

Can you rank this smaller parts of the larger problem, and then try to determine how to act based on your rankings?

Once when I was in high school, the kid who sat behind me in algebra was copying my answers during an exam. I had no idea what was going on until he nudged me and asked me to move my elbow so he could read the rest of my answers! I was pretty annoyed. Then I noticed that I'd made a mistake and graphed a hyperbola in the wrong quadrants. I'd also made another mistake on another graph. I waited until he turned his paper in and started erasing as he was passing my desk on his way back to his seat. My score: 102 out of 100 (the teacher made a mistake with the points). His score: 68 (F). It was very satisfying, and it can be a good strategy for discouraging cheaters.

Added: I'm going to respectfully disagree that we should turn our heads when cheating happens and accept it.

The trick is to find the best strategy to stop it.

Its pretty simple.

You should request a meeting with the school director and turn the other child in.

Cheating is unacceptable.

Val, I tend to agree. But, you are right, what is the best strategy? Hoped someone here may have BTDT and had a good one?

Austin, I have certainly considered this, but want to be sure this is the right strategy first.

However, the general consensus seems to be to ignore it?

I, for one, was not suggesting any such thing. I was pointing out that there's nothing that can reasonably be done in this case, at this stage.

Since it seems to be necessary to spell it out: Stephanie has only her DD's word that the cheating wasn't the other way round. The only piece of evidence in the case is the identity of the answers, and that is symmetric. I'm sure she knows her DD well enough to be sure, but it would be another matter to expect the school to act on that basis!

I'm actually personally most inclined to be angry with the school for putting students in a position where they were highly likely to see one another's answers accidentally, and thereby be exposed to a strong and unnecessary temptation. I imagine the organisers of the competition would also be unimpressed that children sitting it were sat at the same table as one another. [ETA and if they were informed of this case, the only thing they could reasonably do would be to disqualify both girls. So I don't suggest that!]

Well, just let me say that no, the school does know my daughter well enough to know who would have copied. Last competition,last year (all multiple choice) my DD again got top 1%, and the other 4 all got credits, with almost same scores ( around 80 percentile ). The risk of my DD being accused of the cheating is almost zero. She is 3 years subject accelerated for math, whereas other kids only do one year ahead math curriculum. The identical written answers 3 of which were random as I said, and the fact they sat next to each other are proof enough that cheating occurred.

My two older kids competed in climbing for several years, and the local competitions were often on an honor basis, with each competitor filling out their own card as to which routes they were able to complete during a specific amount of time (called a red point for those who care). One girl on the team always came in second to my daughter, and the kids were very aware once they began the season in earnest with judged competitions that this girl had to have cheated, because she could no longer perform at that level. She would claim mild injuries, etc. to explain away the differences.

My daughter, the team captain, kept quiet for a long time, but it ate at the entire team. She finally decided that it wasn't fair to anyone to not address the issue, even if there was not real proof that that girl had cheated.

Instead, during a team meeting, she brought up the need of each competitor bringing their best effort to the group and pointed out that when one of the team slacked off and made excuses, they weren't being honest with themselves or the team. She made eye contact several times with the girl in question, but my daughter never named her specifically.

The next season, this young girl filled out her card accurately, and the dynamic with the team was quite different.

Is there a way to approach your issue in a similar way since there is no hard evidence of cheating? Good luck - it's a tough call, but I do think addressing the issue even in broad terms will be better than saying nothing at all.

Hi Stephanie,

I'm sorry for making such an unfair assumption about how your DD found out, hard sometimes over the internet to imagine the possible scenarios.

Polly

I'd go to the teacher and tell her what your daughter told you. You won't be accusing anyone; you'll just be reporting what was reported to you.

Keep your tone neutral and use the conversation as an FYI thing for the teacher. Then the onus will be on her to keep the girl away from the others when testing is happening, and the matter will be out of your hands.

Is your daughter sure the answers that were the same are really what her friend put down during the test to be graded or is it possible she wrote down the answers in the classroom after? Maybe the girl knew she got them wrong and said she got the same answers as your DD in class because she knows your DD is smart and probably got them right (and didn't want to say she got them wrong in class).
Just trying to think of other possibilities.

ALSO: Usually there is an alert on these tests that will flag tests with totally random (wrong) answers especially if they occur in sequence. The test should have flagged this and looked into it to see the work provided. If there is NO work shown on EITHER test with the same answer there is no way to prove who cheated on who. Even if your daughter is sure the other girl cheated, all it would take is the other girl saying your daughter cheated, not her. Both scores would be thrown out and the ONLY solution would be a re-test. That is best case scenario. I don't know what you should do, but I just wanted to present you with the probable outcomes.

GHS, the question book was already filled in when they reached the class. 3 of them only had done this (put their answers on the question book). She accepted that the other girl may have got the other 2 most difficult (non multiple choice) right like she did, but when she came home she said how then she saw that her answers to the other 3 written answers were the same as hers. It was then that she first realized that she must have copied, because those answers were totally random. This upset her as she said she had worked very very hard on those 2 hard questions. Her working is in her question book which we still have. The competition is designed such that most kids won't even get to those last 5 hard questions, which are worth 6,7,8,9,and 10 respectively. Well she got the ones with 7 and 9 correct!

I too thought they may have been disqualified when the same, random answers
were given. I too thought the marking software (ESP in a math test lol) would pick this up. Which is when I first started
wondering how best to handle this issue! But unless the school has been told and has chosen to not say anything, or maybe as the random answers weren't
actually consecutive??

So interesting. If they already got the scores back I would have to assume the tests were not flagged. And if they were, like you said, the school chose not to pursue. But wouldn't the test itself (rather than the school) be the one to choose wether or not the tests should be flagged and subsequently thrown out? It is a really rare situation.
I caught someone looking at my paper once in middle school and told my best friend. She stated she saw the same person looking at her paper during the same test. We went together to the teacher but I am not even sure the teacher believed us or acted on it as the student was typically top of the class. We both thought it strange too.

I will admit that DD8 is a cheater. Not on tests (at least not as far as she's admitted to me!), but on in-class work. We had a real issue last year, where she was copying answers off another kid during the timed math drills - and the kid she was copying off of was more wrong than DD would have been.

We've tried to discourage it, with limited success. If DD thinks she can't do something, she'd rather copy than try.