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

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.