Widespread cheating at McLean HS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s at the colleges and universities, too.

It took me a long time to figure out the real reason some college students had very expensive calculators was that they could program key equations and facts into those calculators to have them for the tests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s just really disappointing to see how kids that don’t cheat are at such a disadvantage.

My son is in one AP class and the teacher doesn’t change the test throughout the day for the later class periods. He is in first period and the average test grades are substantially lower (he can see the grade distribution online for his class) than the last class of the day (a friend showed him grade distribution). Kids in first period are taking pictures of test or writing test questions on scratch paper then sharing test questions with friends in later classes or there is a rumor one kid selling them to a couple of students.

The teacher doesn’t realize or care of has just given up because of so much cheating.

I teach an AP class and changing the test for each period would be a gargantuan task. I already have different versions for students seated next to each other. I have a make-up version, and an alternate version of each question for students who have extended time. I label the tests differently so it's not obvious which version is which from one period to the next. I also have a retake version. That's already five different tests I had to create. If I had to make different ones for each period, that would be a dozen tests, plus their respective keys.

I do tell students that it's one curve for all the classes, so if the later ones get wind of the questions, the earlier ones' grade will automatically go down by virtue of the curve. I'm not having issues with later periods scoring higher.