DS accused of plagiarizing test

[Anonymous]

You describe an interesting situation. Sorry your son has to deal with it without fully understanding what is OK and what isn't. Surprised the school with advanced academics didn't coach kids on citing ...

Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
Thank you for all your suggestions.
DS is a 9th grader in a highly regarded charter which boasts accelerated education. The teacher did not ask students to cite quotations. There were no guidelines. He has short term photographic memory. English is not his first language. His grades are usually good because he gets extensive tutoring. He took the exam on Monday June 9. The teacher and admin waited until Friday afternoon, as he was exiting the building, to drop this bomb on him. They did not even email me until I wrote to them.
His final draft was assessed by a tutor (college junior in communication) and a retired college professor.
I did ask him to write the essay again and ran it through Turnitin. There are ideas and some phrases taken from study guides. He has not yet learned how to use citation or bibliography. The school also knew very well he would be leaving town/country for the summer.

The key question here is how can the school accuse him of plagiarism if the teacher did not cover specific details of what it entails and how to avoid it?
But maybe the school will say they did.

[Anonymous]

Since English is not his first language does he get ESL or ELL services? What is on his 504 or IEP? Has the teacher giving him grievance before this incident?
There has to be more to this.

[Anonymous]

Sometimes it does happen naturally. When I was in college, I got called to see the professor. It was an art history class, and we'd been asked to write a paper about any painting in the university museum. I had gone to the library and found one article about the painting.

Because it was pre-internet and because I was saving this for the night before, I didn't go any further. Around 2 am, I was tired and just started making up any artsy-fartsy BS I could about the painting ("the juxtaposition of the three heads implies the Holy Trinity and the artist's internal struggle with God...."). I had been kind of embarrassed to turn it in because I thought it was ridiculous and over the top.

I get to the professor's office and he says, "be careful, you're either going to get an A or you're going to fail the course. Did you read any articles about this painting?" "Yes, the one I cited. I didn't have time to go looking for anything else." So he pulls out another article and says "so you didn't see this one?" "Nope."

So I read it. It was almost identical to my paper, and looked like what would happen if you were trying to plagiarize a paper and paraphrase it and switch a couple of paragraphs around. I was horrified, and I blurted out, "no, I really never saw it and I just put down whatever BS I could think of about the painting!" He laughed, and I got the A. But if he'd been a hardass or just crotchety, who knows.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
Thank you for all your suggestions.
DS is a 9th grader in a highly regarded charter which boasts accelerated education. The teacher did not ask students to cite quotations. There were no guidelines. He has short term photographic memory. English is not his first language. His grades are usually good because he gets extensive tutoring. He took the exam on Monday June 9. The teacher and admin waited until Friday afternoon, as he was exiting the building, to drop this bomb on him. They did not even email me until I wrote to them.
His final draft was assessed by a tutor (college junior in communication) and a retired college professor.
I did ask him to write the essay again and ran it through Turnitin. There are ideas and some phrases taken from study guides. He has not yet learned how to use citation or bibliography. The school also knew very well he would be leaving town/country for the summer.

OK. So yes, that is plagiarism by any definition. Just have him retake the test and let this be a lesson. Also, you keep mentioning his travel plans, as though the school should be working around them. That's just not how it works. He's honestly quite lucky that he's getting to retake the test - it sounds like they are accommodating the fact that he's ESL.

It isn't the school's problem if he's going out of the country - his/your vacation plans are irrelevant. I don't mean to be harsh but really, travel plans shouldn't be interfering with him taking the test and following the rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
Thank you for all your suggestions.
DS is a 9th grader in a highly regarded charter which boasts accelerated education. The teacher did not ask students to cite quotations. There were no guidelines. He has short term photographic memory. English is not his first language. His grades are usually good because he gets extensive tutoring. He took the exam on Monday June 9. The teacher and admin waited until Friday afternoon, as he was exiting the building, to drop this bomb on him. They did not even email me until I wrote to them.
His final draft was assessed by a tutor (college junior in communication) and a retired college professor.
I did ask him to write the essay again and ran it through Turnitin. There are ideas and some phrases taken from study guides. He has not yet learned how to use citation or bibliography. The school also knew very well he would be leaving town/country for the summer.

OK. So yes, that is plagiarism by any definition. Just have him retake the test and let this be a lesson. Also, you keep mentioning his travel plans, as though the school should be working around them. That's just not how it works. He's honestly quite lucky that he's getting to retake the test - it sounds like they are accommodating the fact that he's ESL.

It isn't the school's problem if he's going out of the country - his/your vacation plans are irrelevant. I don't mean to be harsh but really, travel plans shouldn't be interfering with him taking the test and following the rules.

Doesn't sound like he's been taught the "rules".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here.
Thank you for all your suggestions.
DS is a 9th grader in a highly regarded charter which boasts accelerated education. The teacher did not ask students to cite quotations. There were no guidelines. He has short term photographic memory. English is not his first language. His grades are usually good because he gets extensive tutoring. He took the exam on Monday June 9. The teacher and admin waited until Friday afternoon, as he was exiting the building, to drop this bomb on him. They did not even email me until I wrote to them.
His final draft was assessed by a tutor (college junior in communication) and a retired college professor.
I did ask him to write the essay again and ran it through Turnitin. There are ideas and some phrases taken from study guides. He has not yet learned how to use citation or bibliography. The school also knew very well he would be leaving town/country for the summer.

OK. So yes, that is plagiarism by any definition. Just have him retake the test and let this be a lesson. Also, you keep mentioning his travel plans, as though the school should be working around them. That's just not how it works. He's honestly quite lucky that he's getting to retake the test - it sounds like they are accommodating the fact that he's ESL.

It isn't the school's problem if he's going out of the country - his/your vacation plans are irrelevant. I don't mean to be harsh but really, travel plans shouldn't be interfering with him taking the test and following the rules.

Doesn't sound like he's been taught the "rules".

If his school is anything like any that I ever attended, teachers emphasize the rules like crazy. He may well not have understood them as they apply to a take home test - I'm not trying to say he was trying to be sneaky. But I doubt there was no mention in class of citation rules. Again, sounds like the school thinks this might have been a misunderstanding on his part; hence the retake.

[Anonymous]

Agree with pp. The school is trying to be understanding that there may have been miscommunication or misunderstanding, thus letting him retake it. OP, instead if fighting it, be glad they didn't expel him

[Anonymous]

First of all, I'm actually a little stunned that no one is mentioning that the student had two tutors/aids assist with the paper -- which in and of itself can sometimes slide into 'cheating' -- in the sense that the work is on some level not entirely the student's own. But perhaps the students were allowed to get external help on the drafts.

So, presuming that they were allowed to get external help, OP, I'd question the competency of the tutors -- at the least, the retired college professor should have been talking to your DC about citing....

You mention that this is a highly-regarded charter school. I find it impossible (sorry) to believe that your DC hasn't learned about citing sources: information literacy/citation is at this point essential in any curriculum and is taught as early as elementary school.

Frankly, your DC is lucky that this didn't happen in an AP setting and that there's a second chance being offered. I agree that the teacher and administrator should have handled the approach differently and in a more timely manner, but your child and the tutors also had some lessons to learn, too.

(FWIW, I'm a former English professor who's taught high school students and is extremely familiar with the curricula in the region's K-12 as well as in higher ed. I'm sorry that the school didn't handle the approach differently, because that failure makes it far too easy to blame this on the school rather than to get at the heart of the matter -- the student's need to learn to display origianal versus assisted or borrowed thinking and writing.)

[Anonymous]

Wait a minute, am I the only person who read that the student was told about this as he was leaving on the last day of school as was leaving?
If so, I find it bizarre that the school waited until the last minute and did not inform him while school was in session. And now they areexpecting the student to take the test during his vacation time without giving proper notice to the parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wait a minute, am I the only person who read that the student was told about this as he was leaving on the last day of school as was leaving?
If so, I find it bizarre that the school waited until the last minute and did not inform him while school was in session. And now they areexpecting the student to take the test during his vacation time without giving proper notice to the parents.

Exams are usually the last week of school and might not be graded until the last day (or later). When I taught high school, I routinely graded every day's exams that same day, but the last two exams and any missed exams made up on the final day were not graded until after students' last day. You can run the multiple choice parts through a scantron quickly, but reading and scoring essays takes time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:First of all, I'm actually a little stunned that no one is mentioning that the student had two tutors/aids assist with the paper -- which in and of itself can sometimes slide into 'cheating' -- in the sense that the work is on some level not entirely the student's own. But perhaps the students were allowed to get external help on the drafts.

So, presuming that they were allowed to get external help, OP, I'd question the competency of the tutors -- at the least, the retired college professor should have been talking to your DC about citing....

You mention that this is a highly-regarded charter school. I find it impossible (sorry) to believe that your DC hasn't learned about citing sources: information literacy/citation is at this point essential in any curriculum and is taught as early as elementary school.

Frankly, your DC is lucky that this didn't happen in an AP setting and that there's a second chance being offered. I agree that the teacher and administrator should have handled the approach differently and in a more timely manner, but your child and the tutors also had some lessons to learn, too.

(FWIW, I'm a former English professor who's taught high school students and is extremely familiar with the curricula in the region's K-12 as well as in higher ed. I'm sorry that the school didn't handle the approach differently, because that failure makes it far too easy to blame this on the school rather than to get at the heart of the matter -- the student's need to learn to display origianal versus assisted or borrowed thinking and writing.)

+1

As someone who went to probably the crappiest rural public school in the whole U.S., I learned how to cite sources in 8th grade. This was about 20 years ago. I am shocked a competitive school would not be doing this earlier.

Also, as someone who did not have tutors (but later became a tutor, thanks to a genetic predisposition for academic success and not my terrible public school education!), having two tutors help with a take-home essay test -- or even the drafts of practice essays (one/some of which would be on the final exam) -- is fundamentally academically dishonest. Tutors should be reinforcing the lessons he's learning with extra practice/insights, not polishing or editing his schoolwork for him.

[Anonymous]

WOW! This is taking a life of its own.
OP here.
The school did not let us opt out of taking this literature course even though DS studied English language at a much lower level -- three to be specific. The teacher knew he was being tutored as the literature readings and the homeworks were too difficult for him. His essays required him to cite the book and the page only. That was his accommodation in this class.. He could have memorized direct quotes from the book and cited the pages, had it been a requirement for the final.
By the way, I ran his other essays through Turnitin which showed more plagiarizm than this one. I then ran my own CV through the website and I found out that I had heavily plagiarized my own résumé.
I also found it to be quite strange that no one informed me about it for several hours past the incident, and responded only after I wrote to them.

[Anonymous]

You are obnoxious OP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:WOW! This is taking a life of its own.
OP here.
The school did not let us opt out of taking this literature course even though DS studied English language at a much lower level -- three to be specific. The teacher knew he was being tutored as the literature readings and the homeworks were too difficult for him. His essays required him to cite the book and the page only. That was his accommodation in this class.. He could have memorized direct quotes from the book and cited the pages, had it been a requirement for the final.
By the way, I ran his other essays through Turnitin which showed more plagiarizm than this one. I then ran my own CV through the website and I found out that I had heavily plagiarized my own résumé.
I also found it to be quite strange that no one informed me about it for several hours past the incident, and responded only after I wrote to them.

So plagiarism is a habit for him?