DS accused of plagiarizing test

[Anonymous]

OP is foreign and obviously from a culture that thinks memorizing and regurgitating = learning. (Asian? Indian?)

[Anonymous]

Maybe her son goes to TJ-there is a subset of over prepped, over-tutored non-English speakers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It sounds like the poor kid was over-prepped for his test to the point he had memorized his notes. Had he just been studying concepts for basic understanding and writing an essay on the spot, he might have been okay. Instead he researched, was tutored, rewrote and basically regurgitated information he pulled from other sources. Getting the questions in advance was his downfall.

Then this is a pattern for him, because Mom ran other papers through plagiarism websites and found that this instance was not his first time cheating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP is foreign and obviously from a culture that thinks memorizing and regurgitating = learning. (Asian? Indian?)

Then welcome to America. Time to assimilate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is foreign and obviously from a culture that thinks memorizing and regurgitating = learning. (Asian? Indian?)

Then welcome to America. Time to assimilate.

This is OP. This will be my 4th and last posting here.
Thank you to all who gave constructive criticism, including the free websites. I was hoping I would hear from ELL parents who had gone though the same experience as me, and how they handled it.
When DS first brought the syllabus and I saw all the college level material/books he had to read, I knew it would be more than chanllenging for him. I tried to see if he could take an alternate class, but there was none.

Imagine your pre-algebra kid being told he has to take calculus. That was our situation.
So I told him to take notes, bring everything home and do the best we could. Day after day he would come home saying he did not understand the classwork. After meeting with the teacher, I learned more about the way the class was run and knew he needed much more structure to understand the class.

Independent reading/writing/cooperative group with minimal direct teaching did not work for him, and he was not learning.

I did meet with the IEP case manager requesting someone teach him how to write/do research. I am not sure it ever happened.
So I started getting him help. The teacher and admin knew he was getting help. There was nothing mentioned about his essays all year long. Instead of showing it to one person, this time he showed it to 2 people and then memorized all the essays.
Had we been told anything during the year, we would have addressed it and corrected it.
This class for him was a sink or swim situation. He worked very hard and thought he was swimming, but alas, he sank at the very last moment.
Had this happened earlier in the year, it would have been a learning process. Now it has become a punitive experience.
Let's all move on.

[Anonymous]

Before you run off, can you explain to us how a person plagiarizes a resume? HEAVILY, in your own words. Are you claiming accomplishments that are not your own?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Before you run off, can you explain to us how a person plagiarizes a resume? HEAVILY, in your own words. Are you claiming accomplishments that are not your own?

Yes. If nothing else,thank you OP. This thread has been a very interesting one. As a mom of toddlers, I haven't had to think about plagiarizing in a very long time. And not during the computer/google age, that's for sure. Your experience has really made me think and I have a bunch of new questions about this that I need to research!

[Anonymous]

It sounds like his school is not a good fit--if they don't offer remedial English classes. Why not find a school that will teach to his level?

[Anonymous]

Why did you sign him up for that advanced charter school in the first place, if you knew he could not handle the work?

[Anonymous]

I'm going to say this again, OP.

Your son is in 9th grade and is being offered a second chance, despite breaking academic honesty rules. This is the school being lenient and considerate of his age, inexperience, etc.

By 11th grade, most schools are not going to be that lenient. And cheating/plagiarism will go on his transcript. As well the F he will earn in the class. He will get kicked out of college for much less.

Talk to him about what happened. Help him articulate why he did what he did, and help him understand this is not the way to handle things when he is struggling.

Do it now before the stakes are much higher. Class being hard is not an excuse for dishonesty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Before you run off, can you explain to us how a person plagiarizes a resume? HEAVILY, in your own words. Are you claiming accomplishments that are not your own?

I'm not the OP, but I'm sure if you ran my resume through Turn It In it would come up as heavily plagiarized. Everything in it is true, but I absolutely googled sample resumes and borrowed phrasing that I thought described something well. Since I have a job that has many common components (e.g. I create and present workshops, so I looked at sample resumes of people who also create and present workshop. I supervise a department, as do many people). But a resume isn't the same as a test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why did you sign him up for that advanced charter school in the first place, if you knew he could not handle the work?

THIS. THIS. THIS.

EVERYBODY would be a lot happier if people picked schools which are actually a good fit. Your kid would be happier, you would be happier, the school would be happier, the other kids would be happier...

Instead a ton of people seem to either unwittingly make uninformed decisions, or knowingly make bad decisions based on magical thinking that, overnight, it will fix all of the bad that happened prior, or that it will magically elevate their kid to some new level of achievement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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.

I had the same problem writing a college term paper. I had just come up with some sort of hook to tie the thing together, and in looking for sources to beef up the introduction found a book doing the exactly the thing I had wanted to do. It was the middle of the day so I literally went to my professors office and showed him the situation (it was during finals week so I didn't have time to come up with a new idea). He was a really chill guy, and I had completely different citations for the same information, so he ended up giving me credit for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP is foreign and obviously from a culture that thinks memorizing and regurgitating = learning. (Asian? Indian?)

Then welcome to America. Time to assimilate.

This is OP. This will be my 4th and last posting here.
Thank you to all who gave constructive criticism, including the free websites. I was hoping I would hear from ELL parents who had gone though the same experience as me, and how they handled it.
When DS first brought the syllabus and I saw all the college level material/books he had to read, I knew it would be more than chanllenging for him. I tried to see if he could take an alternate class, but there was none.

Imagine your pre-algebra kid being told he has to take calculus. That was our situation.
So I told him to take notes, bring everything home and do the best we could. Day after day he would come home saying he did not understand the classwork. After meeting with the teacher, I learned more about the way the class was run and knew he needed much more structure to understand the class.

Independent reading/writing/cooperative group with minimal direct teaching did not work for him, and he was not learning.

I did meet with the IEP case manager requesting someone teach him how to write/do research. I am not sure it ever happened.
So I started getting him help. The teacher and admin knew he was getting help. There was nothing mentioned about his essays all year long. Instead of showing it to one person, this time he showed it to 2 people and then memorized all the essays.
Had we been told anything during the year, we would have addressed it and corrected it.
This class for him was a sink or swim situation. He worked very hard and thought he was swimming, but alas, he sank at the very last moment.
Had this happened earlier in the year, it would have been a learning process. Now it has become a punitive experience.
Let's all move on.

So yes, Asian or Indian.

It's sad to think that this kid has probably already been expelled from college because his mother failed to be a parent.

[Anonymous]

NP. The point of tests isn't to test a kid's memory, it's to test their UNDERSTANDING of the material. It sounds to me like your son didn't understand the material, and you knew that, but you'd prepped him (with paid tutoring etc) to the point where, combined with his photographic memory, he could rattle off a good essay. That's not a demonstration of learning, it's a demonstration of a kid with a photographic memory whose parents prepped him well, but who still didn't understand the material being tested.

I've taught at the college level for several years, and caught numerous cheaters in that time. It all becomes clear when they can't answer similar questions, can't answer questions about their own answers, etc.

Most kids don't have a photographic memory, hence why they offer the list of topics beforehand. It's impossible for them to rattle off an entire essay perfectly that they don't necessarily understand.

If you want your kid to get good grades, it sounds like you'll need to prep him the way that everyone else does -- by making sure they actually understand the material.