Look, this is all so objective.
I wrote a totally original paper to test how these plagiarism websites work. It gave me almost 40% and showed sites that might have influenced me. Grading papers is a very objective thing. Why is it so difficult to understand that more than one person may had the same thought process.
When a teacher wants to punish a student, the easiest thing to do is to accuse the student of plagiarism. When unable to prove, the student will be accused of not having original ideas. If that fails, the student will be accused of writing in a different style. Again, no proof except for punishing the student with a failing grade.

There is so much cheating and grade inflation/deflation in schools, it's ridiculous.

Anonymous wrote:Wow $5???? It was so expensive in the 90s. Like $250. Went to a private college.

That's why America is a disaster. We'll make America great again with Trump's plan to imposed a 5000% tariff on foreign-written term papers.

Definitely not.

No, of course this is not common, as it is cheating because you are not writing your own paper.

I would think this would work in college but not in high school. Sections are much smaller - 20 kids or fewer and teachers ask for progress outlines and drafts. Also there is a fair bit of in class writing so teachers would have a strong sense for each student's voice - I don't think you could doctor a paper to have your own voice very easily - almost as much work as writing the paper from scratch.

Anonymous wrote:I had a Big 3 student describe to me how students have offshored their term papers to services that charge as little as $5 to custom write a term paper for them. Since the papers are written for the prompt and are original, it is impossible to detect them through turnitin.com. I googled it and there are a bunch of services to order from online. Is this common?

What's turnitin.com?

Wow $5???? It was so expensive in the 90s. Like $250. Went to a private college.

Parents use tutors for papers, what is the difference.

My son did a group project and the tutor for another boy emailed us "talking points" for my son. I laughed out loud. My son might get an A+ instead of lowly A.

Anonymous wrote:Simple answer, NO. The teachers can spot those papers a mile way. No one gets away with such blatant and stupid plagiarism. Only the most idiotic and desperate students would attempt it. Struggling students can always talk through a paper with the teacher in office hours and get lots of extra help.

As the OP stated, some of these sites have people that custun write papers for the student. Not so easy for a teacher to detect, particularly if the student does a bit of editing to make the paper appear to be written in his or her own "style". This might take the kid an hour or do but it is still a lot less work than writing their own paper from scratch. i know people who attended top colleges who got away with doing this kind of thing multiple time; a couple of them who attended top SLACs where actual professors, not TAs, graded their papers without realising that they didn't actually write them. I don't doubt that there are high school student -- even at top schools --who have gotten away with using these web sites, as well.

They blare effectively obsolete at a ny school where teachers care and have an Internet connection

Paper writing services like these have been around for years. Knew two people in college who used them.

A senior male at a big3 was thrown out over Xmas break my DD's senior year. Everyone knew why, but also knew he was warned several times first. Just didn't think they would actually do it. Surprise.

Unless you have your parents' credit card how would you pay?

Simple answer, NO. The teachers can spot those papers a mile way. No one gets away with such blatant and stupid plagiarism. Only the most idiotic and desperate students would attempt it. Struggling students can always talk through a paper with the teacher in office hours and get lots of extra help.

I had a Big 3 student describe to me how students have offshored their term papers to services that charge as little as $5 to custom write a term paper for them. Since the papers are written for the prompt and are original, it is impossible to detect them through turnitin.com. I googled it and there are a bunch of services to order from online. Is this common?