(Utah Davis-Kinsey / Y-Press)

Ayanna Porter has watched kids in her class casually put a stick of gum in their mouths, then use the wrapper to scribble down test or homework answers.                                            

Next, they wad up the foil and toss it to friends. These kids unwrinkle the wrappers and copy down the answers they need for a test or homework.

Ayanna attends Stonybrook Middle School, but this Warren Township school is certainly not the only one with students looking for new ways to cheat on their school work.

Teachers say that students use cell phones and other electronics to text answers and eventake pictures of tests. 

These examples are part of a disturbing trend. According to a 2006 study by the Josephson Institute, a nonprofit center for youth ethics in Los Angeles, 60 percent of students cheated on a test, 1 in 3 used the Internet to plagiarize an assignment, and 62 percent lied to a teacher about something significant in the past 12 months.

“School has become a pressure cooker for kids, and as a result, I think we’re seeing the instances of cheating skyrocket,” says veteran North Central High School English teacher Jill Lyday.

But combating student cheating can often be tricky because teachers and students don’t agree on what signifies cheating.

Yolenia Rodriguez, an eighth grader at Raymond Park Middle School in Warren Township, defines cheating as copying another student’s work or letting other students copy. But Desiree Jones, a freshman at Owen Valley High School in Spencer, Ind. says that cheating typically involves stealing information from a teacher.

For example, a student might go up to the teacher’s desk and copy down answers – or even take a photograph of them -- while that teacher is out of the classroom, Desiree says. 

Also, students say that there are degrees of cheating. Yolenia and Ayanna say copying off someone’s answers during a test is serious cheating, but helping friends outside of class isn’t.

“Helping with homework is kind of cheating, but I don’t look at it like cheating all the way,” explains Yolenia.

Lyday suspects a lot of students cheat on homework, but says teachers may be partly to blame.

“When I come to school in the mornings, everybody’s sitting in the hallways, and I can see a lot of kids who appear to be copying other kids’ homework.

“If you’re giving homework, and you’re not checking it closely, kids will figure that out: ‘I can let this go because if it’s not worth that much to the teacher, it’s not worth much of my time.’ ”     

Too often, educators and parents haven’t given youth a clear definition of cheating, says Peter Schuhmann, a professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He was one of three authors of a study, “That’s Not Cheating, Is It? An Analysis of Student Definitions of Cheating,” published in The Journal of Economic Education in 2007. 

“We decided to test whether providing [students] with a definition of cheating made a difference in the amount of cheating that they reported,” Schuhmann says.

Once college students were provided with a definition, they reported much more cheating because they previously hadn’t considered certain behaviors, such as copying a paper or discussing answers to a take-home test, as cheating, he says.

Desiree knows what cheating is, she admits, but still helped a good friend cheat because she felt pressured.

The girl told her: “If you’re my friend you’ll actually do this for me,” Desiree says.

Desiree insists she could never tattle on a friend for cheating: “Because they’re my best   friends and you wouldn’t want them to do that to you.”

She says students will sometimes cheat because they get desperate or feel like grading isn’t fair. Teachers don’t explain the material well, or pick favorites in class that get more help or praise, Desiree says.

Through his study of 400 freshmen and sophomore college students, Schuhmann found that there are two types of students who tend to cheat the most: students with lower grades and students who thought receiving good grades was more important to their success than actually learning.

In the experience of Lyday, a different demographic is more likely to cheat: honors students.

“There is pressure now to get the highest grade so that you can get into the best school, and everybody’s in every advanced class that they can possibly take,” she says. “And [cheating] is so easy now…they just give in.”

In fact, Lyday saw firsthand as the school sponsor of the National Honor Society how high achievers sometimes stooped to cheating.

If a student in the society is caught cheating, he or she is brought before a faculty council and can be dismissed from the society as a result.

“In every single case that came before the council, they were dismissed from NHS,” says Lyday, who sponsored the society for a decade. “One time it was an officer [of NHS]…his disappearance was really noticed.”

The Washington Township teacher says it’s also much easier for computer savvy educators to discover dishonest students, particularly those who plagiarize.

For example, thousands of schools nationwide, including North Central High School, subscribe to “turnitin.com,” a service that tracks whether students have stolen words from other writers or researchers. Tracking via Google also works well, Lyday says.

And many teachers, especially those with experience like Lyday who has taught 32 years, quickly pick up on writing styles. “I know how each student writes. I know their individual voices. I know their style. And so it’s easier to notice,” she says.

In any case, Lyday and Schuhmann agree that cheating is wrong, no matter what.

“It’s stealing from the teacher and from the honest classmates who worked hard to earn a grade,” Schuhmann says.

Lyday stresses there are always other options to cheating.

Ask a teacher for homework help or request an extension on an assignment if you’ve procrastinated or taken on too many classes or responsibilities, she advises.

Yes, there may be a grade penalty, Lyday notes, but suggests students think of the alternatives: “A grade reduction is a lot easier to take than getting caught cheating and having your academic reputation ruined, losing your membership in honors things, and getting kicked off the debate team or getting an F on the assignment.”

Desiree and Ayanna both have turned to teachers instead of turning to cheating.

In the midst of a science test, Desiree describes getting confused. She’d missed some school and didn’t understand a lot of the material. She asked her teacher if she could have an extra day so she could studying the material she missed, and the teacher consented.

Ayanna’s learned to put this strategy to use whenever she doesn’t understand a homework problem or test question: “I always go up to the teacher and ask for help. She gives me a clue, and then I’ll get the question.”

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Navya Kumar, 17; Mallory St. Claire, 17; and Zoe Waltz, 17.

REPORTERS: Moira Corcoran, 11; and Sam Gabovitch, 11.

 I vow not to cheat?

By Arielle Johnson, 14

     Honor codes can prevent students from cheating, according to researcher Peter Schuhmann, a professor of economics at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

One such honor code can be found at the University of Richmond in Virginia. All freshmen must promise to follow school rules and pledge on their honor to honestly complete graded assignments.

The University of Richmond Code prohibits students from lying, cheating, sabotaging academic materials, and helping others break rules.

Students must also report infractions, which are reviewed by a grievance committee. If the committee files a charge, the accused student picks a representative for their side of the case.

Then they either plead guilty (leading to a sanction hearing) or innocent (leading to a trial with the school's Honor Court as a jury).

If a student is found guilty, consequences can range from a warning to expulsion.

"At the University of Richmond, where there is a formal honor code which is very well-published…students had a much better grasp on the concept of cheating," Schuhmann says. "There was much less cheating than at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where there is not a formal honor code for the students."