|
Mark Oliver, a Hall High School librarian, had to find out what
was going on. So he went undercover.
From his West Hartford, Conn., school, he logged onto the Internet
and became a virtual student seeking a ready-made term paper.
No problem, the operators of High Performance Papers told him.
The web site would tailor a paper to his exact needs.
But shortly before Oliver's paper was theoretically due, complications
arose. The web site operators apologized because the paper would
not be ready on time. Why? They were grossly overbooked -- it
was the height of term-paper season, and they were fielding 800
requests a day from high school and college kids.
"It makes you wonder: Is anybody writing their own papers anymore?"
says Oliver, running a palm over his hair as he sits in the school
library. "It's like a shopping market."
Cheating in school used to be limited to relatively low-tech
tricks like scribbling equations on the cuff of a shirt. But the
Internet, high-powered calculators, electronic pagers, and even
fax machines have raised the art of cheating to levels far beyond
the reach of harried educators. Some schools are struggling to
fight back in a high-tech game of cat and mouse. But they're asking
themselves: Can we really win this game?
"It's hard to hold on to -- to grasp, because it's happening
at so many different levels," says Ken Poppe, a Hall teacher who
is co-chairman of the school's Academic Integrity Committee.
Across the country, middle and high school kids are flocking
to web sites like The Evil
House of Cheat and School
Sucks, where they can download papers or review classroom-tested
cheating tricks. But they don't stop there. Internet chat rooms
are abuzz with students trading papers, too.
What's more, math and science students are secretly storing
notes and formulas in high-powered calculators to call up during
tests. Other kids are setting electronic pagers to store messages
they can conveniently call up when the teacher's not looking.
Even relatively older technologies like the fax machine have become
more useful to kids. One Warminster, Pa., science teacher discovered
students using their parents' fax machines to copy each other's
homework faster.
In a nationwide survey of 356 high school teachers by The
American School Board Journal (ASBJ) and the Education Writers
Association (EWA), nine of 10 teachers say cheating is a problem
in their school, and nearly as many say increasing numbers of
students are plagiarizing information off the Internet. (A full
report of the study will appear in the April issue of ASBJ.) Internet
plagiarism has escalated so quickly that two Harrisburg, Pa.,
entrepreneurs recently started selling anti-plagiarism software
called Integriguard.
Frustrated by the trend, educators have fought back in the courts.
The most closely watched case involved Boston University, which
filed a lawsuit to shut down several cheating web sites. Much
to the university's dismay, a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit
in December.
Catching the mouse
Teachers say digital cheaters used to be easier to catch because
they made more careless mistakes. Marcia Hilsabeck, an English
teacher at Round Rock High School in Texas, chuckles when recalling
how one of her students printed a research paper off the Internet,
created a title page, and turned in the assignment. He was unaware
the web address (URL) of the site he plagiarized was printed in
the top corner of every page he downloaded. Hilsabeck nabbed him.
She has nabbed other students, too. For a first offense, a student
must do the assignment again under Hilsabeck's supervision, and
the highest grade possible for the new work is a D. To strike
fear into students, first-time cheaters are shown a sample letter
saying the school will rescind college application references
it has agreed to send, or has already sent, if the student is
caught again. "I make a point to my students that I do a lot of
surfing on the net," Hilsabeck says. "The main thing that makes
kids leery is they know I know where to go."
Still, the Texas teacher is worried. She deliberately assigns
narrow topics for papers to make it harder for students to find
Internet resources to copy. But the kids are responding by polishing
their deceptions more carefully. And Hilsabeck says the next crop
of high school students will make today's kids look like Luddites:
"When the kids who are in seventh and eighth grade now are in
high school, they'll be able to deceive anybody."
Back at Hall High School, it's a December morning and nine giddy
freshmen are gathered around a table in the basement cafeteria.
During a lull in the conversation, one boy eyes English teacher
Kerry Meehan, who is sitting across the table. Finally, the young
man blurts out that he's willing to share a story:
Last year, in eighth grade, he downloaded text verbatim from
Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia and pasted it into a word processing
program. Click. Drag. Copy. Paste. Easy as that, he says. Then
it was simply a matter of deconstructing the piece into jumbled
teen lingo: "You have to edit all the obvious stuff you wouldn't
say," he says, instructing his listeners in the fine art of plagiarism.
"Take out the big words. Some teachers know I wouldn't say those
long words."
Did it work? "Yeah," he says, leaning back in his chair. "I
got away with it."
Unfortunately, it's the rare occasion when students are caught.
In a survey of the nation's best students by Who's Who Among
American High School Students, researchers found roughly three
out of four high achievers admitted cheating in school. A whopping
95 percent of those who admitted cheating said they were never
caught.
With the highest percentage in the state of students taking
Advanced Placement exams and 84 percent of its graduates going
to four-year colleges, Hall is a microcosm of high achievers.
To their credit, school officials are not naive to the unintended
consequences of academic pressure: They concede kids feel pressure
to cheat. But that hasn't always been the case.
Just two years ago, the school had no policy specifically addressing
student cheating. (In the ASBJ/EWA survey, roughly one
in three teachers say their school or district has no such policy,
either.) A questionnaire given to Hall students, parents, and
teachers jolted the school into action because it tagged cheating
as one of the biggest concerns among all three groups. What's
more, research by Hall's Academic Integrity Committee concluded
high-tech cheating was far more sophisticated and widespread than
anyone ever imagined.
Now, the school has a tougher academic honor code that specifically
addresses digital cheating. Other high schools in the West Hartford
district have followed Hall's lead.
But digital cheating hasn't stopped.
Says a Hall junior: "I know a lot of people who put every single
formula they may need for a test into their graphing calculators,
and few teachers ever know or check."
Karyn Hill, a Hall math teacher, is aware of that trick. To
show a visitor how it is done, she places a calculator on her
desk. Sitting at the head of a quiet, empty classroom, she presses
a few fingers on the buttons as she outlines the steps.
"This can be programmed like a computer," she says. "Some kids
are so advanced they can download information off the Internet
[into the calculator]. I had one kid even play music on it."
As a countermeasure, Hill designs her tests into two sections.
One section allows calculators because it does not require memorization.
The other section prohibits their use.
Before midterm exams, Hall's math department takes the unusual
step of erasing the machines' memories. Hill says the kids get
upset because they don't want games or personal information stored
in their calculators erased. "So we offer to supply them with
graphing calculators for the test," she says. "But we don't have
a lot of spares anymore."
Upping the ante, some whiz kids program their calculators to
look as though the memory has been erased when in fact it hasn't.
Hill knows that trick. She smiles resignedly: "If they're that
clever, then I guess they win."
A fall from cheater's paradise
"Cheaters! Cheaters! Cheaters!" The words march across the computer
screen as visitors enter Cheaters
Paradise. The greeting continues: "Your teachers have been
notified that you are a cheater. ... If you believe this, then
you are a moron and will never get away with cheating." On the
other hand, the message goes on: "If you think you can handle
being a lying, cheating, deceitful individual, click on 'Freshly
Squeezed'" -- an icon featuring O.J. Simpson's Los Angeles police
mug shot. "Don't look at me," the icon's talk bubble says. "I
didn't do it."
Click on O.J. and you're in a world of virtually endless cheating
tips, with titles like "Who's that paging me?" For students who
own pagers, here's the trick Cheaters Paradise outlines: Before
an exam, call the pager and leave as much test information in
a message as possible. Then set the pager to vibrate rather than
beep. When test time arrives, turn on the pager and it instantly
becomes an electronic cheat sheet.
If Cheaters Paradise doesn't have what students are looking
for, they can quickly link to School
Sucks. Or Cheat
Factory. Or Cheater.com.
Or A1 Termpaper. Or
the Evil House of Cheat,
which offers more than "9,500 essays in 44 categories." Some of
the essays include grades and comments given by high school teachers.
One Hall senior who went there got caught.
In a teenage twist of logic, the boy -- who plans to go to college
-- says his trip to the Evil House of Cheat was really his teacher's
fault. He didn't like the way she was teaching, so he thought
cheating was a justifiable response. He's not alone in his logic:
If you don't like a teacher, many kids say, it's perfectly OK
to cheat. If you do like the teacher, well, that's a little murkier.
The teacher, Heather Maynard, had required that students turn
in a portfolio of writing assignments. Some papers were graded
and included teacher comments, but others were not graded. The
boy thought it was a waste of time to write papers that would
not be graded. So he took a risk. He copied a paper verbatim from
the Evil House of Cheat and slipped it in his portfolio.
But Maynard was on the lookout. A colleague told her that this
student plagiarized parts of an essay the year before. Now, reading
through his writing portfolio, Maynard was startled by how quickly
some of his writing had improved. With a colleague's help and
the ubiquitous powers of a computer search engine, she conducted
a background check on one essay. "It was the first one that came
up -- word for word," she says. "It was amazing he could be so
bold as to do that."
The upshot was that the boy received a D+ for the grading period.
His parents were contacted, and he was given a failing grade in
citizenship. All Hall students receive citizenship grades. But
because the school's cheating policy does not carry over from
year to year, the boy escaped the stiffer penalties that come
with multiple cheating offenses. That bothers Maynard. She wants
to see the school take a tougher stand against repeat offenders.
What about the boy himself? Did he feel guilty about plagiarizing?
"Not really," he says. "I know it's wrong. But no matter what,
the temptation to plagiarize and cheat will always be there."
Hackers complicate the chase
Black boots. Black socks. Black jeans. Black shirt. Black leather
jacket. That's what the boy is wearing. It's part of the hacker
persona, and he likes that. He is a student at North Springs High
School in Fulton County, Ga., a sprawling Atlanta suburb of strip
malls, fast food restaurants, and high-tech firms. He feels safe
in anonymity but craves attention. That's why he's talking to
a reporter but doesn't want his name in print.
On this morning, the boy is doing time in In-School-Suspension
-- a cramped, low-ceilinged room of tiny cubicles reserved for
today's miscreants. A middle-aged man keeps a close watch over
the mostly male group as the boy in black steps into a closet-sized,
glass-enclosed office behind the teacher's desk.
The boy has his own laptop and sports 13 e-mail addresses with
various aliases. He claims he has the know-how to hack into the
school's network, where grades and confidential files are kept.
He also claims he hacked into the network at his old school in
New York and changed his grades as well as those of his friends.
Whether his story is true remains a mystery because the boy
says he was never caught. But the fact that he is thinking about
it -- well, that is worrisome.
"Anybody can break a code if they have enough knowledge," concedes
Susan Miscally, North Springs' network technology specialist.
"There's always a way."
At New Berlin Eisenhower High School in Wisconsin, it all started
with a student peeking over the shoulder of a teacher's aide who
was logging onto a computer. According to Vice Principal Robert
Krecak, the student recorded the password and passed it along
to friends. Two boys then downloaded a hacking software program
called Key Logger from the Internet. Using Key Logger, they recorded
the keystrokes of a system administrator using another computer.
That, in turn, gave them a log-in name and password that enabled
them to dig deeper. Eventually, they had access to students' grades
and other confidential files. Krecak says the boys did not change
grades, however.
School officials were on the trail of the intruders after another
student reported that someone had been snooping around in his
computer files. Once the culprits were caught, school computers
had to be shut down for a week to install new passwords and a
better security system.
Now, Krecak says, the school changes the passwords of its computers
more frequently. It also conducts a weekly network check, sweeping
the system to see if it has been infiltrated. And school officials
are more careful about logging onto computers when students are
around.
Krecak has these warnings for educators: "First of all, never
underestimate the abilities of your students. And always assume
the worst when it comes to security. Otherwise, the worst will
happen."
The worst did happen at Mergenthaler Vocational Technical School
in Baltimore, Md. Two years ago, the brother of a Mergenthaler
student hacked into the Baltimore City school district's computer
network and changed his brother's grades, according to Principal
Gene Lawrence. The boy also changed the grades of his brother's
friend. Lawrence says some grades were changed from failure to
passing, and others from C's to A's. Had it not been for an alert
teacher who noticed the grade changes, the scam probably would
have worked.
"We were trying to improve [computer security]," Lawrence says,
looking back on the incident. "Somebody beat us to it. And now
we're trying to improve again." The culprit was never charged
because school police didn't have enough evidence, Lawrence says.
And that bothers him. But he says the district has installed a
better computer security system since then. Among other things,
the new system separates the district's grade reporting program
from the city's main network.
Back at North Springs, the boy in black is smiling coyly. Subtle
changes are safest, he says. You don't change a D to an A -- you
just upgrade it to a C. That way nobody notices.
"It's a lot of fun to outwit the system," he says. "The way
I look at it, whose fault is it? Is it mine because I'm smart
enough to do this, or is it the school's because they're too dumb
to catch me?"
Kevin Bushweller is a senior editor of Electronic
School and The American School Board Journal. He received a fellowship
from the Education Writers Association to investigate the problem
of student cheating.
SNEAK A PEEK AT THESE CHEATING SITES
If you haven't already, you should take a look
at some of the web sites students are using to pick up ready-made
term papers and tips on cheating. Here's a small sampling:
Cheaters Paradise
www.jaberwocky.com/cheat
The Evil House of Cheat
www.cheathouse.com
School Sucks
www.schoolsucks.com
Cheat Factory
cheatfactory.hypermart.net
Cheater.com
www.cheater.com
Genius Papers
www.geniuspapers.com
Schoolpapers.com
www.schoolpapers.com
Research Papers Online A+
www.ezwrite.com
Thousands of Papers
www.termpapers-on-file.com
A1 Termpaper
www.a1-termpaper.com
|
