High school students are increasingly likely to cheat their way to the top, according to the latest data from a nationwide survey about teenage ethics.
In 2006, more than six in 10 of about 34,000 high schoolers admitted to cheating on at least one exam in the past year. For 2008, data to be released in early November shows a slight increase, said Michael Josephson, founder of the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute, which publishes the Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth.
Students who admitted to shoplifting increased by several percentage points, as well, from about 28 percent in 2006.
“Those are pretty shocking numbers when you realize this is the next generation of corporate executives and nuclear inspectors,” Josephson said.
Students admit cheating is a problem, but blame it on increased pressure to get into good colleges and the lack of a consistent school culture to promote honesty.
“The pressure definitely gets to people – each year seems more than the last,” said Ben Moskowitz, a recent graduate of Bethesda’s Walter Johnson High School and last year’s student member of the Montgomery County school board.
“I think what tends to happen is that students sign a code of conduct or academic integrity at the beginning of the year, and then they never see it again,” Moskowitz said. Despite schoolwide policies, “it’s not really integrated into the school experience.”
In addition, some teachers don’t do enough to define what cheating actually is, Moskowitz said, allowing some students to feel fine about copying passages from the Internet without citations.
In 2006, more than one-third of high school students turned in an assignment cut and pasted from the Internet, according to the ethics report card.
While many educators who study student dishonesty conclude there’s a pressing need for schools to foster a greater love of learning for its own sake, Josephson said there are simpler solutions in the short term.
“You could cut it in half with mechanical changes,” Josephson said. “Don’t give the same test to different classes on the same day, don’t allow cell phones and PDAs in the classroom, just don’t make it so darned easy to cheat.”
Beyond that, he said, schools need to follow Moskowitz’s instinct and make integrity a part of the everyday classroom experience.
“Character education programs are a very effective and vital part of that — not anti-cheating exclusively,” Josephson said. “But just how to be a good person.”
