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conulyFirst, let me clarify a few things. Lots of people are commenting who don't know one thing about what they're saying, which is especially grating when they happen to live in NYC and ought to know better than to say any old thing that pops into their heads.
1. Nowadays, there is no "general diploma" in NYC schools. You have to take an array of Regents exams. Anybody who wishes to comment that they didn't have to should educate themselves.
http://schools.nyc.gov/RulesPolicies/GraduationRequirements/default.htm
This theoretically made schools tougher, but it's no surprise that it probably only made the Regents easier... at least for the "required" subjects.
2. Stuyvesant has an even stricter standard of tests. Students there don't have the option of just taking the "easy" Regents, as one commenter blithely claimed.
http://www.stuy.edu/academics/grad_require.jsp
3. Yes, Stuy has very nice facilities. (It even has lockers... though not nearly enough for every student.) This is not because Stuy kids are especially favored by the city. In fact, the city spends slightly less per student than at most high schools. It's because the building is owned by BPC, and they use it after hours. They're the ones who pay the upkeep on the school. The city just borrows it.
3a. The school also gets significant private donations, which IS unfair... but again, you can't really blame this on favoritism from the city.
4. Not every student at Stuy is a. white or b. wealthy or c. both. Actually, there's a significant minority presence (mostly Asian) and quite a lot of not-so-rich students.
Admittedly, there are also a lot of rich white guys, and the school isn't very diverse (not many blacks or Hispanics), but this is not just a rich kid's school. The city even runs a program nowadays to help lower-income students pass the test, because their parents are less likely to be able to pay for special tutoring.
5. It's a public school. The only way to get in is to pass a test. You can't bribe your way in, or do really well on an interview, or get in via any sort of system gaming. Well, except for the aforementioned tutoring.
Now, the news that's coming out is that the students caught receiving test answers will be forced to retake their Regents. These are not optional tests for these kids, they HAVE to take them to graduate.
On the one hand, I agree that this is not really a very good punishment. I think that they should be allowed to retake the tests after taking the course again (either in summer school, or after redoing this year), and I think they should not be permitted to get the "advanced" Regents diploma (which is largely equivalent to a Regents endorsed diploma back when RCTs were still around).
However, on the other hand, I find the attitudes of many commenters to the various articles I've seen on this subject appalling. Many people seem to think that the best (and only!) solution to cheating is harsher punishments. They want these kids to be expelled from the school and not allowed to enter college or get a good job ever. That'll show 'em!
Pardon me if I think that punishing people for life because of an error in high school is generally a bad idea.
First, I think it's just over the top. What they did was wrong, but there are gradations of wrongness.
Secondly, I think that it won't really work as a deterrent because you simply can't catch all or most cheaters. If you could, they wouldn't do it at all. So long as most cheaters are getting away with it, people will continue to do so. They won't worry about the potential consequence because they KNOW it's not likely to hit them. There's just no way! They caught, so far, what - 70 students in this little cheating ring? If they caught 70 students in just this one incident, I guarantee that there is a rampant and widespread problem. There is almost no chance that this is anything LIKE an isolated incident.
And thirdly, punishment doesn't address the root cause of the problem. The root cause is that Stuy is a real pressure cooker for students. To an extent, the whole culture nowadays is, but Stuy and Hunter and the other schools like this are a breed apart.
When I went, there were largely no resources for struggling students there. And a LOT of kids struggle at Stuy. This was a known issue, and there wasn't much help. A lot of kids have problems because they're just not that smart, but they studied a lot and worked a lot and got in, and now they're in over their heads (but they can't quit because it'd upset their families, they're sure). On the other side, equally many kids struggle because they ARE that smart, so smart that they're used to breezing through their classes, and now they can't and they can't adapt either (they also can't quit because their entire self-image is based upon being so smart, and quitting is like saying they're not. Smart people can be exceedingly stupid sometimes.)
And the reason there were no resources was because it wasn't a priority. Stuy is a very large school. There are 3300 students there. It is very easy to slip through the cracks, and everybody says they care, but what I remember is jokes from the teachers when a kid made a little mistake. "What do you think this is, Brooklyn Tech?" I remember being constantly told how brilliant we all were, and the air that just by going there, we'd get into whatever college we wanted.
Some people blame "entitlement" for this cheating scandal. Reading that paragraph no doubt makes them more convinced. "Oh, you tell them how smart they are, they think they deserve to pass without trying." That might be the case for some students, but I'm thinking it's more like panic. If they don't pass, they have no idea what they're going to do. (Well, they know what they're going to do, they're going to fail. Then what?) If just getting a wrong answer in math class is something worth mild teasing about, if Brooklyn Tech isn't good enough, what on earth happens to the student who can't even pass the Regents like everybody else in the city?
The situation isn't much better for middle of the road students. At least everybody acknowledges there's a problem with the ones who are struggling, but what about the one who gets 70s and 80s?
There's an outdoor area on the 5th floor attached to the cafeteria. When I was there, nobody was ever allowed out on it. I don't know if that's still true or why that was the case then, but the story that went around is that the year it opened, one or two or three students jumped. This was also the reason given for the lecture we all received about "You're not allowed to cross West Street, use the bridge", that it wasn't that the street is inherently dangerous to cross (it really is) but that some kid one year deliberately got hit by a car. Stupid stories, but the hidden message everybody was passing around is "Suicide. It's a thing. They're worried we'll all snap and kill ourselves."
So, yeah, I'm not really surprised about the cheating. I'm surprised it took so long to catch, but I'm not surprised about it. If you want to solve it, really solve it, it's going to take a lot more than punishing the perps, though. The whole culture of the school has to be changed. Additionally, there has to be, throughout the entire state, less of an emphasis on standardized tests and more of an emphasis on real assessment of learning. (Remember, the easier they are to grade, the easier it is to cheat!) Essays are better than multiple choice, smaller classes are better than large ones, and helping kids who need help is definitely better than not helping them. That means making this help both logistically and psychologically easier to attain. If you have to go and make arrangements yourself with your teacher, and that means admitting semi-publicly that you're not smart enough to do it on your own, that will keep a lot of kids from seeking it at all.
Now, with that said, I'm aware that none of this justifies cheating. It's still wrong, no matter how sobby your story. But sometimes fixing a problem means you have to do more than just set out the same out punishment.
1. Nowadays, there is no "general diploma" in NYC schools. You have to take an array of Regents exams. Anybody who wishes to comment that they didn't have to should educate themselves.
http://schools.nyc.gov/RulesPolicies/GraduationRequirements/default.htm
This theoretically made schools tougher, but it's no surprise that it probably only made the Regents easier... at least for the "required" subjects.
2. Stuyvesant has an even stricter standard of tests. Students there don't have the option of just taking the "easy" Regents, as one commenter blithely claimed.
http://www.stuy.edu/academics/grad_require.jsp
3. Yes, Stuy has very nice facilities. (It even has lockers... though not nearly enough for every student.) This is not because Stuy kids are especially favored by the city. In fact, the city spends slightly less per student than at most high schools. It's because the building is owned by BPC, and they use it after hours. They're the ones who pay the upkeep on the school. The city just borrows it.
3a. The school also gets significant private donations, which IS unfair... but again, you can't really blame this on favoritism from the city.
4. Not every student at Stuy is a. white or b. wealthy or c. both. Actually, there's a significant minority presence (mostly Asian) and quite a lot of not-so-rich students.
Admittedly, there are also a lot of rich white guys, and the school isn't very diverse (not many blacks or Hispanics), but this is not just a rich kid's school. The city even runs a program nowadays to help lower-income students pass the test, because their parents are less likely to be able to pay for special tutoring.
5. It's a public school. The only way to get in is to pass a test. You can't bribe your way in, or do really well on an interview, or get in via any sort of system gaming. Well, except for the aforementioned tutoring.
Now, the news that's coming out is that the students caught receiving test answers will be forced to retake their Regents. These are not optional tests for these kids, they HAVE to take them to graduate.
On the one hand, I agree that this is not really a very good punishment. I think that they should be allowed to retake the tests after taking the course again (either in summer school, or after redoing this year), and I think they should not be permitted to get the "advanced" Regents diploma (which is largely equivalent to a Regents endorsed diploma back when RCTs were still around).
However, on the other hand, I find the attitudes of many commenters to the various articles I've seen on this subject appalling. Many people seem to think that the best (and only!) solution to cheating is harsher punishments. They want these kids to be expelled from the school and not allowed to enter college or get a good job ever. That'll show 'em!
Pardon me if I think that punishing people for life because of an error in high school is generally a bad idea.
First, I think it's just over the top. What they did was wrong, but there are gradations of wrongness.
Secondly, I think that it won't really work as a deterrent because you simply can't catch all or most cheaters. If you could, they wouldn't do it at all. So long as most cheaters are getting away with it, people will continue to do so. They won't worry about the potential consequence because they KNOW it's not likely to hit them. There's just no way! They caught, so far, what - 70 students in this little cheating ring? If they caught 70 students in just this one incident, I guarantee that there is a rampant and widespread problem. There is almost no chance that this is anything LIKE an isolated incident.
And thirdly, punishment doesn't address the root cause of the problem. The root cause is that Stuy is a real pressure cooker for students. To an extent, the whole culture nowadays is, but Stuy and Hunter and the other schools like this are a breed apart.
When I went, there were largely no resources for struggling students there. And a LOT of kids struggle at Stuy. This was a known issue, and there wasn't much help. A lot of kids have problems because they're just not that smart, but they studied a lot and worked a lot and got in, and now they're in over their heads (but they can't quit because it'd upset their families, they're sure). On the other side, equally many kids struggle because they ARE that smart, so smart that they're used to breezing through their classes, and now they can't and they can't adapt either (they also can't quit because their entire self-image is based upon being so smart, and quitting is like saying they're not. Smart people can be exceedingly stupid sometimes.)
And the reason there were no resources was because it wasn't a priority. Stuy is a very large school. There are 3300 students there. It is very easy to slip through the cracks, and everybody says they care, but what I remember is jokes from the teachers when a kid made a little mistake. "What do you think this is, Brooklyn Tech?" I remember being constantly told how brilliant we all were, and the air that just by going there, we'd get into whatever college we wanted.
Some people blame "entitlement" for this cheating scandal. Reading that paragraph no doubt makes them more convinced. "Oh, you tell them how smart they are, they think they deserve to pass without trying." That might be the case for some students, but I'm thinking it's more like panic. If they don't pass, they have no idea what they're going to do. (Well, they know what they're going to do, they're going to fail. Then what?) If just getting a wrong answer in math class is something worth mild teasing about, if Brooklyn Tech isn't good enough, what on earth happens to the student who can't even pass the Regents like everybody else in the city?
The situation isn't much better for middle of the road students. At least everybody acknowledges there's a problem with the ones who are struggling, but what about the one who gets 70s and 80s?
There's an outdoor area on the 5th floor attached to the cafeteria. When I was there, nobody was ever allowed out on it. I don't know if that's still true or why that was the case then, but the story that went around is that the year it opened, one or two or three students jumped. This was also the reason given for the lecture we all received about "You're not allowed to cross West Street, use the bridge", that it wasn't that the street is inherently dangerous to cross (it really is) but that some kid one year deliberately got hit by a car. Stupid stories, but the hidden message everybody was passing around is "Suicide. It's a thing. They're worried we'll all snap and kill ourselves."
So, yeah, I'm not really surprised about the cheating. I'm surprised it took so long to catch, but I'm not surprised about it. If you want to solve it, really solve it, it's going to take a lot more than punishing the perps, though. The whole culture of the school has to be changed. Additionally, there has to be, throughout the entire state, less of an emphasis on standardized tests and more of an emphasis on real assessment of learning. (Remember, the easier they are to grade, the easier it is to cheat!) Essays are better than multiple choice, smaller classes are better than large ones, and helping kids who need help is definitely better than not helping them. That means making this help both logistically and psychologically easier to attain. If you have to go and make arrangements yourself with your teacher, and that means admitting semi-publicly that you're not smart enough to do it on your own, that will keep a lot of kids from seeking it at all.
Now, with that said, I'm aware that none of this justifies cheating. It's still wrong, no matter how sobby your story. But sometimes fixing a problem means you have to do more than just set out the same out punishment.
