Pssst - What's the Answer?

What you are looking at, dear reader, is the ugly face of dishonesty. Yep, you are viewing an honest-to-goodness, hidden-up-the-sleeve, stolen-answer cheat sheet. This one is the second of two I confiscated from students on Friday. One group of students is at their midterm point in our program and, therefore, were scheduled to take their evaluation exam to determine how far they've progressed in the last five months.

I was really encouraged by their initial scores - some of them made huge jumps from sixth and seventh grade levels to twelfth grade level. I thought they had just really buckled down and worked hard because our program director had offered two additional personal paid-leave days for anyone whose score increased by more than two grade levels. Yes, I am Naive Nancy.

Having discovered the cheat sheets (from two students who aren't as good at hiding their actions as some of the others), I now realize that the majority of this group was just outright cheating. Someone stole an answer sheet, copied it, and circulated it among the others.

Frankly, it was really disheartening and it made me really angry. I took the tests of the two I caught and sent them and everyone else with these giant grade jumps home for the day. We'll retest in the next couple of weeks and see how they do.

I know I probably shouldn't take it personally but I do. I can't help but feel like the hand of assistance that I hold out to my students just got spat on. Gross but true.