Cheating on a higher scale

News spreads fast, but not as fast as cheating. Another cheating scandal in the AP U.S. History classes has hit Chantilly. Before spring break, the AP U.S. teachers assigned a take-home test to all of the students, as practice for the trimester exam the day back.

“We gave them a multiple choice test that was given to us by the College Board,” AP U.S. teacher Charles Demek said. “It had not been released, and it was not supposed to be released by the orders of College Board to the public.”

However, the answers were found online and distributed among the students through various sources of communications such as Facebook and cell phones. A hard copy of the answer key from College Board was found in the SGA room by a teacher, who reported this incident to the social studies department.

“I think many of them passed it around on Monday [after spring break] and people simply copied the answers,” Demek said.

The take home test, instead of counting as a test grade, simply ended up as a small completion grade. Students who honestly took the test were disappointed.

“I was pretty mad because most people were counting on the test for a grade boost,” junior Roni Chang said.

Some students found that the change, making the take-home test a completion grade, useful.

“I took the take-home test honestly and I actually did worse on it then I would normally on a test, so it was kind of a plus for me,” junior Rachel Carle said.

Other students said that the cheating was inevitable despite the great trust that the teachers place in AP students.

“I feel that the teachers shouldn’t have given us the take-home test because people are going to look on the internet, [and] that is just what’s going to happen,” junior Nicole Rhoads said.

As a result of this incident, Demek said that no take-home tests will be given next year; everything will be done in school.

Not only was cheating discovered for the take-home exam, the same day another scandal erupted.

Demek said that students in his 2 period were caught telling students in his 6 period and 8 period AP U.S classes that the trimester exam, administered the day after spring break, had been the College Board 2006 released exam.

Immediately after 2 period had finished their test, students were found in the library and in other computer labs during lunch, looking up the answer key from College Board.

Some students, who had seen the released test over break while they were studying, approached Demek and admitted that they had already taken this exam. As punishment, Demek decided to start a new slate, not counting the test at all, and administered a new exam after the AP U.S. exam.

“I felt that it was compromised, and instead of doing [a new test] just for 8 period, I did a new test for everybody,” Demek said. “[Charles] Koch and [Phil] Cronin felt their students were not compromised because they don’t have an 8 period.”

The specific person who started the chain of cheating is not known, but the teachers were well aware that cheating had taken place.

“People don’t get 100 percent from tests from College Board,” Demek said. “Secondly, the scores from my 8 period were exponentially higher than normal.”

Even the students were surprised that the cheating had escalated to such a grand scale.

“The fact that the cheating was so careless and so widespread was pretty ridiculous,” Carle said. “There’s cheating in every course, it was just surprising it was so organized.”

Extremely disappointed in their students, the social studies department cancelled the breakfast they had been planning for their students the morning before the AP U.S. exam. Cronin even decided to cancel his “Food Fridays,” where students bring in food and drinks every Friday, for the rest of the year.

This is the third year in a row in which cheating has been discovered in the AP U.S. History classes. Last year, the take home test was also compromised. Two years ago, teachers had realized students had been obtaining test answers from previous alumni who had kept their tests. AP U.S. is one of the most common AP classes taken at Chantilly.

“With the push for everyone to take AP’s sometimes it’s not the people who are willing to take the effort to take the course honestly,” Carle said.

cheating Issue 8, News, Print