Is honesty still the best policy? Stiff competition for grades has led to a rise in academic cheating.

As Jake Wood stared down at his spelling assignment, one question glared back at him. He racked his brain for the correct answer, but drew a blank. Moments later, he spotted the answer he needed on a classmate's paper.

"I didn't know how to spell the word," says the 12-year-old from Liberty Township, Ohio. "I found the answer on somebody else's paper and put it on my paper. I didn't feel right because I knew I didn't do it myself."

While feelings of guilt may haunt students like Jake, the pressure to make the grade often wins out. According to a study by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, 62 percent of high school students in the United States cheated on a test in the past year. Many students think that copying and cribbing are the only ways to get ahead. But they leave behind a trail of lies, deceit, and phony grades.

* A|| About the Grades

The reasons students give for cheating are varied--and so are the kids who cheat. "It's a big myth that only certain types of people cheat," says Steve Peha, president of Teaching That Makes Sense. "We're all inclined to cheat when the pressure to achieve good grades is greater than what we think we can do on our own in a given situation."

High-achieving students are especially vulnerable to that pressure. Burdened by demanding classes and high expectations, more and more "brainy" students are cheating their way to As, says Denise Clark Pope, a lecturer at Stanford University's School of Education.

"The worst offenders are often the kids in the higher-track classes," Pope told JS. "They know [cheating is] wrong, but in their heads, the alternative--getting a low grade and disappointing their parents--is worse. It's all about the grades."

Keeping up grades takes time--something students say is in short supply. In addition to mountains of homework, they have schedules crowded with extracurricular activities, household chores, and after-school jobs. There aren't enough hours in the day, it seems, to get everything done. So, many kids resort to cheating.

* Electronic Plagiarism 

Giving or receiving any inappropriate assistance on an assignment or an exam is cheating, whether it involves sneaking a look at your neighbor's test or scribbling notes on your palm. In recent years, however, some of these old-fashioned techniques have given way to a new trend: Internet plagiarism.

Every day, thousands of students copy phrases, paragraphs, and whole pages from the Internet, then try to pass those words off as their own work. This practice has been made easy by the availability of term papers and source documents on the Web.

But thanks to Turnitin.com and other sites, teachers are no longer defenseless against online cheaters. Turnitin subscribers receive reports that compare their students' papers to books, journals, other student papers, and the 8 billion pages on the Internet. Any evidence of plagiarism that turns up is detailed in the reports.

"We receive 40,000 papers a day, and 30 percent are less than original," says John Barrie of Turnitin.com.

"[Using our service] is an undeniable way to document whether a student did [his or her] own work."

* Everyone Loses

Barrie is on a mission to rid U.S. classrooms of cheaters. He doesn't agree with the easy explanation that cheaters hurt only themselves. "The people who are getting hurt are the hard-working students who are trying to compete honestly with their cheating peers," says Barrie.

Claire Kozlowski, 12, is one of those hardworking students. Most nights, she stays up late working on her homework. She resents classmates who aren't willing to do the same. "It makes me feel like I did all that hard work for nothing. Other people don't do the work, and they still end up getting the same grades as me," says the A student from West Chester, Ohio.

In the end, Claire can take pride in the fact that she earned her grades fair and square, says Mimi Doe, author of Nurturing Your Teenager's Soul. "If you want respect, earn it and study," says Doe, "or get help. Getting what's not yours is not a sweet victory. It's fake. It's a lie."

Just ask Jake. A week after he turned in his spelling assignment, he got the A he had been looking for. But instead of joy, he was full of regret. "I thought, 'I don't deserve this,'" says Jake. "It's not worth it to cheat to get a good grade, because you're not doing the best you can. All you're doing is copying the best that somebody else can do."

Word to Know

* plagiarism: using other people's words or ideas without crediting them.

Your Turn

THINK ABOUT IT

Why do so many students cheat? What can be done to discourage cheating in schools?

* OBJECTIVES

Students should understand * Recent studies have found that a high percentage of U.S. students cheat in school.

* Cheating affects both the student who cheats and honest classmates.

* WORD TO KNOW

ethics: a set of moral values; the principles by which a person or a society is guided

* TEACHING STRATEGY

Ask students: "Are there any shortcuts to achievement in such activities as sports, business, or schoolwork? Why or why not?"

* BACKGROUND

Recent studies and surveys have found an increase in the incidence of academic cheating. In addition to the reasons discussed in this article, some analysts have attributed the rise in cheating to such ubiquitous social/cultural phenomena as athletes taking steroids to get ahead, business magnates defrauding stockholders, and reality TV shows in which contestants try anything they can get away with in order to win.

* CRITICAL THINKING

NOTING DETAILS: Why are high-achieving students especially vulnerable to pressure to cheat? (They fear getting low grades and/or disappointing parents.)

CAUSE AND EFFECT: How has the Internet affected students' ability to cheat on schoolwork? (The Internet makes it easier to find material to copy and pass off as one's own.)

* ACTIVITY

BUDGETING TIME: Have students list their activities by time and day(s) of the week, then share and discuss possible ways to organize their time more efficiently. Which activities are required? Which can be treated flexibly? Where can students fit in quality study time, alone and undistracted or with friends, a peer mentor, and/or a parent?

STANDARDS

SOCIAL STUDIES, GRADES 5-8

* Individual development and identity: How societal and family pressures affect some students' perception of cheating.

* Civic ideals and practices: The relationship between cultural/ societal ideals of honesty and actual practice among students.

RESOURCES

PRINT

* Humphrey, Sandra McLeod, If You Had to Choose, What Would You Do? (Prometheus Books, 1999). Grades 6-8.

* Lewis, Barbara A., What Do You Stand For? (Free Spirit Publishing, 1997). Grades 6-8.

WEB SITES

* 2004 Report Card on Youth Ethics josephsoninstitute.org/Survey2004

* What Teachers Can Do educationworld.com/a_admin/admin/admin375.shtml

* Decide whether each sentence is true, false, or an opinion. Write your answer on the blank line provided.

--11. Cheating among U.S. students is on the decline.

--12. It is OK for "brainy" kids who usually get good grades on their own to cheat every now and then.

--13. The Internet has made it easier for kids to find portions of written work to pass off as their own.

--14. Only certain types of people cheat.

--15. Copying an answer from another kid's test paper is cheating, but making notes on your palm for a test is not.

11. False (Academic cheating is on the rise.)

12. Opinion

13. True

14. False

15. False (Both are cheating.)