SCHOOL FOR THOUGHT

A Lesson on Cheating

According to this Globe and Mail article, the EQAO plans to provide the province's educators with more explicit test-giving directions, in the hopes that it will make it more difficult for them to rationalize cheating. The article includes a poll about the value of standardized testing, with the results split more or less evenly, as well as 28 comments which are overwhelmingly critical of the cheating educators - as well as the lack of consequences for their dishonesty. 

A sidebar to the article, unfortunately not available on-line, reports on what happened to the cheating educators at one school. Two of them had retired by the time the investigation had concluded, and so nothing much happened to them. The other two had transferred to other schools in the meantime, and they were given short suspensions but are now back in the classroom. The sidebar doesn't say whether the suspensions were with pay or not.

Of course, there are cheaters in every profession and the number of confirmed cases (10) is actually surprisingly small in a province with about 5,000 publicly-funded schools. To me, the issue is not that there are cheaters - that is a given - but how their cheating is handled. The current policy of giving them a slap on the wrist sends a strong message to the students that cheating is okay. Is this what we intend?