Three things
Three things to talk about from the past few weeks: one article, one decision, and one anecdotal story.
1 – The Wall Street Journal came out with an article (behind a paywall, I believe) entitled, “Cheating at School is Easier Than Ever – and It’s Rampant”. Long story short: everything I’ve been mentioning on this site is pretty much true, but much more widespread than I had thought. It’s not necessarily about the old-school ‘individual cheating’ – looking on someone else’s paper during a test or copying part of a term paper word-for-word from somewhere else – but the new ‘professional cheating’, which is basically hiring / paying someone else to write your papers and take your online tests for you. An entire industry has sprung up around this. Colleges and schools now must go out of their way to deal with it. One important step will be getting students back into the classroom full-time, taking tests at a desk, no electronics, just pencil and paper, with a professor/teacher/proctor watching them. The pandemic proved that we ‘could’ move to online learning. It also showed that, if given a choice, we shouldn’t.
2 – Many sources, including the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reported that the Georgia public colleges will once again require ACT/SAT scores for students applying for Spring 2022 and beyond. This was probably shocking - and depressing - news for many high school juniors living in Georgia who had avoided the ACT/SAT for the past 12 months but now find they have to take – and study for – the exam over the summer or early fall. Also, any out-of-state students who want to apply will have to report their scores. And for those keeping track, remember that the Florida public colleges never eliminated, even temporarily, the ACT/SAT requirement last year. The news surprised many. However, as I’ve mentioned here, up to 60% - 80% of students admitted to some top-40 colleges over the past few months submitted their scores with their application. Universities may refer to themselves as ‘test-optional’, but smart students were always going to submit their scores. Many test-optional colleges are bragging about the high ACT/SAT scores of their admitted students. Think about that.
3 – One reason for the reinstatement of standardized test scores might be that the high school GPA is no longer a meaningful measure of academic success. I asked a good friend of mine, a high school math teacher with 30+ years of experience (and a one-time ‘teacher of the year’), exactly how remote learning was affecting grades. Remote learning means remote testing, and remote testing in math means remote cheating. I asked, in general terms, how semester grades were distributed before Covid, back when students were in school every day and remote testing wasn’t even a thought, and then how they’re distributed now. In very, very general terms, they responded 40% A, 30% B, 20% C, and 10% D. This was before Covid. Now, they say, it’s 75% A and 25% B. Everyone cheats. They said there are very few test grades that aren’t an A anymore. Given that, I asked why it was that ‘only’ 75% received an A for the semester. The response was eye-opening for me. They said that the 25% B was mostly due to students who basically didn’t turn in any homework, but still got A grades on their tests. With homework accounting for 10% of their semester / final grades, A students who do no homework end up with a B grade. So … students can do NO WORK all semester – not Zoom into a class (or do so with no video and no audio), do no classwork, hand in absolutely no homework, cheat on their 5-7 take-home tests each semester – and still get a solid B grade. No wonder GPAs are now meaningless.