Tiger aimed to answer the question of why students cheat and how they get away with it. Through a Google Form survey that received approximately 350 responses, or about a quarter of the school student population, and through interviews with students of all grade levels, Tiger found that, contrary to teacher belief, a large percentage of SPHS students do cheat for reasons explained in this center spread.
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Student quotes
“I think I’ve perfected how to do it”
A junior who has been cheating consistently on assessments since eighth grade was confident enough in his ability to get away with cheating that he was willing to sit down with Tiger and thoroughly discuss his experience. He claims to have a 100 percent success rate on the tests, quizzes, and finals he has cheated on since middle school; he also estimates that he cheats on upwards of 40 percent of assessments.
“I see a lot of what we do at school as kind of useless … it’s really funny to see how many holes there are in the school system,” the junior said. “Usually I feel like I’m never gonna get caught, it’s pretty easy not to.”
His methods of cheating are abundant and versatile enough that locked Google Forms and in-class handwritten essays can be cheated on. If one method is close to getting caught, the junior will simply swap it out for a readily available new one. Cheating comes easily enough that little planning is required; the junior can simply stroll into class and decide on the spot if he will cheat on the day’s assessment.
“It’s usually the day of. It’s actually really easy because I have a lot of connections and other people in almost every class I need,” he said. “It’s really easy to get what I need, even the day of.”
These connections, along with a school culture in which snitching on cheaters is greatly frowned upon, are the primary reasons why the junior, per his account, has never been caught cheating by a teacher or school administrator. It is also because of these reasons that the junior does not try very hard to keep his cheating a secret from other students and will instead talk openly about it, knowing that the likelihood of any given student informing a teacher about his cheating is remarkably low. He speculates that his cheating influences his friends and those around him to cheat themselves, and he claims that he will give test answers to anyone who asks.
The junior said that he would never tell on anyone who he witnesses cheating and does not understand why anyone would tell on someone who is cheating, since “it doesn’t affect [the person who tattles].”
“I think I’ve perfected how to do it … I just trust that no one’s gonna say anything because they never have,” he said.
“I didn’t want to cheat … I needed to”
It is a fact that students cheat, but the question of why arises. Some students noted craving academic validation, while others discussed being unable to understand the content yet too embarrassed to ask for help and unwilling to accept a lower grade.
“I tried asking the teacher for help, and I tried Veritas tutoring, but still every test I did poorly. None of it helped … I didn’t want to cheat, but I felt I needed to,” a junior said. “The pressure to perform well is so stifling at this school … There were so many expectations to live up to, and I guess I cheated to take an easy way out.”
AP Government teacher Oliver Valcorza noted similar reasons as to why students cheat. “Students cheat probably because it’s a lot of the pressure of wanting to do well,” he said. “And then, of course, [they] measure their performance with their peers. They want to get those high scores. And unfortunately, for some, they want to do it in any way possible, which is not always the best idea.”
Other students, however, blamed their own cheating on teacher faults.
“The way that teachers think is if a student of theirs is failing, it’s the student’s fault, but a lot of the time, the way that the teachers are teaching, [students] just can’t understand it … If they have a kid that has a lot of potential in their class, they will devote their energy to that kid rather than helping those who are struggling,” a freshman said. “It’s also how competitive everything is … Teachers will compare class averages to other class averages, making you feel worse about your grade.”
Teachers seemed to suppose that cheating was not a “rampant problem” at SPHS. “Sometimes, there may be a temptation,” one teacher said, “but I think for the most part, they’re honest.”
However, data collected from a Tiger survey estimated that more than one in four SPHS students have cheated on an assessment. One senior estimated that 75 percent of cheating at SPHS goes unnoticed by teachers, and because of this, the senior explained that it is easy to pity those who do get caught.
“It’s easy to feel bad for students when they do get caught. I definitely agree that cheating is wrong, but when so many students get away with it all the time, I feel bad for the few students who are unlucky enough to get caught,” the senior said.
A junior echoed the senior’s message, saying, “Teachers: Students cheat in every grade level, in every rigor of class. Freshmen are not too young to cheat, and AP students are not too academic to cheat, and all that stuff in between. If you’re a teacher and you don’t catch students cheating in your class, it doesn’t mean they’re not cheating, it means you need to get better at catching them.”
Cheating survey data
- 343 students out of the school’s approximately 1400 students (24.5 percent) responded to Tiger’s survey; 39.3 percent were freshmen, 18.2 percent were sophomores, 18.2 percent were juniors, and 23.5 percent were seniors
- 27.84 percent of students have cheated on tests more than once, and 5 percent cheat “quite often” or “on most/all assessments in most/all classes”
- Students who consistently or sometimes take AP or honors classes were 10 percent more likely to have cheated on an assessment than students who do not typically take AP or honors classes
- 56.2 percent of students would tell no one if they witnessed someone cheating on an assessment, 42.9 percent would tell their friends, and 17.2 percent would tell the teacher
- 36.4 percent of students were more likely to cheat in certain classes, 26.5 percent were more likely to cheat with certain teachers, and 52.4 percent were not more likely to cheat under either circumstance
- Of students who have cheated on one or more assessment, 47.4 percent had minimal worry because they believed the teacher would not find out, 22.4 percent had minimal worry because they believed they were good at cheating, and 10.0 percent had minimal worry because they believed the consequences were not that bad
- 39.6 percent of students believe cheating is morally wrong, 11.8 percent believe it is not, and 53.8 percent responded that it depends
- 54.8 percent of students believe copying answers from a friend’s math homework with their permission is cheating, while 32.5 percent believe that using ChatGPT to research, brainstorm, or outline an English essay is cheating
- In response to the survey’s open-ended “overall comments on cheating at SPHS” prompt, various students discussed their beliefs of the low risk and high reward of cheating at SPHS
