Students are under pressure from teachers, parents, and college admissions counselors to maintain high grade point averages, score well on high-stakes tests, participate in a variety of extracurricular activities, and gain admission to top colleges. In fact, surveys have found that most students identify academic pressure as the main reason for…

This paper is comprised of two essays by the same author. The first essay, "Reading and Writing," refers to two books written by Dan Koeppel as an introduction to the topic of plagiarism in education and the temptation that both educators and students face to cheat. A "Big Lister" is described by Dan Koeppel in his book,…

Administrators and teachers in several large districts nationwide have cheated on standardized tests to make achievement levels look better than they actually were. The offenses range from giving students advance answers to questions on standardized tests, to erasing and changing unsatisfactory answers. As a result of district and state…

The cheating scandal that has rocked the 48,000-student Atlanta school system was an egregious, but not entirely unexpected, byproduct of accountability pressures, many testing experts say. The reason: As long as test scores are used in any field to make decisions on rewards or punishments, including for schools or educators, a small percentage of…

This report presents the 1998 statistical findings of the annual survey to determine the attitudes of national high school student leaders. Questionnaires were completed by 3,123 high school juniors and seniors, all of whom were selected for recognition in "Who's Who among American High School Students." In addition to demographic…

In the United States, tests are held to high standards of quality. In developing countries such as Malawi, psychometricians must deal with these same high standards as well as several additional pressures such as widespread cheating, test administration difficulties due to challenging landscapes and poor resources, difficulties in reliably scoring…

Research indicates that the frequency of cheating in the classroom is increasing accelerating. Students continue to utilize the standard methods of cheating such as cheat sheets, copying off of another student's test paper, or telling friends in the next class period what was covered on an exam. With access to the World Wide Web, opportunities to…