School’s Brightest Suspected of Cheating

As many as 50 high school students, some of them the brightest in the school, could face criminal charges as well as academic discipline from an investigation into a cheating scandal that involves stolen copies of upcoming tests.

Shirley Peterson, principal of Patrick Henry High School, said Friday that a still-unknown number of students apparently were using duplicate master keys to enter a copying room where the tests are kept.

After teachers began to suspect something was amiss--compiling what Peterson called “bits and pieces” of evidence, including a tip from one student--an instructor pulled a bait-and-switch, deliberately planting a false exam in the copying room.

Then the teacher gave a different test in class, and several students used answers from the false exam, Peterson said.

The five students implicated so far are among the school’s brightest, officials said. Peterson was reluctant to provide details Friday, saying her investigation is incomplete. But school board Trustee Sue Braun said the five have already been implicated, and seven duplicate master keys had been recovered from them. Braun said they do not know how the students got the key copies.

“We will be taking some legal and disciplinary actions against the culprits” after determining who used master keys to illegally enter buildings and take tests, Peterson said.

Peterson said that the magnitude of the apparent cheating “obviously bothers me and the teachers at the school a great deal, in terms of the fact that these are some of our brightest students and the pressures they felt they were under to resort to cheating.”

Peterson’s colleagues at other high schools said that what happened at Henry is not unique.

“This could occur on any campus anywhere, and it could occur among any kids, whether they are the best, or regular, or whatever in terms of academic achievement,” Kearny High Principal Mike Lorch said.

“All kids are under some sort of academic pressure and will respond at times by cheating, unless we teach them adequately why cheating is literally (the) sin, or (the) crime, of stealing from their fellow students,” Lorch said.

“And that becomes harder for us when kids are not learning about the larger issues of ethics and morality in society, when television is constantly presenting (situations) that have no emphasis on conscience or values,” he said.

Lorch was vice principal at high-powered La Jolla High School in 1986 when concern over widespread cheating and plagiarism--a student survey showed that 80% would cheat if necessary to pass a test--resulted in the school’s Academic Honesty Policy.

The policy is discussed by every La Jolla High teacher at the beginning of the school year, and a copy must be signed by both students and their parents, and then kept in student files.

It provides for harsh punishments--a zero test score on the first instance of cheating, an F semester grade for the second instance--for cheating on tests, fabricating data for an assignment, unauthorized collaboration among students and plagiarism. Theft of a test or other course materials brings an automatic F and suspension from school.

“Kids are not stupid and if you remind them that there is no latitude for this stuff, then you can cut down on the problem,” La Jolla High Principal J. Tarvin said Friday. “We want to make it easier on a student not to be put into a situation where they are tempted to cheat.”