It’s 4 Strikes You’re Out in New Policy on Cheating

They set out to accomplish a simple task: create a policy to discipline students for cheating.

An academic honesty policy would fit with Ventura Supt. Joseph Spirito’s push to promote core values and provide a consistent set of rules for all district teachers, avoiding the sort of problems that arose last year when accusations of cheating at Ventura High School led to a lawsuit.

But the road to creating a cheating policy for high school students has been a long one, undermined at first with murky legal issues and then, more importantly, with philosophical questions about how tough a policy and what the punishments should be.

“We thought we could do it in less than, talk about idealistic, three or four months,” said John Weiss, president of the Ventura Unified Education Assn., the teachers union that drafted the policy. “Boy, was I wrong on that one.”

More than 1 1/2 years after educators first broached the idea, the union has developed a policy they’re satisfied with and will present it to trustees for approval Tuesday night.

Among the provisions, a high school student caught cheating four times can be transferred to an alternative school, such as Pacific High School, where students with discipline problems are frequently sent. Earlier offenses can mean failing grades on assignments or suspensions.

But educators acknowledge that the policy is a compromise, borne of their own uncertainty about the best way to deal with academic dishonesty.

“We’re dealing with teenagers and young people and must teach good values,” said Jaime Castellanos, principal at Buena High School. “When a kids has made a mistake, there’s punishment. . . . But if a kid get’s a scarlet letter, then something is wrong.” What is certain is that cheating is going on in schools today.

Many students say the problem is “very common.” Some can rattle off an incident they witnessed that week: students bringing in cheat sheets, peeking over at a neighbor’s paper, whispering answers across the room, signing answers with hands or plagiarizing from encyclopedias.

But sometimes they say teachers shy away from snagging a student for cheating.

“They put a blinder on when they want to,” said Buena sophomore Paul Williams. “Even if they see [a student] is cheating they won’t believe they’re cheating. Sometimes I think they purposely don’t because they don’t want a good student to fail.”

That certainly wasn’t the case last year when a Ventura High School teacher accused a student of stealing a rubber stamp she used to validate homework.

English teacher Sue McEwen, expelled the student from her class and gave him a failing grade. When his parents successfully appealed the decision and had his punishment reduced, McEwen filed a lawsuit against the student.

The incident touched a nerve among critics who accused the teacher of carrying a small incident too far and among educators who said the school district should do more to hold the students accountable.

Trustees received numerous calls from teachers at Ventura High School who wanted guidance on how to handle cheating. Though Buena High had long had a written policy, Ventura High’s teachers were allowed to take care of cheating incidents individually.

“They wanted a strong policy but wanted it down in writing so they would know what to do,” board member Diane Harriman said.

“If the policy had been in place, there would have been a system to follow and all the fallout from that would never have occurred,” said Weiss from the teachers union.

That incident, along with Spirito’s push for core values, fueled the quest for a uniform academic honesty policy.

The first draft was written by the district’s lawyer, but teachers said it was so full of legal jargon that no one could understand it.

So administrators asked the teachers union to create a policy in layman’s terms.

The union formed a committee, bringing in one or two representatives from various schools. Creating a policy proved to be a difficult matter, when there were so many issues that needed to be considered.

“Are we talking too much punitive, not enough due process for students or the opposite?,” said Peter Churchill, a union member who sat on the panel that developed the policy. “Should we nail them right away and hit them really hard and deal with reality?”

In addition, they needed to work with schools that had policies in place and create a compromise.

Much of the time was taken up trying to decide what to do about cheating at the high school level, where consequences had to be more serious than those for elementary or middle school students.

In early October, the union’s panel brought the board of trustees a working draft, complete with a call for expulsion from a course after three cheating offenses. But the panel members left the meeting flustered and a few trustees appeared frustrated after the superintendent asked them to rework the policy, citing possible legal problems.

Don Austin, the district’s legal counsel, explained later that the concept of expelling a student from a class might not be legally defensible.

“The case law is so undecided in the area of whether or not being thrown out is a partial expulsion,” he said in an interview. “If there isn’t a clear issue, you don’t want to be the guy who goes in the law book.”

So they went back to the drawing board and came up with a new policy, calling for sending a student to an alternative school after the fourth infraction. The draft satisfied legal concerns but included a new provision that alarmed some teachers: bumping an advanced placement student back to a regular class after just one cheating offense.

“Boy, you’re really doing a number on the student with that one mistake,” said Ventura High School Principal Hank Robertson. “It sounds a bit severe.”

“It sounds a bit harsh,” agreed Lisa Meikle, a English teacher at Buena. “When you look at behavior, none of us is totally without fault. We all make bad judgments and sometimes, not wise ones. I don’t think you should hang the kid up by the toenails.”

So, in yet another compromise, the policy going to the board now bumps advanced placement students out of the college-bound courses after the third offense.

Union leaders believe the latest draft should satisfy trustees. But they acknowledge that enforcing the policy could be just as tricky as drafting it.

Even where a firm policy exists, enforcement is not always consistent.

For instance, Buena High School has long had a policy requiring that a student be expelled from a class after three cheating incidents. But in the 10 years that Principal Jaime Castellanos has been there, he can’t recall anyone being charged a third time.

That means either that no students have been caught cheating three times or that no teachers have wanted to invoke the strict sanction.

Some teachers admit they set their own standards for what constitutes academic dishonesty and how severely students should be punished. One instructor said he worries more about cheating on tests than on homework assignments. Another said she does not report students for cheating if she catches them with hidden answers before the test begins.

Others watch carefully for signs of cheating and issue warnings when they see eyes wandering across other students’ desks.

Christine Hantgin, a Spanish teacher at Buena, said she gives her students many warnings about the consequences of cheating so that they will avoid it.

“I really don’t want to catch them,” Hantgin said. “I really want them to know I’m going to catch them and hopefully they will not ever want to even try it.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Draft Cheating Policy

Primary grades (kindergarten-3rd)

* First offense: Counseling.

* Subsequent offenses: Parental notification.

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Upper elementary (4th-5th)

* First offense: Counseling, zero on assignment, parental notification.

* Second offense: Counseling, zero on assignment, notification to parent and principal.

* Subsequent offenses: Counseling, zero on assignment, conference with student, parent, teacher and principal.

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Middle school (6th-8th)

* First offense: F on the assignment, notification of assistant principal and parent.

* Subsequent offense: F on the assignment, conference with student, assistant principal, teacher and parent.

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High school (9th-12th)

* First offense: Counseling, one or two Fs on the assignment, notification of administrators and parents.

* Second offense: Two-day suspension, one or two Fs on the assignment, notification to administrators and the parent.

* Third offense: Five-day suspension, one or two Fs on the assignment, notification of administrators and the parent. Removal from advanced placement or honors class.

* Fourth offense: Transfer to an alternative school, such as Pacific High School.