Cheating or Not, Shortcut on Homework Roils School

David Bryan believes that the private school he heads in Santa Monica owes its students more than a solid grounding in academic subjects.

“We need to teach them to think about the choices they make,” he said. That is why, he added, New Roads High School suspended about 50 students for a day and a half earlier this month.

And, in case anybody missed the point, the school posted a message on its large campus sign board visible from heavily traveled Olympic Boulevard: “HONESTY GOOD. CHEATING BAD. GET IT.”

Some parents complained to The Times, contending that the school had overreacted. But other parents applauded New Roads’ handling of the situation.

The incident began unfolding about two weeks ago, when the students’ math teacher learned that they had figured out how to work a computerized geometry program to find answers to homework problems they were supposed to be solving themselves.

They deliberately filled in a wrong answer, then hit the computer’s “back” button, which brought up the right answer.

Students earn points toward their grades for correctly working through problems.

Students suspected of cheating were called into a meeting with the teacher and directed to write letters explaining what they had done, said Bryan, New Roads’ head of school. Some voluntarily included notes of apology to the teacher, Robert Kuhar.

“The kids all love Robert. My son felt bad and wanted to write his letter right away,” said one mother, who nonetheless blamed the teacher and school, at least in part. She was among five parents who contacted The Times to complain about the school’s handling of the incident but declined to be identified because they said they did not want their children embarrassed.

Students who had gamed the system more than once were told to call their parents and go home. They were also stripped of credit from the tainted assignments, causing their grades to drop. The school asked parents whose children were involved to sign letters acknowledging that they had been told about what happened.

Those who complained to the newspaper questioned the wisdom of having students at home instead of in class. Some said the school never contacted them about the situation. Others said the sign board message humiliated their children and cast the school in a bad public light.

And some contended that what the students did was not cheating at all -- a view that Bryan says he finds most upsetting. They blamed New Roads for not noticing and fixing the “glitch” in the program sooner.

“It seems almost like entrapment to me,” said one parent. “Kids will be kids, and the school should not have tempted them all like that by not dealing with that glitch sooner.”

“It was only homework, not a test or anything like that,” said another. “And the teacher never told the students not to get the answers this way.” She likened the system the students used to turning to the back of a math textbook and looking at the answers printed there.

One student said she knew the material and could have done the homework as expected but used the system to save time on what she considered busywork.

“I do feel I did something wrong, but not as much as what I’m being punished for,” the student said. “My grade dropped from an A to a C-plus because of this.”

But the parents of two other students involved in the incident praised the school’s response.

“My son was wrong, but he has learned a valuable lesson that will last a lifetime,” said Eldora Gatewood, whose son is a ninth-grader.

“I appreciate the way the school handled it.... My son is learning to take responsibility for his actions,” Gatewood added.

Cheryl Schapiro said she “backs the school 100%. The kids cheated, and that’s all there is to it.”

Schapiro called New Roads a “fantastic school,” with a staff that is always available to help students and communicates well with parents. Her son, a 10th-grader, is “a very, very good kid, who has never done this kind of thing before.

“But he did wrong, and I could have wrung his neck,” she said. “The school did the right thing.”

As the school was piecing together what had happened, Bryan said he grew increasingly concerned when he realized that those who had gamed the system felt justified because it was “only homework” they were cheating on; they also seemed to feel they would not be punished because so many had done it.

New Roads, with an elementary school, middle school and high school spread over three campuses, was founded a decade ago by a group called New Visions Foundation. The goal was to provide a wider group of students the kind of private college prep education usually affordable only by affluent families.

About half the school’s annual operating budget goes for scholarships, and the school prides itself on the socioeconomic, cultural and racial diversity of its roughly 485 students.

About 40 of the 90 high school students using the geometry program did not cheat, Bryan said.

“For the most part, these are extraordinary, wonderful kids,”

Bryan said. “They just got swept up in the peer pressure and the feeling of ‘everybody’s doing it’ and telling themselves it’s not really cheating” and that nobody would get punished if everybody did it. “They admitted it, and many of them apologized for it.”

Bryan disagrees with parents who don’t consider their youngsters’ actions cheating.

“Most of the kids have been absolutely terrific about it,” he said of their response to the punishment. “When people are this young, this is the perfect time for a slap on the wrist” to avoid life-shattering consequences for poor decisions later in life.

Bryan also said the school called every parent on the day the students were sent home. But he acknowledged there were “one or two” who could not be reached because the phone numbers on file were not current. “We did not just turn them out on the streets,” he said.