At Day Creek, cheating is something that pops up regularly in conversations among teachers and students. Maybe it doesn’t occur as often as at other schools, but it still happens. All it takes is a quick glance at your partner’s paper.

“[I don’t encounter cheating] too terribly often, but when I do, it’s super distressing,” said Mr. Evans, a 7th grade teacher at Day Creek. “I tell my students, you have my trust until you lose my trust. If I see someone cheating, what I generally do is: take their computer, zero them out on that test and it would usually be a phone call home.”

In May, twenty-two students at Suncoast High School were caught cheating on an Advanced Placement test and sent back to campus to retake their exam. According to Principal Karen Whetsell, there is a “high probability” that some kids had an “unfair” edge on their test. When the school compared the students’ grades to their scores on the test, it raised suspicion that some of them were cheating. Suncoast High School is ranked as the 53rd best high school in the nation.

This is not the first time this has happened. At Scripps Ranch High School, 850 students had to retake their Advanced Placement exams because the seats were way too close to each other, giving the students an easy view of another student’s work. The San Diego Unified School District Board of Education voted 4-0 in favor of throwing all of the exams away and having the students retake the exams.

While these stories involved high schools and AP tests, junior highs aren’t immune from these problems.  

“I think some people cheat on tests because they don’t want to study.  Then they’re just too busy having fun and they forget to study. They want to get better scores and they stress out and they cheat,” said Aryan M., a seventh grade student at Day Creek Intermediate School.

“I think students feel pressure to get good grades because they don’t want to disappoint their parents and they want to be better than their classmates,” said 6th grader Chloe H. “My parents expect me to get good grades. Parents always remind us that we don’t get good jobs if we don’t get good grades in school. [I don’t cheat] because I spend lots of time studying the notes my teachers give me before the tests.”

Cheating can happen at any school, including Day Creek, no matter how excellent our school is. Alternatively, kids should choose to study and work hard for their grades instead of making a bad situation worse by cheating.