Skip to main content

Home/ Tam News Lab/ TAs Cheat at Redwood
Jonah Steinhart

TAs Cheat at Redwood - 81 views

started by Jonah Steinhart on 14 Mar 13
  • Sarah Asch
    #3 Sarah Asch on 19 Mar 13
     
    This article makes it seem like there are a lot more TAs at Redwood than at Tam and I wonder if that is true, or if they are exaggerating the role of TAs in the classroom to make their point. Also, is the teacher liable at all for this happening if it is their TA who has access to their grade book?
  • jake izola-henry
    #6 jake izola-henry on 19 Mar 13
     
    Did the TAs get suspended? BTW Nick Yahid grades my tests and quizzes in Ms. Smith's spanish class. Better not get on his bad side.
  • Markita Schulman
    #7 Markita Schulman on 19 Mar 13
     
    I agree with Jasmine; it seems like there is a larger problem here, which is the entire high school academics culture and the heavy value that we place on grades. That might be a good editorial to accompany an issue with this feature.
  • Nate Vogel
    #9 Nate Vogel on 19 Mar 13
     
    I felt like this article was a bit biased, only blaming kids for changing grades. Obviously they are in the wrong, but the teachers should have some of the blame. Allowing kids to grade their homework or their friends homework is a bad idea. Letting kids change grades in eSchool is even worse.I agree with Jasmine too, the pressure on students to be perfect promotes cheating. The article itself is written well, and the fact that they were able to get a couple of good sources that weren't anonymous helps the story.
  • Krissy Powers
    #11 Krissy Powers on 19 Mar 13
     
    I think that publishing this article was a good choice, they didn't even need to have that many details, I think the main point was to let everyone know that this is happening and that there are repercussions. I think if a student TA was contemplating changing grades, after reading this article they would be more compelled not to. A lot of times I feel like the stories we publish although very interesting and informative don't cover some controversial topics such as this, so it was good that they decided to step outside of a comfort zone to cover the story. As I said I think it raises awareness in all students, not just Redwood but for anyone reading this article. I think that this does however put a negative impact on all TAs, now many teachers and students might have a negative bias towards them and teachers might lose respect even though they haven't done anything bad.
  • Lauren Lampl
    #12 Lauren Lampl on 19 Mar 13
     
    This article was definitely intriguing to the reader because it is about a topic that all students can relate to and are interested in. I think that the Bark did a good job in addressing the issue without scapegoating any specific TAs. It is obviously an issue that should be brought to the attention of the school, and more specifically, the teachers who are having their grades messed with. Hopefully, they will learn their lesson and not allow TAs to have access to eSchool or their grade books.The quotes used were informative, but not too biased. Overall, I thought the article was appropriate and maybe even deserved a follow-up regarding further action that is taken about the issue.
  • Dom Quaranta
    #13 Dom Quaranta on 19 Mar 13
     
    After hearing about what this anonymous student Ben goes through/went through on a daily basis, it is easy to place all the blame on those directly responsible.I believe, however that the blame is shared evenly with the teachers who allow these teens to access eSchool. Leaving a student with the responsibility to not only enter in an entire class' grades but that student's personal one as well is too tempting for most. It seemed almost inevitable that this would happen and it does not surprise me that students were taking bribes as petty as $5.00 to bump a fellow classmates grade up a letter or two.
  • Haley Fretes
    #15 Haley Fretes on 19 Mar 13
     
    I agree with a lot of the above comments. I think that it was important that this story was published by the Bark. Like Holly said, I don't understand why the science teachers wouldn't want this published, especially since they are so effected by it. I would think this is something that they wouldn't want to hide because it's and issue that involves so many students, and could help other teachers prevent the problem from becoming any bigger. Getting this story out helps raise awareness about what TAs are doing, and now that they see people are aware of what they have the ability to do in their position, they are probably less inclined to change their grade or do anything that would suggest that they are not being honest about their grades. Overall, I think that writing this story was beneficial and something that definately was appropriate to publsih.
  • liz archer
    #16 liz archer on 19 Mar 13
     
    This article makes me wonder if TAs at Tam cheat just as much as the TAs do at Redwood. This article could affect the decisions to have TAs at Tam in the future, due to the implications at Redwood. I think that trusting your TAs is one thing, but when it goes so far as to enable the students to have access to eschool, with the power of changing everything from past semester grades to recent quizzes, teachers should either consider not having TAs, or double checking the work (which would just mean wasted time). I think it was a good idea to publish this article, because it gives other schools ideas of what their own TAs could be doing.
  • Nic Mosher
    #17 Nic Mosher on 19 Mar 13
     
    After reading I have a lot of unanswered questions. First off, what was the punishment for the TA's? Were they punished at all? What about the teachers? Did they, or did they not have control over the actions of their TA's? Although this article could have been written more thoroughly, it was certainly worth publishing for the reason that if it was kept on the down low, the problem would not be solved, and the people of Redwood would be left in the dark. Overall I say the Bark did a great job of getting the news out there despite objections from the school.
  • Max Bayer
    #19 Max Bayer on 19 Mar 13
     
    I think this is a very well written article because they have an array of interviews that can support the accusations being presented in the article. I think they need another article, possibly an editorial, going over more of the ethics of the article because although this is a terrific news story, there are serious ethical problems this can cause and those need to be assessed separately. Another issue is that if the students were granted anonymity, the publication probably shouldn't have put the anonymous name next to the real life teacher they TA'd for. This easily narrows down who the person can be and makes their anonymity virtually worthless.
  • weston lazarus
    #23 weston lazarus on 19 Mar 13
     
    I thought the story was really good, I really liked how they got all of the interveiwes and different sides of the stroy. One thing I think they could have done better is they changed the name of the TA who was cheeting, but they left all of the teachers names unchanged so it could be easy for the students to figure out who it was. I was a TA for Ms. Levine last year and she never really let me grade anything, so I dont even know why the redwood teachers would give their TA's that much freedom, I think its partly the teachers fault.
  • Hannah Y
    #24 Hannah Y on 19 Mar 13
     
    As mentioned above, the article definitely says something about the academic pressure students find themselves under. For me what fascinates me most is not the act of rampant cheating but rather how many students feel compelled to cheat. I know when I self grade things (My french teacher has us grade our own quizzes sometimes) I'm really tempted to give myself a better grade. But I feel too bad and he looks over them afterwards though, so I've never followed up. But I know cheating doesn't help me, and those that cheat often feel the same-yet why are we still tempted to?
    Also, I wish this article had some concrete statistics. (Would that have been possible?) I can't really get a grasp of how much of a problem this is actually.
  • Emma Shields
    #25 Emma Shields on 19 Mar 13
     
    I agree with Deovn, kids are always going to find some way of cheating. I also agree that this is partly the teacher's fault, sure they want to trust their students but if they give their students the power to grade homework or even access to eSchool, students might be pressured or convinced to change their grade. Students always hear that school is so important and they might fear that their grade is not good enough, so they believe they need to cheat to get a good grade. I thought the story was very well written but the writers could have got a few sources that are not anonymous.
  • Zatar Omar
    #26 Zatar Omar on 19 Mar 13
     
    This topic has definitely made this article a touchy situation, it could not only be controversial but also exposing to people. The piece was very informal and detailed as to how the TA's were cheating, which brought up the problem. By going public this puts a lot of tension on the problem, but it never addressed any possible solutions to it's audience. I would be very interested in reading about how the teachers and administration are going to handle this.What happens to the people who admitted to cheating on this article? Will their identities be released to the administration to take action? Even if action were taken to fix this cheating problem would it be alright for the Redwood journalists to write a piece updating the situation.
  • Gibson Katz
    #28 Gibson Katz on 19 Mar 13
     
    One thing that has been somewhat known to me at lest, is that there is cheating at Redwood. Due to the obsession of getting the highest number and causal amorality
  • Sonja Hutson
    #34 Sonja Hutson on 26 Mar 13
     
    I think this was very well done. This is definitely a touchy subject and there very easily could have been misinformation published but the article seemed very balanced with a variety of quotes, viewpoints, and aspects of the situation. The article could have gone deeper. One addition could be more illustrative detail like the first few paragraphs. Despite the article's length, it felt it just skimmed the surface of this complex topic. It didn't discuss the motivations behind the cheating, especially in this competitive community. Also, the ending could have been a lot stronger. The description of a TA position should have been much earlier in the article. The ending swerved too far from the original topic, and should have instead been something about the cheating itself, not about a certain teacher's perspective on grading the homework herself that had nothing to do with cheating.
  • Veronica Russell
    #35 Veronica Russell on 26 Mar 13
     
    This was very interesting but I really have to wonder about how many TAs really do this. Could this be like our Craiglist article? A few students doing it? Maybe the anecdotes, while there are many, are about the same few kids. But who knows? Maybe Redwood really is that crazy. What I got from the article was that many of the TAs do it, where it's most likely only a few of them.
  • Emma Sandrolini
    #37 Emma Sandrolini on 01 Apr 13
     
    While cheating is a very "over-done" topic by many student newspapers, the topic of cheating amongst TAs is something I have never heard before. This topic really shocked me, as I had no idea students could have such access eschool etc. I think the sources gave a lot of information and though anonymous which we try to avoid, this is completely understandable in that they wouldn't want anybody knowing about this. The writer did a great job including all the ways TAs could cheat and also quoting a teacher who doesn't use a TA to grade was also informative. However, what I did find lacking in this article is administration sources. What do they think of this? What is the punishment? What is the next step after identifying this issue? After reading the article it seemed slightly empty and I had a lot of questions. Though not many steps could have been made, at least talking with a principal would have created some kind of conclusion to the subject, rather than ending with what the District defines as a teacher assistant. However, overall, this is a really great article and probably the best student written article I've read all year. It just needs a follow up once this issue is more wide-spread amongst the school and the District.
  • Mae P
    #39 Mae P on 04 Apr 13
     
    This is interesting - I'm glad they published it, but I agree with the people who say they could have gone deeper. I say this because it doesn't go into the role of TA's much - how many students actually grade papers? Also, the article also makes it sound like the TAs have more grade power than their teacher, and that everyone at Redwood knows this. I think this is something I've seen the Bark do a couple of times, where they assume that something is a student-wide problem, or not an isolated incident, when I feel like it sometimes might be. Maybe if they got more students who weren't TAs to go on the record and say that they knew the TAs were cheating, it would be better.

To Top

Start a New Topic » « Back to the Tam News Lab group