Looking for a place to start? I highly recommend this book:

Cheating in School: What We Know and What We Can Do

Much of today’s talk came from this book.  For example, here are a few quotes from the book that caught my eye:

Persistent student cheating may corrupt a child’s character and lead to a devaluing of trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and honesty as fundamentals in a just society.

[cheating in school] may form a habit that persists and transitions into an adult’s work and life habits

• For teachers, many ways and reasons to cheat on tests – USATODAY.com
• Video: How to cheat in a test using a coke bottle!
• Video: CBS Early Show: Hi-Tech Cheating Poll and related article
• Hi-Tech Cheating: Cell Phones and Cheating in Schools (A National Poll)

If students are led to focus on ‘how well’ they’re doing more than on ‘what’ they’re doing, they may do whatever they think is necessary to make it look as though they’re succeeding.
-Who’s Cheating Whom? by Alfie Kohn (Phi Delta Kappan)

Schools fail to reward, and in some way discourage, good behavior on the part of the students. When so much emphasis is placed on grades and individual achievement, the system seems to breed dishonesty. Students learn to succeed by all means possible, even if this means compromising their integrity to obtain high grades.
-Denise Clark Pope (Doing School)

It’s not the dumb kids who cheat… it’s the kids with a 4.6 grade-point average who are under so much pressure to keep their grades up and get into the best colleges. They’re the ones who are smart enough to figure out how to cheat without getting caught.
-Everybody Does It by an anonymous student (SFGate.com)

Some children and their parents have convinced themselves that they have to be superstars and go to Harvard, Stanford, or Brown to have a worthwhile life. This attitude leads to cheating by the most qualified, not the least qualified, students in some schools.
-Who Says Cheaters Never Win? by Kirk O. Hanson (Stanford Knowledgebase)

• Audio: Cheating In College Is Widespread — But Why? (NPR)

“The top’s cheating to thrive, the bottom’s cheating to survive…”
-Don McCabe

• Junie B., First Grader: Cheater Pants (Junie B. Jones, No. 21) by Barbara Park
• Cheating: Here, There, Everywhere (PBS Kids GO!)
• Dan Ariely
  • Books: Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality
  • Video: Why we think it’s OK to cheat

• Video: Teachers not in the room, let’s cheat!
• Don’t claim what isn’t your work
• South Korean human cloning pioneer ‘admits to fake evidence’
• Embryo cloning cheat resigns in disgrace

Science is not received wisdom, but informed guesswork. It may well be wrong. That’s life. Besides, what’s the alternative? To substitute our own gut feelings for scientific analysis, flawed though it may be? We should always be willing to question the outcomes of science, but we should be even more willing to question ourselves.
-In praise of scientific error by George Musser (Scientific American)

• Video: Candle Power
• Power Balance gets slapped in Australia
• Mythbusters Forums

…the more we focus on all the clever ways youngsters can cheat, the more likely we are to ignore the fact that the biggest single factor in escalating academic dishonesty is the failure of parents and teachers to diligently teach, enforce, advocate, and model personal integrity. It’s the adults, not the kids, who have the greatest responsibility to create an ethical culture that nurtures the virtues of honor, honesty, and fairness.
-Cheating Isn’t the Problem by Michael Josephson (Character Counts)

A survey by Common Sense Media of more than 1,000 students ages 13 to 18 found that 48% of teens with cell phones call or text friends to warn them about pop quizzes.

I say, “who cares?”

If a pop quiz is given to offer students a chance to review past material or to provide teacher feedback on how the class is doing then the text warning is only going to trigger more students to study. That’s a good thing, right?

However, if the pop quiz is given to punish students who haven’t been studying, stifle bad behavior or just take up some class time, then Who’s Cheating Whom?