“Cheating is justifiable to me because not everyone does well under pressure when it comes to taking tests. If that causes you to do poorly on a test then your knowledge of what you have learned from the class is not truly reflected, making both you and the teacher look bad,” said Bob, a student at Naugatuck High School.

It is a proven fact that many students cheat.  According to Stanford University, reportedly 86% of high school students have cheated at some point.  Plagiarism, the act of claiming another’s work as one’s own, is one of the most popular and most severe forms of cheating.  However, many students do not go beyond cheating on tests.  

Other forms of cheating at the high school level are copying homework, texting answers to a test, and getting test questions and answers from a person who has already taken the test.  

Students cheat for many different reasons as well.  According to Juanita, “a lot of the time students are too lazy to study and put in the time and effort for the grade.”  Students also cheat as a last resort in order to pass a course or to escape doing the work. Another student, Phillip, a junior, admits that some students cheat because they are desperate to earn a grade that they are not fully prepared to earn.

Another reason students cheat, which may not be as well known as the other reasons, is that some students feel that they are not receiving the education they believe they deserve.  According to an article written in The Atlantic, an anonymous high school student states that “the curriculum and test techniques of my absolutely atrocious AP Biology class were not fair representations of my knowledge.”  The student, therefore, felt that he had the right to cheat in order to obtain the grade he believed he deserved. He felt that he has fulfilled his side of the contract, but that the teacher has failed.

At Naugatuck High School, there are about 8-10 disciplinary referrals for cheating sent to the administration each year.  According to one of the deans at Naugatuck High School, Mr. James Leary, most cheating instances are taken care of on a case-by-case basis by the teacher of the class the episode occurred in.  

Although cheating may seem like the easy way out to many students, in the long run, they are only hurting themselves.  If you plagiarize, for instance, you may get out of typing a paper in the short term.  However, when you are caught, the incident could result in suspension, expulsion, and would be placed on your permanent record.

Cheating also deprives students of an enriched and well-rounded education.  By copying the work of another student, they are not learning the material which could later impact you on a test or even later in life when knowing that material information could benefit you.

According to Naugatuck High School dean Mr. Leary, “Cheating not only takes away from the integrity of the assignment, but it also takes away the integrity of how we do class rankings, how we grade students, and how students are accepted to colleges and universities.”

A student who cheats in high school will not be prepared for the work ethic that college entails.  In high school if a student cheats, a bad grade is one of the main consequences.  However, if a student cheats in college, they will not only be depriving themselves of valuable information for their future career, but they could also potentially be dismissed from their college or university. That dismissal will insure that he will never be accepted to any other university. What may seem like a simple bad decision can end up being catastrophical.

With the incredibly high rate of cheating occurring in high school, it shows that students do not take cheating as seriously as they should.  Cheating has become second nature to many students.  As a result, this generation’s future could be impacted.  The lack of knowledge from cheating throughout school could degrade the level of maturity and intelligence of the future of our country.