According to Principal Dr. Wendy Stratton, the new evidence-based grading system will be based on that of Adlai Stevenson High School in Illinois, which focuses on students’ ability to improve skills over time. In the new four-point grading system, a student’s teacher determines a final course grade by reviewing the student’s assessments and considering any clear patterns of growth. Getting a score of four means that a student has exceeded mastery. Three is mastery, two is approaching mastery and one is having a fundamental understanding.

“It’s (about whether you can do) the skills to the level that we are asking,” Stratton said. “I think it’s a more transparent and straightforward system.”

The Gunn administration has formed an ad hoc committee with staff from various subjects to discuss the upcoming changes, which will occur over multiple years. According to Planning Team Lead Kathryn Catalano, Gunn will prioritize quality over speed and do everything possible to make the transition seamless. Catalano’s conservative projection is that, after a transition period, the final form will be launched in the next seven years. Specifics of the plan have yet to be discussed within the planning team.

For a smooth transition, Catalano says that support resources will be available for both teachers and students. Currently, multiple teachers are participating in a pilot program involving a few teachers from all departments to analyze the practicality of this new system.

“We’re encouraging teachers to jump into this with a teaching team rather than doing this by themselves because having a team anytime you’re trying to learn something new helps a lot,” she said.

According to Adlai Stevenson High School Principal Troy Gobble, the shift to evidence-based grading is necessary due to fundamental flaws in the status quo.

“There’s a problem with the way that we have graded for 100 years,” Gobble said in a video published by the school. “What we’ve done is forced students into a conversation that’s around collecting points. What we want to do is identify the essential learnings of the class — the fundamental standards that exist for the course.”

Catalano noted that the change at Gunn will place an emphasis on developing student autonomy and competence.

“It’s more of a philosophy shift,” Catalano said. “One of the big things with evidence-based grading and teaching is the focus on helping to develop student agency and spending time developing skills that are going to be meaningful and transcend just the high school experience. (It’s about) moving away from content retention and memorization and more towards actual skills applications.”

Computer science teacher Joshua Paley, who gave a TEDx talk in 2023 about the flaws of the current grading system, sees potential in the plan but also has some worries.

“I worry about class sizes being an issue because the teachers will have to get to know the students better, and it’s hard to do that with the class sizes as large as they are,” he said. “With that said, the concept is as promising as anything related to grades that I’ve seen in a long time … But, as long as the word ‘grades’ is involved, I’ll always be skeptical.”

Still, Catalano added that the adjustment will be a collaborative process.

“We don’t want anybody to jump into this without feeling ready to do it,” Catalano said. “(Administrators) want to make sure that we are supporting both teachers and students so that we have a transition that feel smooth and that everybody feels supported.”

Contextualizing grade discussions

According to senior Justin Hou, students discuss grades beyond those given for major assessments. “Sometimes it happens for assignments, especially group projects,” he said. While some disclose specific scores, others give a more qualitative indication on how they did. In Hou’s friend group, these kinds of terms are more common than official, numeric scores. “There’s a sense of respect and community in that we support each other, and if you don’t want to share that information, there’s no urgency to do so,” he said.

Reluctance to share grades can cause students to be vague about their scores. Junior Lauren Kane prefers to keep her scores to herself but will share them with peers if asked. “I try not to get too involved in the conversation, and I don’t go too in depth when describing my grades,” she said. She avoids discussing grades with close friends, explaining that it has increasingly become a source of uncomfortable conversations and stress among them.

On the other hand, freshman Eman Ebrat’s closeness with her friend group encourages her to discuss grades in more detail. “I feel like I can be more personal with them,” she said.

In tricky situations when a peer has a lower grade, students navigate them with supportive words and attitudes. For instance, Ebrat adopts an empathetic stance, telling the classmate that their effort and hard work is enough. Similarly, Kane redirects the conversation to the peer’s strengths rather than focusing on the score. “Usually I’ll counteract with something else I did badly in and they did better in,” she said.

Though conversations about grades typically start with one or two people, they can snowball as other students join in. “Usually when I talk about grades, other people start talking about it first, so then I’ll join in the conversation,” junior Analiesse Schoenen said.

Students’ motivations, hesitations

Sometimes, simple curiosity can prompt students to ask about each other’s grades, but often, more complicated intentions motivate these conversations.

Comparison is one factor for students to ascertain whether they did better than or as well as others. Desire for validation of their hard work can drive students to ask their peers about scores. “At Gunn, especially among certain groups of people, there’s a lot of comparison for people to validate themselves,” Schoenen said. “People like hearing when other people did badly on something, and they also like knowing that they did better than other people.”

Students may also discuss grades to seek a sense of security built on knowing how they stand in relation to the class. Especially for harder tests, knowing that the whole class performed poorly can dispel anxiety over lower grades by providing a frame of reference. “I feel more comforted knowing that I’m not a failure, and that it was just a hard test,” Kane said.

In the face of unsatisfactory grades, students can discuss them to commiserate with each other and acknowledge common challenges, such as difficult questions, unfair grading or ineffective teaching methods. “Usually if I’m talking about grades, I’m complaining about it,” Schoenen said.

Of course, students have reservations when it comes to sharing grades, including not wanting to contribute to a toxic culture of competition. “I typically try not to discuss grades, just because I don’t want to feed that kind of environment,” senior Wyatt Pedersen said.

Kane recognizes that conversations about grades always involve risk, given how straight-cut grade comparisons are. “At least one person is going to leave the conversation hurt,” she said.

Weighing consequences

Dangers to discussing grades, including lowered self-esteem, worsened health and a stressful school environment, exist alongside less visible benefits.

Conversations about grades can cause students to equate their worth with their grade, creating perspectives that—regardless of score—are harmful, according to Kane. “If I do better than someone, then I get too overconfident and a little bit cocky,” she said. “But if I do worse than someone, I get really unmotivated. I feel really, really hopeless. I feel a lot of pressure.”

Low grades, which can ultimately be insignificant in the long term, wield outsized impact when compared to others’ grades. “Sometimes I’ll get caught up in one or two grades and then feel bad about myself for doing bad on a small portion of a big class,” Schoenen said.

To catch up with other people’s grades, students may prioritize academic achievement over their mental and physical wellbeing, a repercussion reflected in Pedersen’s experience. “Learning about others’ grades makes it standardized or glorified to work past your limit and to go far into the night doing homework, as if that’s normal, when it obviously should not be,” he said.

Over time, these pressures can solidify into more serious problems. “It’s a hidden injury,” a junior responded to the survey. “After time it develops into eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. But you never know what’s inside you that’s deteriorating.”

Grade discussions create a culture of stress for some, especially for those without the appropriate mental support helping them put the importance of grades into perspective. “If you don’t have a supportive community or feel more self-conscious about your abilities, it definitely can be harmful in creating a stress culture in which you feel like you’re only more worthy if you work harder,” Hou said.

Consequences aside, students’ asking each other about their grades can reveal unhealthy friendship boundaries. According to chemistry teacher Casey O’Connell, students may feel forced to share their grades in order to avoid the awkwardness of refusing to answer. He asks students to consider whether enthusiastic consent to these conversations was given. “Is your consent just presumed as the default?” he said. “Are your boundaries being violated? Would you prefer that people didn’t ask you about your grade?”

Meanwhile, grade comparisons can be constructive in helping students gauge whether their effort levels are high enough, according to Hou. Talking about grades helped him realize he could do better in tests, such as with a chemistry test he had earlier in the year. “I felt like I prepared for it, but it was at the last minute, and I didn’t do as well as a result,” he said. “So for the next test, I improved my study habits by spacing my study sessions and studying more consistently.”

Discussing grades also simplifies employing the help of peers who grasp the content more clearly or have better study strategies. Sharing grades has helped Ebrat find students who can explain how to answer questions she missed, as she did when she once got a low score on a biology test. “We worked together a little during lunch and before school,” she said. “On the next test, that allowed me to understand the material better since I had a close friend helping me.”

Regardless of whether teachers prohibit grade discussions, math teacher Gopi Tantod believes that students will inevitably continue to discuss their grades. “Everyone discusses grades—it’s not something you’re going to be able to stop,” she said.

In that light, distinguishing between productive and harmful conversations about grades becomes more important. The line is drawn, according to O’Connell, depending on how grades and the surrounding conversations are used. “If grades are just there as a helpful measurement and indicator of how prepared you were, then the conversation turns to behaviors that can be helped and changed,” he said.

Yet when percentages eclipse learning, when grades define a student’s worth, these conversations quickly turn dangerous. “Grades become a value on somebody, and instead of empowering, they become judgmental,” O’Connell said. “A grade as a label on somebody is a judgment. A grade as a descriptor of how you did can be a good measurement of what needs to change, or it can be a measurement of how far you’ve come.”

A frustrating predicament for many this past winter break: the final grades for first semester were hidden throughout the two weeks off from school and came back into display on Jan. 12, the first Friday of second semester. Principal Kathleen Laurence left a short message on Infinite Campus regarding the decision to hide grades before first semester ended, stating that the grade book would be closed for teachers as well and would not be updated until the first week back from break. Not being able to track progress right away and prepare for the new semester was irritating for students and parents alike, and was counteractive to the aim of reducing student stress. Thus, the idea of hiding grades over break needs to be reconsidered.

Being informed on how well a student is currently doing in school definitely impacts how they prepare for the next semester. Second semester preparation can include essential decisions like switching lanes in a subject, dropping classes, signing up for tutoring, studying ahead and changing study habits. But when grades are hidden during this period, it is like being trapped in a place where desired productiveness and proactivity in arranging for second semester are completely unattainable. A student may have no idea that a certain class was too challenging for them by the end of first semester, and they will have to wait a week into the following semester to find out. At that point, switching lanes or dropping a class will be a gratuitous burden.

Making students wait until they have already sunk their teeth into second semester to know how their last semester went is hard to reason. Despite what some might argue about grades causing stress, waiting this long to see grades is bound to create more stress for multitudes of students. Although teachers are not guaranteed to complete all grades at the beginning of break, not being able to see any of them is not an easy feeling for many students. It is especially troubling when their parents are also concerned with their grades and may ask them over and over again whether they have gotten their grades back or why they have not gotten their grades back. Combining the pressure from parents with general confusion and frustration over grades does not make for the most stress-free winter break. And when break is over and a student finds that they do not agree with one of their grades, there is no time to process it or have a thorough conversation with their teacher. That is also sure to induce further stress.

Letting students make the most of their free time, or, according to Laurence, “play time, down time and family time,” instead of worrying about grades is an understandable motive. However, it is not enough to satisfy when a student’s own academic progress is out of their sight. For seniors especially, the end of first semester is a crucial moment to be observing grades, as first semester is typically the last time to prove their academic ability to the colleges they are applying for. That this situation was seemingly ignored by the administration is quite surprising.

The idea that thinking about grades over break takes away from the value of break is genuine, yet it has some unrealistic facets to it. Students really only need to look at their grades once to remember them, and they will do so at the very beginning of a break. After that simple check-in with their progress, whether grades are hidden from them or not does not really matter anymore, since they will not be checking in again.

As a supposed solution to post-first-semester stress, the decision to hide grades from students is ultimately a miscalculated one. If the administration really cares about student well-being, the more effective approach would be to teach students how to deal with their grades emotionally, not letting undesired grades give them so much stress and ultimately shifting the mindset around grades. This would be a far greater tactic, as it addresses the root of the problem directly. With this, grades ought to be kept open throughout the whole school year. That way, students will always be informed about their progress in school and can make any adjustments as needed. If students learn to avoid stressing about grades and can check them whenever they want, this will be the best way to eliminate school stress all around.

“I think curving grades would motivate students to work harder because they will have more hope for a better overall grade.”

Anna Chin (9)

“I think it helps take pressure off of tests. If your class doesn’t really know the material, it helps you get back on track.”

Jessalyn Grant-Bier (11)

“I think that curving grades is helpful because people make little mistakes all the time and curving the grade could help fix that.”

Gary Wu (11)

“I don’t see curving as a bad thing. Either the subject was not taught well or there was a lack of understanding.”

Juan Santos (12)

]]> https://gunnoracle.com/9485/uncategorized/faces-in-the-crowd-does-curving-grades-benefit-students/feed/ 0 https://gunnoracle.com/8003/centerfold/prioritize-happiness-over-success/ https://gunnoracle.com/8003/centerfold/prioritize-happiness-over-success/#respond Fri, 09 Sep 2016 10:00:00 +0000 http://gunnoracle.com/?p=8003

On March 8, the Board of Education held a special meeting for a laning board study session with the purpose of clarifying common language, deepening understanding and discussing the why and the what, research, practice and some pros and cons regarding ability grouping, laning, tracking and access.

The study session was driven by the district’s strive for increased equity, opportunity and choice through Strategic Plan Initiative A3. The purpose of the initiative is to significantly raise the achievement of historically underserved students by ensuring equity of preparation, access and support.

Superintendent Dr. Max McGee said that the historical precedent for de-laning happened at Palo Alto High School (Paly) when they combined English 9 and 9A two years ago. “Before I arrived—when Dr. Kevin Skelly was superintendent—they had a board presentation regarding combining English 9 and 9A at Paly and apparently not everything went as planned,” McGee said. “Hearing about this presentation and the follow- up from some of the board members at the time, it seems to me that perhaps there really wasn’t enough background knowledge or big-picture information presented.”

McGee said that the board’s recent information session was held in order to look at existing research and hear opinions. He stated that the study session was really driven by Gunn’s proposal to combine Algebra 1 and 1A and the opportunity to look at the effects of the combination of English 9 and 9A at Paly.

As a follow-up, Gunn will bring forward a proposal to combine Algebra 1 and 1A at the April board meeting.

McGee noted that the term de-laning is probably a misnomer. “Combining Algebra 1 and 1A is not about de-laning; there will still be plenty of lanes in math—even freshmen year,” McGee said. “This is really just combining Algebra 1 and 1A.”

Math department Instructional Supervisor (IS) Kathy Hawes doesn’t view the combination of Algebra 1 and Algebra 1A as de-laning either. “I see this combination of courses as a delay of laning,” Hawes said. “By placing all Math 8 students in the same Algebra class, we are giving students an opportunity to experience high school before deciding which math lane is more appropriate, either the advanced lane or the college prep lane.” Hawes says this is especially important now that Gunn is allowing open enrollment.

Hawes says the advantage of laning is that it allows students to study math according to their interest level and workload. “For students who are not interested in Science Technology Engineering and Math fields, taking a college prep level class allows them more time to focus on other interests,” Hawes said. “For students who have a strong interest in math and mathematical problem solving, the Advanced and Honors lanes provide a more in-depth study and a greater homework load.”

Hawes said that the main disadvantage of laning occurs when students are locked into the wrong track at an early age. “This is why we call our course offerings lanes and allow students to change lanes each year when choosing courses,” Hawes said.

McGee said the feedback from the community during the March 8 meeting varied. Most of the parents who spoke, McGee said, were afraid of the idea of de-laning. “Their assumption is that you are taking something away from the kids who are accelerated or advanced, and we made it very clear that this workshop and any further conversations about de-laning was not about removing top lanes; it was about combining lower lanes,” McGee said.

Moving forward, McGee wants this decision to go to the board. He believes it’s better to take the community’s opinion into account for this matter, and wants to ensure that everybody has the opportunity to be heard—he is especially eager to hear what students have to say.

According to Paly English Department IS Shirley Tokheim, a few years ago Paly recommended that all incoming freshmen take 9A, so for the past two years, all freshmen have taken 9A. “The result of having heterogeneous classes is that all freshmen learn solid, fundamental skills so that when they do have to choose an accelerated or honors course, all students have the opportunity to do so,” Tokheim wrote in an email.

Tokheim said that educators know from research that students in lower lanes rarely uplane. “We also know that given the choice, students choose their lanes based more on what their friends choose rather than on ability,” Tokheim said in an email. “We know that students in lower lanes are often not as prepared as students who have access to a more rigorous curriculum.” She said that at Paly, they believe in providing all students the opportunity to experience a rigorous curriculum—without limiting their options. Accoridng to Tokheim, having all students take 9A has been a big success, and she would never support dividing students the way they did in the past. “Heterogeneous classes best serve all students, and as a teacher of 9A, I can say that it’s fantastic to help build those skills with all students together,” she said in an email.

Junior Juan Santos agrees with the fundamentals of de-laning that McGee brought up. Although he doesn’t view this as a necessary change, Santos believes it will encourage students to academically experiment and challenge themselves. “Putting everyone in the same situation could allow for more experimentation,” Santos said. “I think it would be beneficial for lower lanes because it encourages kids to strive for the higher lane and progress. It gives them the environment to truly evaluate themselves and see where they can go.”

McGee hopes that over the course of the next few years, electives and Advanced Placement classes will have a more proportional representation from historically underrepresented groups. “Hopefully we will have more students overall who feel like they can succeed in these more challenging classes,” McGee said.

Hawes explained that the purpose of combining Algebra 1 and Algebra 1A is to address one of Gunn’s Western Association of Schools and Colleges goals to increase achievement for all learners, especially historically underrepresented populations. “In the past, only Algebra 1A students have been able to take Geometry over the summer to bridge to Algebra 2/TrigA as a sophomore,” Hawes said. “With this schedule change, all students will have the opportunity to make this bridge if taking calculus in high school is important to their interests and career goals.”

• Ban electronics
  • Banning electronics for the duration of studying may be hard but it helps reduce distractions for your studying process.
• Listen to relaxing music
  • Listening to music can increase concentration, but usually only if the music does not contain lyrics. It is best to find some background music to listen to while working.
• Exercise before studying
  • Doing light exercise before mental activity helps reduce your excess energy. It also improves your concentration levels.
• Use flashcards
  • Using flashcards while studying allows you to switch things up in your routine, which can help you retain more information.
• Highlight!
  • Highlight things while studying so that you can find the main points later on. This also helps to ensure that you are focusing on the job that needs to be done.
• Take breaks and relax
  • Taking 15-20 minute breaks between large studying sessions will help you greatly by allowing your brain some time to relax from constant use.
• Order the subjects
  • Do the most tedious and hardest subjects first. This way you can concentrate on the necessary material.
• Talk to yourself
  • This helps you hear the information that you are reading. It also helps keep you awake.

Good luck, Titans! Make sure to take care of yourself in the weeks leading up to finals. A test isn’t worth sacrificing your health.

It’s test day. You’re sitting at your desk, nervously tapping your pencil. You’ve prepared to the best of your ability, but your anxiety increases as you open the test booklet. One problem in particular is worth a lot of points, but you don’t know how to do it. You need to do especially well on this test to maintain your A in the class.

The teacher exits the classroom into the back of the science department’s atrium to converse with his teaching assistants. Do you pull out your phone to Google the answer?

Senior Gregory Duvall (name changed to protect the student’s identity) answered yes. “If you ask around, everybody’s getting such high grades and high SATs and things,” Duvall said. “You just feel the need to be better or be at least as good as them.”

Duvall, then a sophomore, calls the incident his most egregious act of cheating. “I feel pretty bad about that, but I got an A minus in that class and barely an A minus,” he said. “If I hadn’t looked up that answer, I definitely would’ve gotten a B plus.”

Definitions of cheating

In the beginning of the school year, students attended an assembly that analyzed various results from the 2015 Challenge Success Survey about student life. The survey revealed that only 13 percent of students had not cheated in any way in the past year. Various forms of academic integrity violations included copying someone’s homework, collaborative work without permission and passing on test questions from someone who had already taken it. The results also gave data on students’ own cheating habits, such as using cheat sheets, plagiarizing and using others’ work as their own.

According to Gunn’s academic policy, “cheating is taking (or lending), at inappropriate times a person’s work, information, ideas, research, and documentation, without properly identifying the originator, and/or acting dishonestly or unfairly in order to gain an advantage–a deliberate act of deception.”

If 87 percent of the 2000-student population at Gunn has cheated, then the underlying question of it all is: why?

The more clear-cut reasons

Cheating occurs for a wide range of reasons. While a less observable cause is rooted in the community mindset itself, a number of distinct issues lie within the structure of our school.

Principal Dr. Denise Herrmann says several general motivations exist for cheating. “I think that most of the time, it’s because they haven’t managed enough time for them to be able to do the work, the high quality work or learning, themselves,” she said. “Sometimes they just have too much on their plate, sometimes they have been afraid to ask clarifying questions in class, sometimes they think they understand it but they get home and they don’t.”

One of the most common forms of cheating at Gunn is copying answers from a peer’s assignment or the solutions manual. Senior Maritha Wang often observes students comparing and exchanging answers before big lab assignments are due in science classes. “I don’t think people cheat because they don’t think they’re capable of doing the assignment,” she said. “I think they just run out of time, and I feel like homework is easy points, so you kind of just feel dumb if you don’t end up getting an A in the homework category.”

Gunn’s cheating culture is further perpetuated, says sophomore Clara Kieschnick-Llamas, by an unequal emphasis on STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) classes over arts and humanities courses. “Because we’re in Silicon Valley and we’re surrounded by people who do math and science, people think that those subjects are the most important to be learning,” she said.

Kieschnick-Llamas says she never sees cheating occurring in math or science classes but instead finds students cheating in classes that are “less important like language classes and history.”

Another contributing factor is miscommunication between teachers and students. In sophomore Elizabeth Miksztal’s class, students were told that they would not need to study certain material for a quiz. “It turned out that the things that [were] not going to be on the quiz were on the quiz,” she said. Since the quiz was taken on a laptop on Schoology, students were able to easily open an additional tab and search up the answers.

Because her teacher misspoke about the content on the quiz, Miksztal believes that her cheating was justified. “I talked to people after the quiz and about 40 percent said that they had cheated not because of stress, but because of the fact that they thought it was completely unfair,” she said. “They felt that they didn’t have to have their grade suffer because of a teacher miscommunicating something and not being held responsible for it.”

A bigger issue is Gunn’s broad and overarching definition of cheating, senior Ben Lee says, which he feels is incorrectly applied on campus. “I feel like cheating at this age just naturally occurs, just like other things in life like stress and bullying,” he said. “Cheating is not asking someone for help or asking someone what they thought of the test. Cheating is taking someone’s test and using it for your own test.”

Using such an umbrella term, Lee says, is a disservice to students. By Gunn’s definition, a number of real-world businesses should be facing consequences too, but Lee notes that ramifications for the corporate industry do not exist. Companies constantly build off each other and essentially “cheat” to create new companies with similar services, Lee says. “Lyft, Uber and Wingz are basically the same thing with tiny changes and you can argue that they copied each other. They’re companies and they have certain rights,” he said. “But [the administration doesn’t] look to companies and accuse them.”

Psychology teacher Warren Collier believes students consider cheating when they become desperate. In Collier’s experience, when it comes to deciding between moral or utility values on the spot, one is not compelled to to be honest. “When we are in that desperate situation, the moral issues usually don’t become the main motivating factor,” he said. “When I’m sitting in that test, and I have no idea how to answer the question, I don’t usually think. ‘What is the right thing to do?’ I think, ‘I need to get this right.’”

Collier has witnessed students cheating in his classroom, and followed necessary guidelines set by the administration. Though he does not handle direct ramifications, the relationship between the teacher and student shifts. “For the teacher, it’s hard not to think, ‘Why doesn’t this student care about my class,’” he said. “Things get awkward because I’m emotional about it and the student is emotional about it.”

Collier did cheat in high school, and he carries the attached guilt to this day. “In the long run, you just feel dumb about making a poor choice. It’s important to have integrity as a person and I don’t think it’s worth sacrificing your integrity just for a couple more points,” he said. “The test or project will be gone by next month, but the fact that you cheated will be remembered for the rest of your life.”

What research shows about cheating

The reality is that we have lots of human values; honesty is one of them. “Conflicts arise every time human values collide with each other, and of course they collide with each other when we think about politeness,” Duke University Professor of Psychology Dan Ariely said, pointing to white lies. “But when it comes in collision with success, I don’t think people would thoughtfully say, ‘I want a life of flying over a life of honesty.’” People do it one time, find themselves on a slippery slope and do it again and again and again, Ariely says.

Studying and cheating, however, are not mutually exclusive. One can study and still cheat or cheat and still study. It all comes down to one’s conflicts of interest, says Ariely, who wrote “The Honest Truth About Dishonesty” about his research on dishonesty.

In society, students are naturally pushed toward getting good grades, Ariely says. This is reinforced by parents who treat students differently when they receive good grades and by the working world’s message that only the educated are hired. Naturally, then, a conflict of interest develops: sacrifice honesty or sacrifice good grades? 

We see the world through our conflicts of interest, Ariely says. If you have a conflict of interest, you’re likely to feel motivated in the short term to gain in that way. “It’s certainly not a necessarily planned thought,” he said. “The students probably don’t think of themselves as villains; they just at the moment have a sense of wishful blindness—‘I don’t want to think about it this way and I really want to get a good grade.’”

The pressure to succeed only creates a higher conflict of interest. If students think that people around them are dishonest, that makes it easier for them to be dishonest as well.

Cheating as a necessary evil

If facing the same dilemma in college, Duvall doesn’t believe he will choose the same route. “In college, the stakes are a lot higher,” he said. Most students, he says, see good grades as a pathway for college, college as a pathway for a stable job and a stable job as the ultimate pathway to a successful life.

For Duvall, his decision to cheat on his test was a preventative measure—to avoid punishment from parents.

It is true that in Palo Alto, some parents exert a certain amount of pressure on their children to do well in school. Superintendent Dr. Max McGee reminds students, however, to be aware of the clash of cultural interests in the community. A number of parents in Palo Alto grew up with parents who survived the Great Depression and raised their children to value economic security. Because of this, Palo Alto parents may tend to place high importance on stability, which to them is best achieved through education. Some parents even immigrated into America in hopes of raising their family in a more promising environment.

Students, however, see things from a different perspective, and McGee believes open dialogue needs to occur in order to bridge the gap between parents and students. “We first need to understand cultural powers and pressures,” he said. “Then we need to work with parents and faculty on how these cultural factors impact students and how we can help kids manage the pressures.”

Cheating was also a practical matter for senior Aubrey Laurent (name changed to protect the student’s identity). In one of her classes, the teacher gave quizzes every week, but Laurent says the teacher never adequately prepared students in class for these assessments and instead assigned a large amount of outside work. “I do remember we brought up the amount of work with her in class once,” Laurent said. Her teacher replied that she needed to keep students busy so she could stay busy, Laurent says.

To pass one of these quizzes, which were more frequent and easier than tests, Laurent would have to study for one to to two hours while neglecting other schoolwork and activities. “As everybody in this class started to realize how ridiculous these quizzes were and how they weren’t really testing your knowledge—everybody was just power-memorizing the day before to get a passing grade—a lot more people turned to cheating,” Laurent said. She was even caught cheating once, but her teacher did not report her and there were no repercussions.

The majority of Laurent’s grade relied on scores received from these quizzes, she says. Though her cheating behavior began as a way to maintain a good enough grade without overburdening herself, at a certain point she became so used to cheating that she just kept doing it. “Why keep studying when it’s so easy?” she said. “When students are feeling way too overwhelmed, you have to give something up.”

Underlying pressure and expectations

Gunn’s academic environment is not isolated. According to a study conducted by Challenge Success, two-thirds of 6,294 students at 15 high-achieving schools reported not regularly being “fully engaged in their academic schoolwork, often associating absence of engagement with more frequent school stress, higher rates of cheating and greater internalizing, externalizing and physical symptoms of stress.”

Laurent says a lot of students feel that to be happy you have to make money and to make money you have to go to a good college, and that starts with high school—getting good grades. “That’s a lot of people’s mindsets, and I think unfortunately that’s also a lot of parents’ mindsets, too,” she said. “When everyone seems successful around you, you feel the pressure to be successful, too.”

After all, it is human nature to compare oneself to others, Duvall says. “I don’t see that changing because you’re always going to be curious about how other people do on a test, how other people do on an essay,” he said. “There’s no changing that.” Even if a peer is stretching the truth about a particular test score, such comparisons increase the inherent need to try harder and do better in school so one can “catch up.”

Wang also believes that students themselves have high standards. “Maybe it’s just growing up in the Silicon Valley, where everyone’s already so successful,” she said. “You have startups everywhere; Stanford is literally three blocks down from the street. When you’re in a culture of such excellent people, excellence becomes normal.”

Students face another issue when discussing colleges, most often hearing about prestigious schools like Harvard and not smaller liberal arts colleges. The same goes for the technology industry, Laurent says. “We hear of the parents’ companies that really took off and sold for millions of dollars, and that’s the issue,” she said. “We’re hearing this one-sided opinion of everyone becoming super successful [in their terms of success], and we’re never really hearing about the other 90 percent.”

Though asking for help from a teacher has become less taboo in the last few years, Duvall says peer pressure still contributes to a fear of requesting assistance. “Because there are so many high-achieving students at Gunn, it would seem like you’re weak if you went over and talked to a teacher,” he said.

The alumni Laurent speaks to often talk about how nice it is to be in a noncompetitive environment where students don’t compare grades or scores and peers take time out of their days to help you with your work. “Slowly, we have to become more aware and try our best not to be so grade-focused,” she said. She believes teachers must play a role in raising awareness and realize when they are assigning excess or busy work to help alleviate stress.

Parents, too, can play a role in diminishing students’ competitive mindsets, Duvall says. If parents can instead emphasize collaboration and openness early on in a child’s life, then students will be able to thrive in a healthier environment, without the constant pressure of having to do better than their peers.

Steps toward solutions

To start affecting change, McGee believes conversation must begin in the classroom. He points to the model of a freshman reflection seminar at a national university. These seminars are run by faculty and identify a hot issue related to student life that needs to be addressed. “We need to think about how we can create conditions for that kind of dialogue,” he said. The best outcome will only occur through full and complete honesty. McGee says if a teacher takes action against students who speak of a cheating experience in a space of open dialogue, it will not be tolerated.

Gunn administration is already planning to hold student focus groups in January to start drafting ideas to alleviate cheating. “Some of the possibilities would be to revise some policies in the student handbook or more opportunities for students for retesting and requizzing,”  Herrmann said. Another idea she hopes will take root is the creation of a peer court, where a group of peers evaluate one’s actions and determine the measures needed to earn back the trust of teachers and classmates.

“Some of the possibilities would be to revise some policies in the student handbook or more opportunities for students for retesting and requizzing.”

—Principal Dr. Denise Herrmann

Nonetheless, an internal shift needs to occur, too. “[Students] think that just because they don’t get it right away, they’re not going to get it. If after some initial attempts at learning and they’re not getting it, they’re likely to slip into some poor choices,” Herrmann said. “We want to build on the idea of helping students develop a growth mindset, that it’s okay not to know something and that it’s okay to ask for help and it’s okay to be thinking over assessment over time.”

While some degree of cheating will always remain on campus, we must also realize that we are already quite honest. Ariely says what administrators can do to discourage cheating is create a strict, specific set of rules for behavior. When somebody says, “Don’t cheat,” it’s too broad and not enough to stop someone from behaving dishonestly. What we need are guidelines that clearly define what people are expected and allowed to do and not do. “We can make dishonesty harder,” he said. “We can remind people that a betrayal of honesty is a betrayal of a social good, and we can remind people of the importance of honesty.”

McGee goes a step further and asks the community as a whole needs to look at success from a more multidimensional angle. “When students feel like their ultimate final exam is what college they go to, they may be more inclined to cheat,” he said.

But life is about more than that, and your grades don’t define who you are. “The deepest satisfaction in my professional life is hearing from former students and how they impacted other people’s lives based on lessons they had learned in my classes,” McGee said. “That is my final exam.”