Teachers, students, and administrators reexamine academic expectations in the wake of integrity violations

In late February 2024, Godwin teachers and administrators discovered coordinated cheating throughout the school, especially among those taking, in many cases, too many AP (Advanced Placement) classes.

The means in which these students cheated varied, but the question of why students resort to cheating remains a theme of discussion amongst teachers and staff, many agreeing that Covid enabled a dependency on dishonest behavior.

Godwin AP United States History teacher Mary Hilton and Godwin Principal Leigh Dunavant share the same sentiment felt across Godwin: the unsustainable competition that various colleges, universities, schools, and programs seek out in their applicants inherently foster a hypercompetitive and high stress environment for high school students.

“For whatever reason, [students] feel the need to take an incredible number of AP classes, particularly at this school and I don’t think it’s realistic,” said Hilton.

Although students tend to burden themselves with rigorous courses, these behaviors are motivated by many universities encouraging students to take the highest level of classes.

“If you ask any top-notch school, they will say ‘take as many AP classes and get the best grades you can,’ so it’s a top-down thing,” Dunavant commented.

A positive correlation can be found: the more advanced classes a student is enrolled in, the more likely a student is to partake in dishonest practices. The Eagles’ Eyrie staff spoke to multiple teachers who corroborated this fact in relation to Godwin students. 

Unrealistic academic expectations can be attributed to adverse health effects such as sleep deprivation and increased stress due to an overloaded schedule. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that 72.7% of high schoolers do not get an adequate amount of sleep on school nights. The National Institute of Health found that students enrolled in AP classes receive up to an hour less. 

Out of the 1260 students in 10th-12th grade, Godwin consists of 640 students enrolled in at least one or more AP courses. Among the students enrolled in AP, 329 students take three or more in a single year.

“There are only a handful of students that can take six APs. Swapping your schedules with full APs only creates stress, anxiety, and worry,” said Dunavant. 

While decreased quality of sleep does not directly compel a student to cheat, the accumulation of added stress, poor sleep, and the limited time allocated to school work can lead to a student considering cheating as a possibility, especially if it helps them achieve balance in their busy life.

 According to a Harvard study, fatigue and frequent lack of sleep can contribute to cheating and unethical business practices.

However, English Department Chair Miriam Ashworth does not believe that students should be absolved of their actions simply because of their poor sleep and quality of life, saying plainly, “The people responsible for cheating are cheaters.”

According to Public School Review, “While only 20% of students in the 1940s admitted to cheating in school, this statistic has skyrocketed to 75% of today’s high school student population.”

As students partake in dishonest practices, the relationship between them and their teachers deteriorates. Despite this, it is possible to regain trust.

Godwin AP Physics teacher, Nick Dzienny, commented on student-teacher relationships post-infraction, saying, “I’d like to think that it hasn’t affected my dynamic with students. I try to stay positive and supportive to all students despite any history and setbacks … I don’t want to change how I maintain my classroom environment. That being said, there definitely is a palpable shift in energy in some classes on the other side of everything that has happened.” 

While both students and teachers strive to rebuild trust after incidents of cheating and other integrity violations, factors including the date students cheated and the maturity expected from teachers—especially as they transition into upperclassmen—can make reconciliation difficult.

“There’s going to have to be a conversation [between students and teachers],” said Anna Bryant, who has been teaching at Godwin since its opening in 1980.

A student involved in cheating, who spoke on the condition of anonymity said, “The violation will definitely affect me moving forward, especially with college applications … I can only learn to grow from my mistakes. Teachers have said that it is evident I put in a lot of work with school, I just made a dumb mistake. To improve my relationships with them, I can only grow from my mistakes and prove that I am academically capable.”

While teachers have resorted to scantrons, reorganizing desks, and incorporating test variations to prevent students from cheating, many feel that resorting to the traditional way is redundant and time-consuming.

“I prefer the [new] way of testing versus using scantrons and book pamphlets, given that [students] can have trust given. From where I sit behind the desk, it’s more efficient nowadays to give it on the computer, right?” said Hilton.

Although these precautions have been taken, teachers find themselves spending an enormous amount of time to ensure an honest testing environment. Naturally, digital assessments lift the burden of grading off teachers’ backs, but students can no longer be trusted to use the laptops with integrity, as evidenced by Henrico County’s decision to remove all unapproved Chrome extensions. 

Without trust that students will be motivated to work honestly, teachers redirect more time from planning quality lessons and developing engaging assignments. The question between students and teachers remains, what can be done to rebuild trust.

“Number one, they’ve gotta own it. They’ve got to be responsible, they’ve got to admit what they did and that what they did was wrong. And then I think they’ve got to go above and beyond to show that they’re trying to do things the right way,” said Watson. 

Godwin is not the only school that has fallen victim to cheating, schools across the nation have as well. “This is a Godwin problem, it is also a Henrico County problem, it’s also a state of Virginia problem and a United States problem. There’s cheating that goes on in every high school across the United States. We are better than that, and we can be better than that,” said Dunavant.

Cheating will always be an issue for classrooms everywhere, and while nobody at Godwin can change the events of the past, working to recover what trust was lost in the classroom has undoubted importance in rekindling student-staff relationships.

In a previous version of this article ‘mass’ and ‘many’ were used to describe the volume of and group of people involved in cheating. To maintain clarity these words have been removed and more context has been added to Henrico County’s decision to ban unapproved Chrome extensions.