cheating in school essay

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Why Students Cheat—and What to Do About It

A teacher seeks answers from researchers and psychologists. 

“Why did you cheat in high school?” I posed the question to a dozen former students.

“I wanted good grades and I didn’t want to work,” said Sonya, who graduates from college in June. [The students’ names in this article have been changed to protect their privacy.]

My current students were less candid than Sonya. To excuse her plagiarized Cannery Row essay, Erin, a ninth-grader with straight As, complained vaguely and unconvincingly of overwhelming stress. When he was caught copying a review of the documentary Hypernormalism , Jeremy, a senior, stood by his “hard work” and said my accusation hurt his feelings.

Cases like the much-publicized ( and enduring ) 2012 cheating scandal at high-achieving Stuyvesant High School in New York City confirm that academic dishonesty is rampant and touches even the most prestigious of schools. The data confirms this as well. A 2012 Josephson Institute’s Center for Youth Ethics report revealed that more than half of high school students admitted to cheating on a test, while 74 percent reported copying their friends’ homework. And a survey of 70,000 high school students across the United States between 2002 and 2015 found that 58 percent had plagiarized papers, while 95 percent admitted to cheating in some capacity.

So why do students cheat—and how do we stop them?

According to researchers and psychologists, the real reasons vary just as much as my students’ explanations. But educators can still learn to identify motivations for student cheating and think critically about solutions to keep even the most audacious cheaters in their classrooms from doing it again.

Rationalizing It


First, know that students realize cheating is wrong—they simply see themselves as moral in spite of it.

“They cheat just enough to maintain a self-concept as honest people. They make their behavior an exception to a general rule,” said Dr. David Rettinger , professor at the University of Mary Washington and executive director of the Center for Honor, Leadership, and Service, a campus organization dedicated to integrity.

According to Rettinger and other researchers, students who cheat can still see themselves as principled people by rationalizing cheating for reasons they see as legitimate.

Some do it when they don’t see the value of work they’re assigned, such as drill-and-kill homework assignments, or when they perceive an overemphasis on teaching content linked to high-stakes tests.

“There was no critical thinking, and teachers seemed pressured to squish it into their curriculum,” said Javier, a former student and recent liberal arts college graduate. “They questioned you on material that was never covered in class, and if you failed the test, it was progressively harder to pass the next time around.”

But students also rationalize cheating on assignments they see as having value.

High-achieving students who feel pressured to attain perfection (and Ivy League acceptances) may turn to cheating as a way to find an edge on the competition or to keep a single bad test score from sabotaging months of hard work. At Stuyvesant, for example, students and teachers identified the cutthroat environment as a factor in the rampant dishonesty that plagued the school.

And research has found that students who receive praise for being smart—as opposed to praise for effort and progress—are more inclined to exaggerate their performance and to cheat on assignments , likely because they are carrying the burden of lofty expectations.

A Developmental Stage

When it comes to risk management, adolescent students are bullish. Research has found that teenagers are biologically predisposed to be more tolerant of unknown outcomes and less bothered by stated risks than their older peers.

“In high school, they’re risk takers developmentally, and can’t see the consequences of immediate actions,” Rettinger says. “Even delayed consequences are remote to them.”

While cheating may not be a thrill ride, students already inclined to rebel against curfews and dabble in illicit substances have a certain comfort level with being reckless. They’re willing to gamble when they think they can keep up the ruse—and more inclined to believe they can get away with it.

Cheating also appears to be almost contagious among young people—and may even serve as a kind of social adhesive, at least in environments where it is widely accepted.  A study of military academy students from 1959 to 2002 revealed that students in communities where cheating is tolerated easily cave in to peer pressure, finding it harder not to cheat out of fear of losing social status if they don’t.

Michael, a former student, explained that while he didn’t need to help classmates cheat, he felt “unable to say no.” Once he started, he couldn’t stop.

Technology Facilitates and Normalizes It

With smartphones and Alexa at their fingertips, today’s students have easy access to quick answers and content they can reproduce for exams and papers.  Studies show that technology has made cheating in school easier, more convenient, and harder to catch than ever before.

To Liz Ruff, an English teacher at Garfield High School in Los Angeles, students’ use of social media can erode their understanding of authenticity and intellectual property. Because students are used to reposting images, repurposing memes, and watching parody videos, they “see ownership as nebulous,” she said.

As a result, while they may want to avoid penalties for plagiarism, they may not see it as wrong or even know that they’re doing it.

This confirms what Donald McCabe, a Rutgers University Business School professor,  reported in his 2012 book ; he found that more than 60 percent of surveyed students who had cheated considered digital plagiarism to be “trivial”—effectively, students believed it was not actually cheating at all.

Strategies for Reducing Cheating

Even moral students need help acting morally, said  Dr. Jason M. Stephens , who researches academic motivation and moral development in adolescents at the University of Auckland’s School of Learning, Development, and Professional Practice. According to Stephens, teachers are uniquely positioned to infuse students with a sense of responsibility and help them overcome the rationalizations that enable them to think cheating is OK.

1. Turn down the pressure cooker. Students are less likely to cheat on work in which they feel invested. A multiple-choice assessment tempts would-be cheaters, while a unique, multiphase writing project measuring competencies can make cheating much harder and less enticing. Repetitive homework assignments are also a culprit, according to research , so teachers should look at creating take-home assignments that encourage students to think critically and expand on class discussions. Teachers could also give students one free pass on a homework assignment each quarter, for example, or let them drop their lowest score on an assignment.

2. Be thoughtful about your language.   Research indicates that using the language of fixed mindsets , like praising children for being smart as opposed to praising them for effort and progress , is both demotivating and increases cheating. When delivering feedback, researchers suggest using phrases focused on effort like, “You made really great progress on this paper” or “This is excellent work, but there are still a few areas where you can grow.”

3. Create student honor councils. Give students the opportunity to enforce honor codes or write their own classroom/school bylaws through honor councils so they can develop a full understanding of how cheating affects themselves and others. At Fredericksburg Academy, high school students elect two Honor Council members per grade. These students teach the Honor Code to fifth graders, who, in turn, explain it to younger elementary school students to help establish a student-driven culture of integrity. Students also write a pledge of authenticity on every assignment. And if there is an honor code transgression, the council gathers to discuss possible consequences. 

4. Use metacognition. Research shows that metacognition, a process sometimes described as “ thinking about thinking ,” can help students process their motivations, goals, and actions. With my ninth graders, I use a centuries-old resource to discuss moral quandaries: the play Macbeth . Before they meet the infamous Thane of Glamis, they role-play as medical school applicants, soccer players, and politicians, deciding if they’d cheat, injure, or lie to achieve goals. I push students to consider the steps they take to get the outcomes they desire. Why do we tend to act in the ways we do? What will we do to get what we want? And how will doing those things change who we are? Every tragedy is about us, I say, not just, as in Macbeth’s case, about a man who succumbs to “vaulting ambition.”

5. Bring honesty right into the curriculum. Teachers can weave a discussion of ethical behavior into curriculum. Ruff and many other teachers have been inspired to teach media literacy to help students understand digital plagiarism and navigate the widespread availability of secondary sources online, using guidance from organizations like Common Sense Media .

There are complicated psychological dynamics at play when students cheat, according to experts and researchers. While enforcing rules and consequences is important, knowing what’s really motivating students to cheat can help you foster integrity in the classroom instead of just penalizing the cheating.

Why Do Students Cheat?

• Posted July 19, 2016
• By Zachary Goldman

In March, Usable Knowledge published an article on ethical collaboration , which explored researchers’ ideas about how to develop classrooms and schools where collaboration is nurtured but cheating is avoided. The piece offers several explanations for why students cheat and provides powerful ideas about how to create ethical communities. The article left me wondering how students themselves might respond to these ideas, and whether their experiences with cheating reflected the researchers’ understanding. In other words, how are young people “reading the world,” to quote Paulo Freire , when it comes to questions of cheating, and what might we learn from their perspectives?

I worked with Gretchen Brion-Meisels to investigate these questions by talking to two classrooms of students from Massachusetts and Texas about their experiences with cheating. We asked these youth informants to connect their own insights and ideas about cheating with the ideas described in " Ethical Collaboration ." They wrote from a range of perspectives, grappling with what constitutes cheating, why people cheat, how people cheat, and when cheating might be ethically acceptable. In doing so, they provide us with additional insights into why students cheat and how schools might better foster ethical collaboration.

Why Students Cheat

Students critiqued both the individual decision-making of peers and the school-based structures that encourage cheating. For example, Julio (Massachusetts) wrote, “Teachers care about cheating because its not fair [that] students get good grades [but] didn't follow the teacher's rules.” His perspective represents one set of ideas that we heard, which suggests that cheating is an unethical decision caused by personal misjudgment. Umna (Massachusetts) echoed this idea, noting that “cheating is … not using the evidence in your head and only using the evidence that’s from someone else’s head.”

Other students focused on external factors that might make their peers feel pressured to cheat. For example, Michima (Massachusetts) wrote, “Peer pressure makes students cheat. Sometimes they have a reason to cheat like feeling [like] they need to be the smartest kid in class.” Kayla (Massachusetts) agreed, noting, “Some people cheat because they want to seem cooler than their friends or try to impress their friends. Students cheat because they think if they cheat all the time they’re going to get smarter.” In addition to pressure from peers, students spoke about pressure from adults, pressure related to standardized testing, and the demands of competing responsibilities.

When Cheating is Acceptable

Students noted a few types of extenuating circumstances, including high stakes moments. For example, Alejandra (Texas) wrote, “The times I had cheated [were] when I was failing a class, and if I failed the final I would repeat the class. And I hated that class and I didn’t want to retake it again.” Here, she identifies allegiance to a parallel ethical value: Graduating from high school. In this case, while cheating might be wrong, it is an acceptable means to a higher-level goal.

Encouraging an Ethical School Community

Several of the older students with whom we spoke were able to offer us ideas about how schools might create more ethical communities. Sam (Texas) wrote, “A school where cheating isn't necessary would be centered around individualization and learning. Students would learn information and be tested on the information. From there the teachers would assess students' progress with this information, new material would be created to help individual students with what they don't understand. This way of teaching wouldn't be based on time crunching every lesson, but more about helping a student understand a concept.”

Sam provides a vision for the type of school climate in which collaboration, not cheating, would be most encouraged. Kaith (Texas), added to this vision, writing, “In my own opinion students wouldn’t find the need to cheat if they knew that they had the right undivided attention towards them from their teachers and actually showed them that they care about their learning. So a school where cheating wasn’t necessary would be amazing for both teachers and students because teachers would be actually getting new things into our brains and us as students would be not only attentive of our teachers but also in fact learning.”

Both of these visions echo a big idea from “ Ethical Collaboration ”: The importance of reducing the pressure to achieve. Across students’ comments, we heard about how self-imposed pressure, peer pressure, and pressure from adults can encourage cheating.

Where Student Opinions Diverge from Research

The ways in which students spoke about support differed from the descriptions in “ Ethical Collaboration .” The researchers explain that, to reduce cheating, students need “vertical support,” or standards, guidelines, and models of ethical behavior. This implies that students need support understanding what is ethical. However, our youth informants describe a type of vertical support that centers on listening and responding to students’ needs. They want teachers to enable ethical behavior through holistic support of individual learning styles and goals. Similarly, researchers describe “horizontal support” as creating “a school environment where students know, and can persuade their peers, that no one benefits from cheating,” again implying that students need help understanding the ethics of cheating. Our youth informants led us to believe instead that the type of horizontal support needed may be one where collective success is seen as more important than individual competition.

Why Youth Voices Matter, and How to Help Them Be Heard

Our purpose in reaching out to youth respondents was to better understand whether the research perspectives on cheating offered in “ Ethical Collaboration ” mirrored the lived experiences of young people. This blog post is only a small step in that direction; young peoples’ perspectives vary widely across geographic, demographic, developmental, and contextual dimensions, and we do not mean to imply that these youth informants speak for all youth. However, our brief conversations suggest that asking youth about their lived experiences can benefit the way that educators understand school structures.

Too often, though, students are cut out of conversations about school policies and culture. They rarely even have access to information on current educational research, partially because they are not the intended audience of such work. To expand opportunities for student voice, we need to create spaces — either online or in schools — where students can research a current topic that interests them. Then they can collect information, craft arguments they want to make, and deliver their messages. Educators can create the spaces for this youth-driven work in schools, communities, and even policy settings — helping to support young people as both knowledge creators and knowledge consumers. 

Additional Resources

• Read “ Student Voice in Educational Research and Reform ” [PDF] by Alison Cook-Sather.
• Read “ The Significance of Students ” [PDF] by Dana L. Mitra.
• Read “ Beyond School Spirit ” by Emily J. Ozer and Dana Wright.

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Articles & Advice > Majors and Academics > Blog

This Is What Happens When You Cheat in School

Lots of students admit to cheating in school. But even when it seems like a harmless shortcut, there are serious repercussions whether or not you get caught.

by Cathleen Freedman CollegeXpress Student Writer

Last Updated: Sep 29, 2023

Originally Posted: Apr 1, 2016

Between 75%–98% of college students admit to having cheated in high school. Typically when one thinks of a “cheater,” they think of some hooligan who doesn’t even try to learn the class material. But even top students who make good grades cheat. Cheating in school might seem like a harmless little shortcut, but there are real and seriously harmful repercussions—whether or not you get caught. Let's take a look at why students cheat, the serious consequences you can face, and more honest alternatives for when you need academic help. 

Common reasons students cheat

There's no excuse for cheating, but many students still try to come up with reasons to try to justify it. Have you ever had one of the following thoughts?

“I want to get the grade, not the education”

With the pressure to achieve a high GPA  and class rank, it’s easy to lose sight of what school is actually about: learning . You're in school to get a good education, first and foremost. Then  you are expected to demonstrate your knowledge in your good grades. Learn the material; the grades will follow. And if you’re so overwhelmed that you think cheating is your only way to keep your grades up, there are much better options (keep reading!).

“If I cheat, I’m only affecting myself”

Wrong! By cheating, you’re stealing the work of another student who has put in the time to learn the material. By cheating and getting a good grade you didn’t actually earn, you can also hurt the curve for the entire class and make the students who are struggling with the material believe there is something wrong with them for not understanding.

“My teacher isn’t any good, so it’s okay if I cheat to get by in that class”

While it's unfair for any student to have a low-caliber teacher, it isn’t fair for anyone to cheat. When you cheat and make a good grade without understanding the material, the teacher thinks they’ve taught the criteria well, and they will continue to teach the same way or perhaps at a faster pace. 

Related:  Think Smarter and Work Harder: Never Use an Essay Writing Service  

Consequences of cheating in school

It’s way more than a Saturday suspension. Here are just a few things that could happen when you cheat in your high school or college courses—it could affect a lot more than you think! 

Cheating in high school

• You could get an automatic failure for the assignment.
• You could get an automatic failure for the whole course.
• You could be expelled or punished in other ways.
• Your teacher, friends, family, teammates, coaches, etc. could lose respect for you.
• You could hurt your own self-esteem, mess with your ability to actually think critically and solve problems, and develop a warped sense of morality.
• Cheating goes on your permanent record, which brings me to…

When applying to colleges

• The black mark on your permanent record could cost you your chances of getting into your top college —or any college.
• Scholarship providers could also see your permanent record and not offer you scholarships.
• Teachers won’t provide you with good (or any) recommendation letters. Even if you don’t get caught cheating, when you need a teacher to write your recommendation letter for college or job applications, they’ll remember that one time your Scantron answers looked eerily similar to someone else’s, and they won’t hesitate to tell your dream college or future employer about it. (Your teachers aren’t clueless, even though you think they might be.)

Cheating in college

• You could be suspended or expelled.
• You could lose your scholarship(s) or, again, not get any in the first place.
• You could face copyright infringement troubles. That’s right—you could be sued for cheating on a paper.

Then there’s the aftermath of cheating in the “real world.” You will not have developed that skill you cheated on. And if you think you “got away” with cheating in high school or college, you might be tempted to take other shortcuts in life. But out in the real world, those shortcuts have pretty bad repercussions too. You know, like getting fired—not to mention losing the respect of those around you.

Alternatives to cheating

Okay, so you’re struggling in class. Cheating seems like your only option. Obviously it's not, and you should try to learn the material and do the work on your own. But if struggling to do that is why you’re thinking about cheating in the first place, here are some ways to rise above:

• Ask your teacher, friends, or upperclassmen for help. You might be surprised by how much people can and want to help you!
• Get a tutor. Your high school, college, or local library might offer free tutoring. Or if there is NHS at your high school, many of the inductees need to get volunteer hours and would probably offer free tutoring. Check it out.
• Rethink how you spend your time. If you’re so overwhelmed with school work and activities that you think cheating is a solution, it’s time to rethink your priorities. Maybe it’s time to quit a club, change your class schedule, or give up your Tuesday night bowling league. (Or at the very least, rethink how you budget your time .)
• Remember what’s really important. Yes, the learning. But if you’re hell-bent on getting the grades so you can get into a super selective college, you’re missing the point of what college is all about.
• Use resources online. There are study guides and advice for basically every academic subject, every book you’ve been assigned, and every kind of homework problem. Watch some videos, read some stuff. (Just be careful relying on the answers you get from public online forums and familiarize yourself with what counts as plagiarism!)  

Long story short: You shouldn’t cheat. Besides all the reasons listed above, don’t you owe it to yourself to work honestly? In the words of Journey, don’t stop believing … in yourself and all that you can do—not the guy sitting next to you in Physics class.

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About Cathleen Freedman

Cathleen Freedman attends the High School of Performing and Visual Arts, where she is preparing in the best possible way for college. She would also have to say that writing in the third person is as fun as you might think it is.

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Why Students Cheat and How to Stop It

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Cheating in schools has reached epidemic proportions. The vast majority of young people (and adults for that matter) believe that cheating is wrong. Yet, by nearly every poll, most young people cheat at least once in their high school career. Why students cheat poses a challenging question for educators and parents. Here are some answers to these questions followed by possible solutions to minimize or eliminate cheating.

Why Students Cheat

Everybody does it: It's disturbing to discover that young people in middle school and high school think that it is acceptable to cheat. But the majority of tests that educators give encourage this behavior. Take multiple-choice tests, for example. They literally invite students to cheat.

Unrealistic academic demands: The public education sector is accountable to the government. State legislatures, state boards of education, local boards of education, unions, and countless other organizations demand action to correct the real and imagined failings of the nation's public education system. As a result, students must take standardized tests so that officials and parents can compare one school system to another nationally and at the state level.

In the classroom, these tests mean that a teacher must achieve the expected results or better, or she will be viewed as ineffective, or worse, incompetent. So instead of teaching students how to think, she teaches them how to pass standardized tests.

The temptation to plagiarize: Years ago cheaters lifted whole passages from an encyclopedia and called them their own. That was plagiarism. Plagiarism's current incarnation is even easier: The students simply points and clicks his way to the website with the relevant information, copies and paste it, reformats it somewhat, and passes it off as his own.

Possible Solutions

Schools need to have zero-tolerance policies concerning cheating. Teachers must be vigilant and alert to all of the newer forms of cheating, particularly electronic cheating. Smartphones and computer tablets are powerful tools for cheating. Fighting the tools that make it tempting to cheat can be challenging, but if the stakeholders are willing to take the necessary steps, they can help reduce cheating.

Teachers:  The best solution is to make learning exciting and absorbing. Teachers should make the learning process student-centric. They should allow students to buy into the process and empower them to guide and direct their learning. Teachers can encourage creativity and critical thinking as opposed to rote learning. There are some specific steps teachers can take:

• Model integrity, no matter what the cost.
• Don't assume young people know why cheating is wrong, both from a personal and corporate perspective.
• Enable students to understand the meaning and relevance of an academic lesson.
• Foster an academic curriculum that perpetuates real-world applications of knowledge.
• Don't force cheating underground—let students know that you understand the pressures and, at least initially, be reasonable in responding to violations.

Parents:  Parents have a huge role to play in combating cheating. That's because children mimic almost everything parents do. Parents must set the right sort of example for their children to emulate. Parents must also take a genuine interest in their children's work. They should ask to see everything and anything and discuss everything and anything. An involved parent is a powerful weapon against cheating.

Students:  Students must learn to be true to themselves and their own core values. They should not let peer pressure and other influences steal their dreams. Parents and educators should emphasize that if students are caught cheating, there will be serious consequences.

Also, this might seem simplistic, but students need to understand why cheating is wrong. Dr. Thomas Lickona, a developmental psychologist and education professor, defined a few points to emphasize to students about cheating. Lickona says that parents and teachers should explain to students that cheating:

• Will lower self-respect because you can never be proud of anything you earned by cheating.
• Is a lie because it deceives other people into thinking you know more than you do.
• Violates the teacher's trust and undermines the whole trust relationship between the teacher and his class.
• Is unfair to all people who aren't cheating.
• Will lead to more cheating in other situations later in life—perhaps even in personal relationships.

Foiling Electronic Cheating

When essay topics are generic, there seems to be more opportunity to cheat. By contrast, when the essay topic is specific to class discussions and/or unique to the course's stated goals, it becomes more difficult for students to go to web sources to lift material or download papers.

When the teacher expects the paper's development to follow a step-by-step process that requires students to document their topic, thesis, outline, sources, rough draft, and final draft, there are fewer opportunities to cheat. If there are regular in-class writing assignments, a teacher can come to know the students' writing style, allowing him to recognize plagiarism when it occurs.

There are a few steps teachers can take to combat and prevent plagiarism and other electronic cheating:

• Use a plagiarism detection service like  Turnitin.com  to catch plagiarism.
• Forbid the use of smart devices in exam rooms.
• Secure the grade program and database.
• Look for crib notes anywhere and everywhere.

Teachers need to be vigilant. Trust but verify. They must be aware of the possibilities for cheating which are all around them.

• Lickona, Thomas. “ Character Matters: How to Help Our Children Develop Good Judgment, Integrity, and Other Essential Virtues .”  Amazon , Simon & Schuster, 2004.
• Niels, Gary J. “ Academic Practices, School Culture and Cheating Behavior. " Winchesterthurston.org.
• “ NMPLB: Cheating. " FlyLady.net.
• “ One Third of Teens Use Cellphones to Cheat in School. ”  U.S. News & World Report , U.S. News & World Report.
• Sperling, Melanie. “ Cheating: Today's High School Norm? ”  Wayland Student Press.
• Wallace, Kelly. “ High-Tech Cheating On The Rise At Schools.”   CBS News , CBS Interactive, 17 June 2009.

Article edited by  Stacy Jagodowski

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Home — Essay Samples — Education — Cheating — Is Cheating in School Getting Better or Worse? An Argumentative Analysis

Is Cheating in School Getting Better Or Worse? an Argumentative Analysis

• Categories: Academic Dishonesty Cheating

About this sample

Words: 576 |

Published: Aug 31, 2023

Words: 576 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Current landscape of cheating, technological advancements and cheating, social and peer influence, educational system and accountability, counterargument: efforts to address cheating, ethical implications and long-term consequences.

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Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools

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ChatGPT has been part of the public consciousness for only a little more than a year. But in some places, it is already transforming students’ writing experiences, helping teachers create lesson plans and quizzes more efficiently, and prompting educators’ to rethink what skills students will need for future jobs.

Elsewhere—and sometimes as close by as the classroom down the hall—educators are banning the tool outright or asking students to complete assignments in paper and pencil to avoid cheating.

And in some cases, it is unclear what district leaders want. More than three-quarters—79 percent—of educators say their districts still do not have clear policies on the use of artificial intelligence tools, according to an EdWeek Research Center survey of 924 educators conducted in November and December.

What are the best practices in crafting AI policies —should schools ban the technology, wholly embrace it, or something in between? What are the questions district and state leaders should ask themselves as they chart their course on AI? And where does AI literacy and professional development for teachers fit in this picture?

This webinar will explore those questions, offering practical tips from educators and experts on how to approach this rapidly evolving technology while remaining mindful of core principles such as student privacy and academic honesty.

For all webinars broadcast by Education Week after August 1, 2019, Certificates of Completion are available to all registered live attendees who attend 53 minutes or more of this webinar. Educators can download a PDF certificate verifying 1 hour of Professional Development credit. As with all professional development hours delivered, Education Week recommends each educator verify ahead of the webinar broadcast that the content will qualify for professional development in your school, district, county, or state with your supervisor, human resources professional, and/or principal or superintendent’s office.

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Is a robot writing your kids’ essays? We asked educators to weigh in on the growing role of AI in classrooms.

Educators weigh in on the growing role of ai and chatgpt in classrooms..

Remember writing essays in high school? Chances are you had to look up stuff in an encyclopedia — an actual one, not Wikipedia — or else connect to AOL via a modem bigger than your parents’ Taurus station wagon.

Now, of course, there’s artificial intelligence. According to new research from Pew, about 1 in 5 US teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork. Kids in upper grades are more apt to have used the chatbot: About a quarter of 11th- and 12th-graders who know about ChatGPT have tried it.

For the uninitiated, ChatGPT arrived on the scene in late 2022, and educators continue to grapple with the ethics surrounding its growing popularity. Essentially, it generates free, human-like responses based on commands. (I’m sure this sentence will look antiquated in about six months, like when people described the internet as the “information superhighway.”)

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I used ChatGPT to plug in this prompt: “Write an essay on ‘The Scarlet Letter.’” Within moments, ChatGPT created an essay as thorough as anything I’d labored over in AP English.

Is this cheating? Is it just part of our strange new world? I talked to several educators about what they’re seeing in classrooms and how they’re monitoring it. Before you berate your child over how you wrote essays with a No. 2 pencil, here are some things to consider.

Adapting to new technology isn’t immoral. “We have to recalibrate our sense of what’s acceptable. There was a time when every teacher said: ‘Oh, it’s cheating to use Wikipedia.’ And guess what? We got used to it, we decided it’s reputable enough, and we cite Wikipedia all the time,” says Noah Giansiracusa, an associate math professor at Bentley University who hosts the podcast “ AI in Academia: Navigating the Future .”

“There’s a calibration period where a technology is new and untested. It’s good to be cautious and to treat it with trepidation. Then, over time, the norms kind of adapt,” he says — just like new-fangled graphing calculators or the internet in days of yore.

“I think the current conversation around AI should not be centered on an issue with plagiarism. It should be centered on how AI will alter methods for learning and expressing oneself. ‘Catching’ students who use fully AI-generated products ... implies a ‘gotcha’ atmosphere,” says Jim Nagle, a history teacher at Bedford High School. “Since AI is already a huge part of our day-to-day lives, it’s no surprise our students are making it a part of their academic tool kit. Teachers and students should be at the forefront of discussions about responsible and ethical use.”

Teachers and parents could use AI to think about education at a higher level. Really, learning is about more than regurgitating information — or it should be, anyway. But regurgitation is what AI does best.

“If our system is just for students to write a bunch of essays and then grade the results? Something’s missing. We need to really talk about their purpose and what they’re getting out of this, and maybe think about different forms of assignments and grading,” Giansiracusa says.

After all, while AI aggregates and organizes ideas, the quality of its responses depends on the users’ prompts. Instead of recoiling from it, use it as a conversation-starter.

“What parents and teachers can do is to start the conversation with kids: ‘What are we trying to learn here? Is it even something that ChatGPT could answer? Why did your assignment not convince you that you need to do this thinking on your own when a tool can do it for you?’” says Houman Harouni , a lecturer on education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Harouni urges parents to read an essay written by ChatGPT alongside their student. Was it good? What could be done better? Did it feel like a short cut?

“What they’re going to remember is that you had that conversation with them; that someone thought, at some point in their lives, that taking a shortcut is not the best way ... especially if you do it with the tool right in front of you, because you have something real to talk about,” he says.

Harouni hopes teachers think about its implications, too. Consider math: So much grunt work has been eliminated by calculators and computers. Yet kids are still tested as in days of old, when perhaps they could expand their learning to be assessed in ways that are more personal and human-centric, leaving the rote stuff to AI.

“We could take this moment of confusion and loss of certainty seriously, at least in some small pockets, and start thinking about what a different kind of school would look like. Five years from now, we might have the beginnings of some very interesting exploration. Five years from now, you and I might be talking about schools wherein teaching and learning is happening in a very self-directed way, in a way that’s more based on … igniting the kid’s interest and seeing where they go and supporting them to go deeper and to go wider,” Harouni says.

Teachers have the chance to offer assignments with more intentionality.

“Really think about the purpose of the assignments. Don’t just think of the outcome and the deliverable: ‘I need a student to produce a document.’ Why are we getting students to write? Why are we doing all these things in the first place? If teachers are more mindful, and maybe parents can also be more mindful, I think it pushes us away from this dangerous trap of thinking about in terms of ‘cheating,’ which, to me, is a really slippery path,” Giansiracusa says.

AI can boost confidence and reduce procrastination. Sometimes, a robot can do something better than a human, such as writing a dreaded resume and cover letter. And that’s OK; it’s useful, even.

“Often, students avoid applying to internships because they’re just overwhelmed at the thought of writing a cover letter, or they’re afraid their resume isn’t good enough. I think that tools like this can help them feel more confident. They may be more likely to do it sooner and have more organized and better applications,” says Kristin Casasanto, director of post-graduate planning at Olin College of Engineering.

Casasanto says that AI is also useful for de-stressing during interview prep.

“Students can use generative AI to plug in a job description and say, ‘Come up with a list of interview questions based on the job description,’ which will give them an idea of what may be asked, and they can even then say, ‘Here’s my resume. Give me answers to these questions based on my skills and experience.’ They’re going to really build their confidence around that,” Casasanto says.

Plus, when students use AI for basics, it frees up more time to meet with career counselors about substantive issues.

“It will help us as far as scalability. … Career services staff can then utilize our personal time in much more meaningful ways with students,” Casasanto says.

We need to remember: These kids grew up during a pandemic. We can’t expect kids to resist technology when they’ve been forced to learn in new ways since COVID hit.

“Now we’re seeing pandemic-era high school students come into college. They’ve been channeled through Google Classroom their whole career,” says Katherine Jewell, a history professor at Fitchburg State University.

“They need to have technology management and information literacy built into the curriculum,” Jewell says.

Jewell recently graded a paper on the history of college sports. It was obvious which papers were written by AI: They didn’t address the question. In her syllabus, Jewell defines plagiarism as “any attempt by a student to represent the work of another, including computers, as their own.”

This means that AI qualifies, but she also has an open mind, given students’ circumstances.

“My students want to do the right thing, for the most part. They don’t want to get away with stuff. I understand why they turned to these tools; I really do. I try to reassure them that I’m here to help them learn systems. I’m focusing much more on the learning process. I incentivize them to improve, and I acknowledge: ‘You don’t know how to do this the first time out of the gate,’” Jewell says. “I try to incentivize them so that they’re improving their confidence in their abilities, so they don’t feel the need to turn to these tools.”

Understand the forces that make kids resort to AI in the first place . Clubs, sports, homework: Kids are busy and under pressure. Why not do what’s easy?

“Kids are so overscheduled in their day-to-day lives. I think there’s so much enormous pressure on these kids, whether it’s self-inflicted, parent-inflicted, or school-culture inflicted. It’s on them to maximize their schedule. They’ve learned that AI can be a way to take an assignment that would take five hours and cut it down to one,” says a teacher at a competitive high school outside Boston who asked to remain anonymous.

Recently, this teacher says, “I got papers back that were just so robotic and so cold. I had to tell [students]: ‘I understand that you tried to use a tool to help you. I’m not going to penalize you, but what I am going to penalize you for is that you didn’t actually answer the prompt.”

Afterward, more students felt safe to come forward to say they’d used AI. This teacher hopes that age restrictions become implemented for these programs, similar to apps such as Snapchat. Educationally and developmentally, they say, high-schoolers are still finding their voice — a voice that could be easily thwarted by a robot.

“Part of high school writing is to figure out who you are, and what is your voice as a writer. And I think, developmentally, that takes all of high school to figure out,” they say.

And AI can’t replicate voice and personality — for now, at least.

Kara Baskin can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her @kcbaskin .