Students, Cheating | featured news

More than half of the students implicated in a Harvard University cheating scandal that involved about 125 undergraduates were told to withdraw for as long as a year. Of the remaining students linked to the probe, half were given probation, Michael Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, said today in an e-mail to the Harvard community. The school said in August that the students were under investigation for inappropriate collaboration on a final exam.

Teachers helped students correct mistakes on standardized tests, prepared them with actual test questions or left instructional posters displayed in the classroom during testing, according to school district reports.

The exams will require students to upload photos and provide their gender when they sign up for the tests, the Nassau County district attorney said Tuesday.

Students paid test-takers up to $3,600 to boost scores and their chances of getting into a top college, New York prosecutors said.

Katie, a senior at Plainfield North who asked for her last name to be withheld, felt confident that she was prepared for her AP Statistics exam. But when she realized that she may have overestimated her readiness halfway through the test, she decided to look at someone else’s paper. She said she reasoned with herself that she had put in the work.

A college student from New York was paid between $1,500 and $2,500 to stand in for at least a half dozen students attending a prestigious Long Island high school and take the SAT exam for them, a prosecutor said Tuesday in announcing criminal charges in the case.

Teachers spent nights huddled in a back room, erasing wrong answers on students' test sheets and filling in the correct bubbles. At another school, struggling students were seated next to higher-performing classmates so they could copy answers....