The Diamond Bar High School math department experienced yet another incident of cheating when a Calculus AB student took pictures of a test and sent it to students in other periods a few weeks ago.

The incident was uncovered when students came to calculus teacher Brian Wiencek concerning the leaked pictures.  

“I think it’s disappointing and sad,” Wiencek said. “Theoretically we should be able to write one version of one test, and then we could have the solutions posted…so that they could see exactly which problem they missed and how they missed it. But again, we don’t have time to do that now because we have to write several versions of every exam.”

The consequences of the cheating have ranged from making it difficult to write positive letters of recommendation to giving more free-response question tests.

Tired of having to deal with cheating, Wiencek and other calculus teachers have decided to approach the problem from different angles.

“We’re going to write multiple versions of every test,” he said. “Maybe every period we’ll have a different test. We’re going to have to do less multiple choice and more free-response and show all your work.”

As a result, Wiencek has had to dedicate much of his time grading tests instead of finding better ways to improve learning in the classroom.

“The time that we spent rewriting these exams could be better spent to better uses,” Wiencek said. “We could make more worksheets, spend more time doing other things. I’ve got roughly 150 students; if it takes me a minute per student to grade them [tests], then that’s two and a half hours of work that I could be doing other things.”

In light of the incident, Instructional Dean Nicole Cabase said that cheating also hurts teachers.

“I can look back to when I was a teacher, and any time I would catch someone cheating, whether it was on something as simple as homework, that maybe they didn’t really see as something that mattered,” Cabase said. “Teachers take it personally. We pour a lot of our time that we don’t get paid for into the classroom, into trying to make learning fun, into trying to help, into trying to help make high school a good experience, and it’s like a slap in the face when you catch a student cheating.”

Last semester, students took pictures of tests in Peter Kottke’s Trigonometry class after they diverted the attention of a substitute teacher and then shared them with others.

Last school year, it was revealed that tutoring centers had copies of the school’s math tests and were sharing them with its students.

“I think it’s gotten much much worse as the years have passed,” Wiencek said. “I know that some of the local tutoring centers copy our homework or pay students to get our tests. We’re spending more and more time trying to combat cheating than can be spent helping students.”

Tackling the problem head on, Cabase said she believes that the whole school should take action and look for positive ways to stop cheating.

“I think this is really a schoolwide thing that as a staff, we always look to address and improve on,” Cabase said. “The bottom line is, we need to have people without smart watches and phones during a test…There are things we’ve implemented and will continue to try to implement, [but] maybe a more positive take on the resolution instead of such a negative one.”

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