The BIG Secret to Eradicating "Cheating" As We Know It

Are you tired of all the cheating going on in your classroom every time you give a test? Are your students writing the answers on their hands? Ever-so-slyly looking at their neighbor's paper? Texting the next period's students the answers? Copying and pasting paragraphs from the internet?

Oh good grief, the cheating! What can we possibly do to stop the incessant cheating?!?!?

Well, here it is: Stop giving tests.

That's it. Simple as that. Thank you, and have a nice day.

Huh? You say there is something more to say about it? How about this: In school, we need to quit giving students knowledge and then testing their memory of it. If that's all we're testing, then.....well, we might as well just STOP! Testing, as we all know it (those of us who grew up in the 20th century) has outlived its usefulness.

What we really need to know is, "What do our students have the ability to do with knowledge?" To that I say: How can we possibly know if we just test their memory and comprehension of a set of knowledge and then move on to another set?!?

We need to orchestrate real situations that cause students to develop questions, identify problems, discover challenges. This is what the Common Core State Standards and the National Education Technology Standards are telling us.

AND -- now here is the radical part -- we MUST NOT give them the knowledge.

Instead, we need to give them free, unfettered access to any and all knowledge in the world--access to people (including each other), places, and things. Then, we need to stand back, watch, answer questions with questions, and let them WORK TOGETHER to figure out what they need to know in order to address the questions they develop, solve the problems they identify, and meet the challenges they discover.

And we need to make this happen on a regular, required basis during class, not just at the end of the semester or for extra credit or as an option or as a reward for finishing the worksheet early.

Done effectively, it's intentional, strategical, and orchestrated; and it is standards-based, differentiated, and assessed -- in such an integral way that it's ingenious if not downright devious.

In terms of effort for the teacher, it's front-loaded -- before class starts. It is NOT less work. It is a LOT of work, especially while it's "the new way" -- desirable change requires a lot of work.

It's richly deep, deeply rich, relevant in the eyes of the students, (therefore) engaging, rewarding, memorable.

Assess that.