
Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped? - DanBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39254634
======
jstanley
> one of the consequences is precisely the reverse of its aims

So... was the aim to reduce cheating, or was it just to disadvantage the
richer kids?

Because if the aim was _really_ to reduce cheating, then I can't see how any
of the consequences were precisely the reverse of the aims.

~~~
zdean
The aim was to show that in the absence of academic cheating, a meritocracy
would emerge. What the researcher realized was that the deck was stacked
against poorer students and in favor of richer students...in essence, the
cheating/rigging was happening before the kids walked into school...and the
academic cheating was a response to level the playing field.

~~~
geppeto
New York City experienced a similar reality.

They aimed to help poor and disenfranchised groups get into their specialized
public schools, by forcing a meritocracy, as disproportionately wealthy and
white families were accepted because admittance was previously too
discretionary and lots of excuses were made about why (hm sounds familiar).

After the meritocracy was established it became disproportionately asian by a
huuuuuge margin (stuyvesant high school being ~75% asian with the city having
a ~10% asian population) while poor and disenfranchised groups are still poor
and disenfranchised. Just even more apparently now.

This is no comment about meritocracies, it is about illuminating how far off
base a governing body will be at promoting a particular outcome.

~~~
wbl
Have you looked up the incomes of students at Stuy? There are plenty of poor
Asians in NYC.

~~~
geppeto
Just like in Romania, the meritocracy exacerbated realities behind academic
advantages and revealed cultural quirks that weren't even considered.

There is a lot of literature behind what those exact quirks in New York City,
if you'd like to read about it.

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danieltillett
The least able lost the most marks because they had gained the most from
cheating. If you were able to get 90% without cheating the absolutely most you
could lose is 10 percentage points, while if you are able to only get 10% then
the most you could lose is 90 percentage points.

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niftich
Wealth correlates well with opportunity and choices; students coming from
wealthier families can better afford to acquire other compensating controls --
like private tutoring, or simply eating the fail on the exam and relying on
social capital and social networks to make up for it after the fact.

The poor can't afford such measures and lack the social connections, so they
have no choice to play outside the confines of the system and expect results;
they have to obtain the relevant differentiator -- in this case, grades --
leaving some desperate subset among them to resort to the most overt, blatant
types of cheating to get ahead.

~~~
hkmurakami
Also the children of the affluent have more time since they often don't have
to work.

In fact I was explicitly told by my parents to study rather than work. Their
reasoning was that the whole point of them grinding their butts off working
was so I could have the best education money could buy (they grew up poor in
post WW2 Japan and were dirt poor immigrants in grad school in the 70's).

Worked out for me, but there's no denying that I had an enormous edge over the
vast majority of my peers.

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laser
Who lost the most marks when cheating was stopped? Those of lower socio-
economic status. Because those of such status generally engage in higher rates
of criminal behavior [1], why is this presumed to be surprising?

It seems to me that the basis of the author's misunderstanding that leads to
their surprise is the narrative of wealthy people being more likely to be
corrupt on a per capita basis, which clearly runs counter to the statistics
which demonstrate those of less economic means committing more crimes per
capita.

It also runs counter to the fact that those of greater means have greater
scores due to greater means, and thus less likely to need to cheat to have
good scores.

[1]
[https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137](https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=5137)

~~~
dodorex
Did you read the article? Here's the relevant parts:

    
    
      The most likely culprit, it emerged, was that the "collective" and "petty" forms of corruption, as witnessed by Dr Borcan herself, had a curious effect: they might be paid for chiefly by well-off students bribing invigilators, but everyone benefited. It gave the poorer students "a free ride" to higher marks.
    
      It also meant that when cheating was removed, the academic advantages of wealthier students became even more apparent. Cheating it seemed had provided a kind of levelling effect.
    

The more correct explanation would seem to be that wealthier students have
other advantages - probably along the lines of test preparation, lower stress
if it's anything as in the States - which allowed them to retain high
performance once cheating was reduced.

I'm not sure from where you're deriving these narratives and counter
narratives from.

~~~
omginternets
That doesn't contradict his claim in the least. I don't think he's opposed to
the notion that disparities exist in terms of competitive advantage.

The point is rather that such a result only comes as a surprise if one has a
strong _a priori_ expectation that rich people cheat more than poor people.
Otherwise one would predict _exactly_ this effect.

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akarve
Nary a consideration of the possibility that poverty and cheating were
correlated. "Equality" is euphemism for "the world how I arbitrarily want it--
facts be damned."

------
danieltillett
What I find most interesting about the article is the complete lack of concern
if the anti-corruption efforts have had an effect on absolute performance. It
is though what is important is the pass rate on the exams, not the learning
the material tested.

~~~
literallycancer
Test performance still tells you how well the person understands the material
only if the test score approximates the understanding reasonably well.

~~~
danieltillett
Sure, but this is not the question here. Does making it harder to pass via
cheating encourage students to learn the material being tested or not?

------
snackman
Alternate/additional explanation for the findings: cheating continued after
the campaign, but wealthier students were less afraid of the consequences than
poor students.

~~~
21
Alternate alternate explanation: wealthier students also stopped cheating, but
corruption became even more rampant in the grading stage. A lot of papers were
"marked" so that they could be recognized by the graders and given a more
favorable grading.

I know people which were a constant 5 at math through high school but which
got 9.85 in the exam (1-10 grades at the time).

Teachers preferred corruption to happen in the exam room, since it was the
students cheating, than in the grading stage where they were liable.

------
samblr
BBC unfortunately still has plenty of elitist or colonial shade. Articles
showing most news from other countries in poor light or fault finding is its
forte. Other day I was rummaging through news of 1999 about
Google/Larry/Sergei. Bbc has mentioned it's a breakthrough tech but much of
article was dedicated in mentioning that google only indexes only 10% of web.
And the tone was on negative side. Peter thiel's rightly says that most of
Western Europe only reacts to its progress.

------
eehee
This isn't surprising at all. IQ is highly correlated with genetics
(especially for older teens and adults), and the correlation between IQ and
income is similarly strong.

------
jordansmithnz
It never ceases to amaze me how much our life is determined by something we
have zero control over - the family we are born into. "Life isn't fair"
couldn't be more true here I guess.

This isn't to say that social status/family has to determine someone's future
- I'm a firm believer that hard work and choices can turn that around.
Although on a purely statistical basis, it seems that this is rarely the case.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Social status doesn't make you get bad grades on exams. Being stupid does. You
can expect kids with poorer parents to do worse on exams in any place where
smart people are better at making money.

~~~
jordansmithnz
Are you suggesting that children in poorer families are born less smart than
children from wealthier families?

~~~
SamReidHughes
Absolutely. Because smart people are better at making money and intelligence
is a heritable trait.

~~~
zepto
Only if you simplistically ignore that social status and wealth are also
heritable and make it much easier to make money regardless of intelligence.

~~~
Houshalter
Is social status and wealth really heritable? There are studies of lottery
winners that show their children and grandchildren aren't any better off.

~~~
zepto
This comment makes no sense. Wealthy families clearly pass down money and
social status to their children.

~~~
Houshalter
But it doesn't last long. After 3 generations, maybe less, there's little
statistical difference between those descended from wealth and those not (all
else equal!) The super wealthy may leave billion dollar empires to their
children, sure. But if we are talking about the upper middle class, a moderate
inheritance from your parents isn't going to make or break your life's
outcome.

~~~
zepto
A moderate inheritance plus support during your education may well make or
break your life's outcome vs someone born to a poor family.

'Inheritance' doesn't have to mean just what was passed down at death - it
must also include all the additional resources available during development to
have any meaning.

~~~
Houshalter
But it doesn't! That's the point. Otherwise the lottery winners kids would be
better off since they could go to better schools and afford college. In
general there's little evidence that education makes any difference at all.

~~~
zepto
Seriously, your lottery winners example is meaningless.

But if you are saying that education makes little difference to lifetime
earnings, you're going to have to back that up with a reference because it's
an extraordinary claim.

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duckingtest
The idea of completely stopping cheating in systems like these harms
meritocracy. I know this sounds outrageous.

The problem is systemic - in European post-socialist countries, education is
based _mostly_ on rote learning which becomes more and more pointless in a
modern world. Example on the bottom.

Students cope with that by cheating, which allows them to concentrate their
time on actually useful aspects. Most teachers, except the dullest ones,
tolerate that. In other words, the whole system sort-of works only _because
of_ cheating! As it's so accepted rote learning is irritating, but mostly
harmless.

There's a fine boundary where cheating stops being beneficial - crib notes are
great, making someone else solve problems for you, or having pre-made answers
is not. That actually should be punished.

Punishing all forms of cheating is going to be incredibly damaging, because it
means the best scoring students are going to be those best at memorization.

Wouldn't it be better to remove rote learning instead? Obviously, but I'm
afraid that's not realistic. Harshly punishing cheating now is going to
achieve the opposite: today's top rote learners become tomorrow's professors
and teachers. Not only did they get great scores, but they presumably feel
good in a rote-learning system.

\---

What do I mean by rote learning? Memorize these numbers [0] to the third
decimal place. Not a joke - it's a real example, albeit exceptional in its
absurdity.

[0]
[https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lsq2xglw1e4/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lsq2xglw1e4/maxresdefault.jpg)

