By AISHEE DAS
News Editor
UHS Administration held a meeting with all former Fall Semester AP Macroeconomics (AP Econ) students to discuss concerns about cheating on the final on Thursday, February 4. AP Econ teacher Ms. Nora Seager (Social Science Dept.), Mr. Michael Georgino (Asst. Principal) and Dr. Kevin Astor (Principal) met with 140 students during Office Hours to discuss how they were planning to address the possible academic dishonesty.
It was brought to attention by multiple AP Econ students that the multiple-choice section of the fall semester final was online. Some students who took the final earlier told students from later classes, allowing them to locate the exam online, Georgino said. Other students, not aware that the online exam was the same as the final, used the online questions as practice material.
The multiple-choice section was taken from a College Board exam that was released strictly for teachers. A teacher from another school violated an agreement with College Board by posting the exam online. Following the discovery, Seager and the administration worked to find the best option to deal with the issue. “We considered having everyone retake all parts of the final again or take only the multiple choice part,” said Georgino. “We weighed all scenarios knowing there was no perfect option as all options had some flaw.”
At the Office Hours meeting, Seager explained that she would take out the multiple-choice section of the final to negate the effects of any possible cheating. The final grade would only rely on the free response section of the final. Students whose grades dropped a letter grade from the deletion of the multiple-choice section were given the option to retake it.
According to Georgino, only six students’ grades were adversely affected when the multiple choice section was removed. Astor and Georgino met with those six students and decided the date they wanted to retake the test. The students were given a deadline of four days to let Seager know if they wanted to retake the test. After four days, none of the six students followed up to take the test.
“We figured that maybe they were fine with the grade and didn’t want the stress of restudying for the final among other reasons,” said Georgino. “We recognize that we don’t know the exact people who cheated and maybe [those six] weren’t involved, but we made sure they knew that they had every opportunity to retake that test.”