In Washoe County, today is the day that many children dread—and many parents gleefully anticipate—all summer: It’s the first day of school!
Back in our print-weekly days, the RN&R generally did a special “back to school” issue—and the Aug. 9, 2007, edition (posted online one day before) included a round-up of stories on various school-related issues. One of them, headlined “Cheaters: From grade school through high school, teachers are on the prowl for students who take short cuts,” was penned by D. Brian Burghart:
Gone are the days when students tried to get around preparing for tests by writing significant dates on their wrists or taping an answer sheet inside their jackets. Not that we—or our little darlings—ever did such a thing.
Innovative ideas for cheating that were never contemplated, even in the 20th century, have found a home in 21st century schools. Who would have ever thought students would be able to send a surreptitious text message—”whos buried in grants tomb?—to their more-prepared pal?
But that text message is about as unsophisticated as high-tech cheating gets. Ipods hook directly to computers, and images, JPEG or PDF, can be placed on the MP3 player’s hard drive. Cell phones can be used to photograph entire tests. And schools that offer open wi-fi access points could be allowing Internet access to those lucky students with Iphones or more conventional Web-enabled cell phones.
Then there are Palm-type devices, and calculators with USB hookups and onboard memory, and … you get the idea.
With all the potential for cheating, it may seem odd that schools would allow cell phones on campus, but it’s the law: In 2003, the Nevada Legislature made it illegal to ban cell phones in schools.
“Students may have cell phones on their person while they’re in school, but while they’re in the building, they are to be kept in the ‘off’ or ‘vibrate’ position,” says Steve Mulvenon, Washoe County School District spokesman. “During testing, they cannot have them—at all. Anything that is considered a breach of test security has to be documented, and those reports are sent to the Nevada Department of Education.”
The reason cell phones are allowed in schools at all is simple: Parents demand the ability to get in touch with children for simple communications, like arranging after-school pick-ups or in case of emergencies like sudden sickness or school violence.
The Washoe County School District cell phone policy, which can be found on the district’s Web site … spells out the rights and responsibilities of students with regard “to electronic signaling devices, including but not limited to pagers, beepers, and cellular/digital telephones.”
The school district has four tiers of increasingly odious punishments for children caught cheating with electronic doodads, starting with confiscation, parent notification, policy review and a warning, and ascending to revocation of cell phone rights and school-determined punishments for “administrative insubordination” or “disregard for school rules.”
There are certain types of tests during which getting caught with electronic devices is considered particularly heinous. The national standardized tests, such as the Criterion Reference Tests (CRTs), the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the writing test, all have security protocols.
“They’re standardized, so everybody has to have the same testing conditions,” says Dr. Bryn Lapenta, head of the public policy assessment and accountability office. She’s in charge of filing the reports of possible cheating with the Nevada education department.
“We had some incidents [during the last school year],” Lapenta says. “We have rules against students having cell phones out at all. We’re worried about the whole infrared transferring of images or texting somebody with an answer or just the general disturbance of cell phones going off during a high-stakes test.”
And that’s where the issue of cheating moves from a strictly local-classroom issue to one with national repercussions. Should security be breached anywhere in the country, and a student is able to use a cell phone or other method to make an image of a test, that test could be posted on the Internet in the blink of an eye. The costs could be high if it became necessary to make new tests or if large segments of the test results were invalidated because of wide distribution of the purloined exam.
Lapenta says the secret to security is plugging the breach before cheating takes place.
“We had, I believe, three instances this year of students having a cell phone that came out during the exam. When a cell phone comes out, teachers immediately take it from the child, and it’s reported as an exception, and then there’s an investigation.”
The investigation could include looking at cell phone inbox and outbox records to see which numbers were dialed and the contents of text messages.
“I’m not familiar of any incident of a calculator or an MP3 player coming out during a test in the last testing season,” Lapenta continues. As point of fact, she says, MP3 players are banned in Washoe County schools, although enforcement of this apparently has been problematic.
“In this day and age, we’re used to being able to get in touch with our children easily. The cell phone is a reasonable device that we expect children to have. We don’t expect them to have an MP3 player at school. That’s going to get taken away, and parents are going to have to come pick it up.”
Obviously, a *lot* has changed in the 19 years since. I mean, the piece references iPods (with incorrect capitalization) and “Palm-type devices,” for crying out loud. And beepers!
Another change involves consensus ideas regarding cell-phone use in schools. In fact, a new state law went into effect on July 1 governing cell-phone use in schools. As the Las Vegas Sun explains: “Senate Bill 444 requires school districts to adopt policies governing students’ use of electronic devices—especially cell phones—in schools. The policies must limit use during the school day and set rules for enforcement, while preserving exceptions for emergencies, teacher-approved instructional use and disability accommodations.”
But the biggest change—and by big, we mean one of the biggest possible disruptors in the history of education—is the arrival of AI. How disruptive? To use just one of myriad recent examples, in Denmark, AI cheating is so rampant that students are now required to verbally defend assignments not written in the classroom.
If you’re curious, here’s the AI policy posted on the Washoe County School District website. The fact that it references “anticipat(ing) statewide guidance” from a State Senate bill that died during the 2025 session of the Legislature is a bit disconcerting.
Meanwhile, some district parents also have big concerns about technology being used not by students, but by the district itself. For a primer on these (extremely justified) big concerns about the expensive i-Ready lesson platform, read Brandi Vesco’s June 13 guest commentary.
—Jimmy Boegle
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