At Berkeley High School in California, students felt such an extreme pressure to get higher grades that they broke into the school's computer system to change transcripts. They made more than 150 grade changes and the school forbade 27 seniors to graduate, said the Berkeley School District public relations officer Karen Sarlo. Although she has never heard of an incident to this magnitude, Sarlo said it speaks to the academic and social stress placed on high school students. Rick Ayers, a Berkeley High School journalism teacher, said the incident speaks to society's capitalist economy. They're looking at the model of the stock market where anything goes.
Administrators also plan to change the code more frequently.
It is na ve to think that someone will graduate from high school with a foundation of loose ethics and just stop. But cheating is not limited to computer hackers. Students can download papers off the Web with the push of a button. Teachers often do not recognize e-plagiarism, however, because they are not as Internet savvy as students, said McCabe. Despite many teachers' fears, McCabe thinks Internet resources do not increase academic dishonesty - he said they change methods of cheating.