Let’s be honest, every student has spoken about a test at least once after they’ve taken it. In the eyes of teachers, this could be cheating. But realistically speaking, is it formally breaking any rules? 

Due to Cherry Hill High School East’s rotating schedule, students who take the same class with the same teachers have the ability to take identical tests at different times and even on different days. So, teachers decided to create different versions of tests to avoid this issue. But, for the sake of everyone’s success, information about the test could inevitably spread. While teachers may flag this as cheating, it is only officially counted if a student’s efforts are done by AI, plagiarized or falsified. 

According to the Cherry Hill Public Schools Board of Education District Policy #5701-Academic Integrity, Section 4 writes that students “cheating on examinations by any means and obtaining copies of an examination” could be held for disciplinary action. 

Of course, deliberately sharing actual copies of the test with other students is not acceptable. However, it is not officially written that students are prohibited from talking about a test they recently took. 

Furthermore, it’s highly unlikely that students would be able to memorize the test and share it in a way that could noticeably raise another student’s score. From personal experience, it has never actually been proven that students in one class consistently average higher or lower than students from another. But, if a test is thought to be harder than average, most students taking it will almost always agree that it was more difficult. 

So if most students can mutually categorize the difficulty of a test, why should teachers be allowed to offer different versions? Without clear evidence that proves sharing test information drastically benefits a student’s score, there should be no reason for teachers to create different versions. 

Not only that, but making different versions could create an unfair advantage for all students taking the tests. I have experienced this firsthand, especially when taking math exams. For those who can relate, trigonometry functions such as sine, cosine or tangent are much easier to remember than their inverses, which are cosecant, secant and cotangent. A pattern that can be observed is how the AP Calculus BC Pt. 1 test problems are usually quite similar, aside from the function being used. For example, a student taking Test A would have a sine function in their problem, but a student taking Test B would have a cosecant function. The student with Test A would thus be given a less complicated problem than the other, ultimately giving an advantage to the student who got lucky with a simpler test. If every student is learning the same material in the exact same way, isn’t it only rational to give each student the same test? 

While this may not be the case for all subjects, this is just one example of several situations East students can face. Additionally, if students were to cheat, making different versions of tests would not have as large an impact. As previously mentioned, cheating is officially considered as using AI, plagiarizing or falsifying. This is much more than simply verbally sharing information that may or may not be relevant to a test. 

In the end, the equal opportunity to measure learning accurately is a necessity. Since this is done through tests, the only right decision is to give everyone the same test, not different versions. While preventing cheating is crucial, so is ensuring fairness for all.