Is hiring an editor to review a high schooler's essays cheating?

[Marvin the Martian]

Joe Feldman was on Smerconish last week, he has a book on equity in grading. I know, equity is a trigger word for some.

He does not believe homework should be graded. He said all homework measures is home-life stability. He believes grades should only reflect mastery of subject. Not points for attendance, speaking up in class, baking muffins for fund raising. A student has to exhibit mastery in a unit before they can move to the next unit.

He mentioned how ridiculous it 8s for kids getting points for parents baking goods for fundraisers several times, I guess that is a thing.

I think his point and your point converge. Having a parent help, a tutor help, the Rose-Hulman help line help, isn't the kid showing mastery. If that is the purpose, and I think it is, why grade homework at all.

I know the argument is to make sure it is done. But is doing homework itself a goal? If I can master the subject without ever doing homework, why should I do it? If I cannot, I have an incentive to do homework. Homework itself is not mastery, it is just a tool to help achieve mastery.

 

[Sope Creek]

On my local Facebook dad's group, a dad recently posted that he and his wife were going to start an essay consulting business. They will review essays for form, style, punctuation, grammar, etc. and provide edits and suggestions for ways to make it better, more individualistic, etc.

Is this cheating? I think it clearly is. Essay's are graded. It's like a math tutor who doesn't teach you math or the concepts, but instead "reviews and edits" your math test before you turn it in. The kid is supposed to be learning to do this stuff on his own and is graded on it.

Just as bad, it is the kind of inequity that the equity people have a point on. Why should kids whose parents are into this enough, or have enough money, get better grades than those that don't by hiring essay tutors? It's not as if an editor makes you a better writer, it's just extra help with your product. It would be completely different, in my mind, if they were going to get paid to do extra teaching regarding essay writing to the kid, but not on the ones that mattered.

This becomes even more troublesome when it comes to college essays if we are going to throw away standardized tests and rely on the subjective factors more, like essays.

Am I way off base on this? What do you think?

Are they applying to an SEC school? If you ain't cheating there, you ain't trying . . . .

Seriously, the standard of care for "cheating" is flexible. Word processors that correct run-of-the-mill mistakes are in standard use, so that's OK, IMO. Coaching? I"d be OK with that too, but rewriting/editing is where one person's work takes over for another's. That's cheating.

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

Joe Feldman was on Smerconish last week, he has a book on equity in grading. I know, equity is a trigger word for some.

He does not believe homework should be graded. He said all homework measures is home-life stability. He believes grades should only reflect mastery of subject. Not points for attendance, speaking up in class, baking muffins for fund raising. A student has to exhibit mastery in a unit before they can move to the next unit.

He mentioned how ridiculous it 8s for kids getting points for parents baking goods for fundraisers several times, I guess that is a thing.

I think his point and your point converge. Having a parent help, a tutor help, the Rose-Hulman help line help, isn't the kid showing mastery. If that is the purpose, and I think it is, why grade homework at all.

I know the argument is to make sure it is done. But is doing homework itself a goal? If I can master the subject without ever doing homework, why should I do it? If I cannot, I have an incentive to do homework. Homework itself is not mastery, it is just a tool to help achieve mastery.

A pet peeve of mine is finding a strong correlation between two things and then equating them. It is simply false that the only thing homework measures is home-life stability.

I’m not saying grade all homework. I’d prefer kids spend time with really hard problems and learn that making mistakes and struggling to solve something are good things (math and physics I’m thinking of here).

But teaching a child that daily practice at something makes them better is a crucial life skill, I think. Mastery comes from practice and doing the work.

If a child does not have to do this to master the subject, then she needs to be accelerated.

As for the mastery issues and new, standards based grading, if all kids had one-on-one teachers/tutors, that makes sense. It’s more difficult when trying to teach a subject sequentially where later topics necessarily require mastery of previous ones. Allowing kids the option to wait to master a subject until the end of the course creates bad practices and encourages procrastination, in my experience.

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

Are they applying to an SEC school? If you ain't cheating there, you ain't trying . . . .

Seriously, the standard of care for "cheating" is flexible. Word processors that correct run-of-the-mill mistakes are in standard use, so that's OK, IMO. Coaching? I"d be OK with that too, but rewriting/editing is where one person's work takes over for another's. That's cheating.

Yeah, I agree this is something viewed on a spectrum and we are all going to have different opinions on what counts. But I think we can establish the black and white areas pretty well.

From what I hear, SEC schools are really targeting kids from the Midwest. I know several families from here in Chicago whose kids are attending SEC schools because they received really good scholarships and those were the only schools that offered them. These are kids whose highest ranked school they applied to would be something like U of I or Madison.

 

[mcmurtry66]

Yeah, I agree this is something viewed on a spectrum and we are all going to have different opinions on what counts. But I think we can establish the black and white areas pretty well.

From what I hear, SEC schools are really targeting kids from the Midwest. I know several families from here in Chicago whose kids are attending SEC schools because they received really good scholarships and those were the only schools that offered them. These are kids whose highest ranked school they applied to would be something like U of I or Madison.

For sure. Alabama and ole miss are hot schools for Stl kids

 

[VanPastorMan]

USC is super hard to get admitted. It's a great school and not very big by today's standards of national universities. whenever i think of la i'm reminded of my ucla scholly. old legendary coach sigi schmid had me on campus and they offered on the spot. was just a great day. i loved the campus and location. i later get a call from him personally that they received my ACT scores but there was a mistake and that i had to get with my counselor to get the mistake corrected and the documents re-submitted. it wasn't a mistake my score was just incredibly low

How do you compare USC's standards to Notre Dame for entry? Where did you end up going to school?

 

[Marvin the Martian]

A pet peeve of mine is finding a strong correlation between two things and then equating them. It is simply false that the only thing homework measures is home-life stability.

I’m not saying grade all homework. I’d prefer kids spend time with really hard problems and learn that making mistakes and struggling to solve something are good things (math and physics I’m thinking of here).

But teaching a child that daily practice at something makes them better is a crucial life skill, I think. Mastery comes from practice and doing the work.

If a child does not have to do this to master the subject, then she needs to be accelerated.

As for the mastery issues and new, standards based grading, if all kids had one-on-one teachers/tutors, that makes sense. It’s more difficult when trying to teach a subject sequentially where later topics necessarily require mastery of previous ones. Allowing kids the option to wait to master a subject until the end of the course creates bad practices and encourages procrastination, in my experience.

In almost any case you and I can think of, children who have adults working with them on homework will do better. There is no escaping that.

Is it wise to pass someone who fails tests but always turns in homework, speaks up in class, and bakes goods? Why should any of that replace mastery.

I don't know about the author, I am not saying no homework. But the goal isn't homework, the goal is to know the subject.

 

[mcmurtry66]

How do you compare USC's standards to Notre Dame for entry? Where did you end up going to school?

i don't know re usc vs notre dame. acceptance rate isn't the only factor. legacies, money etc.

 

[Baller23Boogie]

How do you compare USC's standards to Notre Dame for entry? Where did you end up going to school?

From what I could find, Notre Dame has a higher SAT score (about 60 points) average and 1 point higher ACT score.

With that being said, Notre Dame has a higher acceptance rate then USC does (15% compared to 12.5 %).

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

Is it wise to pass someone who fails tests but always turns in homework, speaks up in class, and bakes goods? Why should any of that replace mastery.

No, it is not wise. But I don't believe enough people like this exist to think it is a problem.

Selling baked goods shouldn't count for anything. That's insane.

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

From what I could find, Notre Dame has a higher SAT score (about 60 points) average and 1 point higher ACT score.

With that being said, Notre Dame has a higher acceptance rate then USC does (15% compared to 12.5 %).

I'm guessing a lot of people want to go to USC for the weather and location. South Bend sucks.

 

[hoosboot]

On my local Facebook dad's group, a dad recently posted that he and his wife were going to start an essay consulting business. They will review essays for form, style, punctuation, grammar, etc. and provide edits and suggestions for ways to make it better, more individualistic, etc.

Is this cheating? I think it clearly is. Essay's are graded. It's like a math tutor who doesn't teach you math or the concepts, but instead "reviews and edits" your math test before you turn it in. The kid is supposed to be learning to do this stuff on his own and is graded on it.

Just as bad, it is the kind of inequity that the equity people have a point on. Why should kids whose parents are into this enough, or have enough money, get better grades than those that don't by hiring essay tutors? It's not as if an editor makes you a better writer, it's just extra help with your product. It would be completely different, in my mind, if they were going to get paid to do extra teaching regarding essay writing to the kid, but not on the ones that mattered.

This becomes even more troublesome when it comes to college essays if we are going to throw away standardized tests and rely on the subjective factors more, like essays.

Am I way off base on this? What do you think?

Lots of good points made across this thread and I agree with most of the good ones. 😁

The devil's all in the details, isn't it? It's a question of teaching vs. doing the work for them. The work in writing is really in rewriting and, as in all communication, what the receiver of communication gets is as important as what the intent of the giver is. That's why getting feedback on writing is a really common part of the process. I've made my career in a large part out of writing and having others read that writing and offer comments is a huge part of the process. Novelist all have editors who do the same and the novelist still gets "written by" on the cover of the book. I don't think there's a huge problem with kids getting reactions to their writing. If you want to strictly measure a student's raw writing, the best way to do that is in-class prompts vs. take home work. Otherwise, getting feedback is a natural part of the process. And how prescriptive that feedback gets is the rub.

So, a lot of it depends on what that husband and wife intend to do. Experienced writers tend to know how to give productive feedback - expressing what they got from the writing and asking about the writer's intent instead of telling them what they'd do if they were writing it. If this husband and wife intend to do the work for kids so that those kids are "successful" then I don't think it's a good thing (and they are no different than the hundreds of thousands of snowplow parents out there doing the same thing.) But if they are providing a constructive sounding board where they ask the kids questions and offer insightful feedback, it's just another part of the teaching process (one that parents should be doing themselves.)

Marrying some ideas from the other school thread, a lot of L.A. schools offer free access to Paper, an online service which claims to offer the service above, as a way to address equity issues. It's an interesting idea, but has seemed imperfect in execution.

 

[hoosboot]

I'm guessing a lot of people want to go to USC for the weather and location. South Bend sucks.

University of Spoiled Children is ground zero for many of the problems you identify, but the campus is beautiful, the undergrad teaching is very good, and the alumni network is extremely powerful (all similar to ND). I'd bet that the admission rate difference is likely due to USC just getting more applications because the pure number of high schoolers in California outweighs the Catholic push to ND for these types of schools, but I've never seen the stats.

 

[bawlmer]

On my local Facebook dad's group, a dad recently posted that he and his wife were going to start an essay consulting business. They will review essays for form, style, punctuation, grammar, etc. and provide edits and suggestions for ways to make it better, more individualistic, etc.

Is this cheating? I think it clearly is. Essay's are graded. It's like a math tutor who doesn't teach you math or the concepts, but instead "reviews and edits" your math test before you turn it in. The kid is supposed to be learning to do this stuff on his own and is graded on it.

Just as bad, it is the kind of inequity that the equity people have a point on. Why should kids whose parents are into this enough, or have enough money, get better grades than those that don't by hiring essay tutors? It's not as if an editor makes you a better writer, it's just extra help with your product. It would be completely different, in my mind, if they were going to get paid to do extra teaching regarding essay writing to the kid, but not on the ones that mattered.

This becomes even more troublesome when it comes to college essays if we are going to throw away standardized tests and rely on the subjective factors more, like essays.

Am I way off base on this? What do you think?

Sounds like coaching (form, style, punctuation, grammar). There is a line where a kid is paying for a paper, obviously that's wrong. But what you described sounds like it would be helpful for lots of kids (whose parents can afford it). I know some schools actually offer writing labs where this kind of help is offered.

 

[IUINSB]

I'm guessing a lot of people want to go to USC for the weather and location. South Bend sucks.

Hey!! What have you got against zero sunny days for six months. What have you got against 2-3 feet of lake effect snow.
A winter paradise, I tell ya.

 

[mcmurtry66]

Hey!! What have you got against zero sunny days for six months. What have you got against 2-3 feet of lake effect snow.
A winter paradise, I tell ya.

I got into law school there and went and checked it out. Hated it. Nerd guy from the school said it’ll be expensive as we’ll need two apts. one for me and one for my stoker. Drove to Bloomington the next day and signed up

 

[Joe_Hoopsier]

There are segments of society, once society is organized, use the long game to remove each and every personal success, that builds capability and advances gains in that society. They do this to regress the mass towards being tax paying mushrooms. Those shrooms pay their masters way towards being elite.
Today's dims are the swamp's Wizard of oz, creating slaves but behind a less obvious curtain. That movie explained the next wave of slaves and I didn't understand it, until I watch the actions of demoncrats.

 

[Indianaftw]

On my local Facebook dad's group, a dad recently posted that he and his wife were going to start an essay consulting business. They will review essays for form, style, punctuation, grammar, etc. and provide edits and suggestions for ways to make it better, more individualistic, etc.

Is this cheating? I think it clearly is. Essay's are graded. It's like a math tutor who doesn't teach you math or the concepts, but instead "reviews and edits" your math test before you turn it in. The kid is supposed to be learning to do this stuff on his own and is graded on it.

Just as bad, it is the kind of inequity that the equity people have a point on. Why should kids whose parents are into this enough, or have enough money, get better grades than those that don't by hiring essay tutors? It's not as if an editor makes you a better writer, it's just extra help with your product. It would be completely different, in my mind, if they were going to get paid to do extra teaching regarding essay writing to the kid, but not on the ones that mattered.

This becomes even more troublesome when it comes to college essays if we are going to throw away standardized tests and rely on the subjective factors more, like essays.

Am I way off base on this? What do you think?

Can your kids change a flat tire? Can they jump a car battery? Change oil? How bout just teach kids normal life situations. I look around these days and kids are freaking worthless. Peace. And sick of all of it.

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

This is incredible. $150k on a college admissions consultant?

Getting into an Ivy League school is all about 'measurable accomplishments,' says a college advisor who charges $150,000

Adam Nguyen says students need to find a passion early on and build unique achievements to help impress Ivy League schools.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[Harry Hondo]

This is incredible. $150k on a college admissions consultant?

Getting into an Ivy League school is all about 'measurable accomplishments,' says a college advisor who charges $150,000

Adam Nguyen says students need to find a passion early on and build unique achievements to help impress Ivy League schools.

www.businessinsider.com

This article is a good example of how the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful. Dropping $150K to get your kid into the college that will increase their chances of making the most money in their lifetime.

 

[hoosboot]

This article is a good example of how the rich and powerful stay rich and powerful. Dropping $150K to get your kid into the college that will increase their chances of making the most money in their lifetime.

Nobody promised a meritocracy, but this is a good example of how the playing field isn't exactly level. The thing is that it has always been this way and it likely always will be.

 

[UncleMark]

Nobody promised a meritocracy, but this is a good example of how the playing field isn't exactly level. The thing is that it has always been this way and it likely always will be.

This is just Kaplan on steroids.

 

[UncleMark]

This is incredible. $150k on a college admissions consultant?

Getting into an Ivy League school is all about 'measurable accomplishments,' says a college advisor who charges $150,000

Adam Nguyen says students need to find a passion early on and build unique achievements to help impress Ivy League schools.

www.businessinsider.com

Better start saving your money.

 

[hoosboot]

This is just Kaplan on steroids.

Yeah, just...yeah.

 

[anon_6hv78pr714xta]

This is just Kaplan on steroids.

I don't think it is the same thing. I don't think the test prep classes can make that big a difference in the SATs. They don't take a kid who would normally get a 1200 and turn him or her into a 1500 scorer, for example.

I'll say it again: the great leveler for college admissions is the standardized test like the SAT. It can be improved upon on the margins, but not by as much as we're going to see these now by all these subjective measures once you downplay the objective ones. Interviews, essays, these "measurables" are all going to be paid for. I have a neighbor who runs a robotic limb program at Northwestern. He has interns, who used to be college kids but are now high school kids of the rich and powerful. He said parents will actually move to Chicago over the summer to have their kid intern at his lab, so they can put it on their resume.

 

[Aloha Hoosier]

my first response is that it's definitely cheating, but i suppose it depends on if form is taken into consideration on grading, even if subconsciously.

and some obviously value form far more highly than others, while others are zeroed in on content.

that said, it's really just the next level expansion of spell check, is it not.

how much i consider it cheating, depends not just on the relationship of form to content on the grader's part, but also to the extent said consulting is limited only to form, and doesn't leak into consulting on content.

with spell check and/or any software based form expansion of that concept, it's easy to limit the "consulting" to form only.

when human based, i see said consulting as inevitably leaking into suggestions on content as well.

when a profit motive is introduced into the equation, which i'll assume is the case here, said "leaking" eventually inevitably merges with ghost writing.

You should hire an editor.

 

[hoot1]

There is a growing movement to both do away with grades and allow each student to master a subject at his own pace. In other words, learning a subject isn't about competing with other students, it is about learning material with your own given skill set.

Given the above, hiring what could be called an "editor" or "tutor" can be looked at as simply giving a student help in the process of learning to write essays and not cheating.

Many years years ago I took a course on a rather difficult scientific subject which was important to my job at the time. It was a self study course designed to allow me to absorb the information at my own pace. It may have taken me longer to reach an understanding of the information as quickly as others who were smarter and more experienced in this field of science. Nevertheless, by the time i finished the material my working knowledge of the course was adequate enough for me to use my new found knowledge on the job.

 

[IU_Hickory]

So, is hiring a hitting coach for your 10-year-old son cheating?

Not the same. Other than the unfair advantage.

A better analogy would be hiring a designated hitter that hits the ball for you.

Hiring someone to fix your essay doesn't help the student learn anything. It is akin to a parent doing their kids homework for them instead of helping them learn to do it themselves.

 

[hoot1]

Not the same. Other than the unfair advantage.

A better analogy would be hiring a designated hitter that hits the ball for you.

Hiring someone to fix your essay doesn't help the student learn anything. It is akin to a parent doing their kids homework for them instead of helping them learn to do it themselves.

In the process of writing business proposals I worked with a gifted young lady who was a Butler. English major graduate. She would edit my material. After her editing, we would discuss the changes and come up with a final draft.

Would like to think she taught me a thing or two.

 

[Bulk VanderHuge]

In the process of writing business proposals I worked with a gifted young lady who was a Butler. English major graduate. She would edit my material. After her editing, we would discuss the changes and come up with a final draft.

Would like to think she taught me a thing or two.

😉

 

[IU_Hickory]

In the process of writing business proposals I worked with a gifted young lady who was a Butler. English major graduate. She would edit my material. After her editing, we would discuss the changes and come up with a final draft.

Would like to think she taught me a thing or two.

There wasn't any mention of them doing anything other than fixing mistakes and making sure to convert the paper to A work.

discussing the changes is what would likely been the most help for you.

The grade should come from what the student was able to do. The fixing and going over what they did wrong should just be the learning for next time.

 

[hoosboot]

😉

You sly dog, hoot. 😊

 

[hoosboot]

There wasn't any mention of them doing anything other than fixing mistakes and making sure to convert the paper to A work.

discussing the changes is what would likely been the most help for you.

The grade should come from what the student was able to do. The fixing and going over what they did wrong should just be the learning for next time.

Meh. Writing is about rewriting. And rewriting is taking feedback and changing what you've written to reach a better outcome. What you're advocating is measuring who can write in a way that doesn't reflect the way writing happens in the real world. That doesn't seem like productive learning to me. Obviously a tutor writing your paper for you isn't very productive, but good teachers know how to give feedback on drafts of papers that help the writer understand any disconnect between what they intend to communicate and what is being received.

 

[i'vegotwinners]

when i took the SATs, no calculators were allowed.

using calculators on math tests is cheating.

 

[IU_Hickory]

Meh. Writing is about rewriting. And rewriting is taking feedback and changing what you've written to reach a better outcome. What you're advocating is measuring who can write in a way that doesn't reflect the way writing happens in the real world. That doesn't seem like productive learning to me. Obviously a tutor writing your paper from you isn't very productive, but good teachers know how to give feedback on drafts of papers that help the writer understand any disconnect between what they intend to communicate and what is being received.

No, what I am advocating is students get graded on the work that they actually did.

novel concept i know

In the real world, you would get fired if you were providing shit work that someone else had to redo

 

[hoosboot]

No, what I am advocating is students get graded on the work that they actually did.

novel concept i know

Not a novel concept at all. But neither is giving writers feedback on what they have written so that they can make changes to the writing to make it better.

It looks like we (and most of the people in the thread) agree that someone else doing writing for a student is a bad thing. Do you agree that getting feedback on writing is an important part of the process and a benefit to students?

 

[IU_Hickory]

Not a novel concept at all. But neither is giving writers feedback on what they have written so that they can make changes to the writing to make it better.

It looks like we (and most of the people in the thread) agree that someone else doing writing for a student is a bad thing. Do you agree that getting feedback on writing is an important part of the process and a benefit to students?

Never said they shouldn't get feedback. I just said their grade should be based on their work, not after someone else fixed it

 

[hoot1]

No, what I am advocating is students get graded on the work that they actually did.

novel concept i know

In the real world, you would get fired if you were providing shit work that someone else had to redo

If a classroom teacher writes suggestions when grading a paper, and the student uses the suggestions in his next paper, why is this much different than having a hired editor ?

 

[Bulk VanderHuge]

You should hire an editor.

I chuckled.

 

[hoosboot]

Never said they shouldn't get feedback. I just said their grade should be based on their work, not after someone else fixed it

Cool. This part of your previous post made it sound like you had a problem with getting feedback and doing multiple drafts:

The grade should come from what the student was able to do. The fixing and going over what they did wrong should just be the learning for next time.

But your clarification makes it sound like we are mostly in agreement. Sorry if I misunderstood you. I do a fair amount of volunteer work with teens from disadvantaged backgrounds on creative writing and find that process to be really important in helping to create better writers.