Much needed culture of honesty, love coming to CHS
In recent years, the issue of academic integrity has come of great importance. To combat problems such as cheating, Coppell High School issued a variety of new practices this year, including an updated phone policy and new iPads.
August 30, 2019
“I love you all, have a beautiful day,” the voice of Coppell High School Principal Laura Springer rang out through the intercom on Wednesday, Aug. 15, the first day of school.
These words, though simple, reflect a much larger change occurring at CHS: the fostering of a culture of love over a culture of dishonesty.
CHS is just one of many schools that have become known for a cheating issue, ranging from sending answers of tests to sharing documents for homework.
“Anytime you ask [someone] anything about Coppell High School, the majority of the time they say there is an academic integrity issue,” CHS associate principal Melissa Arnold said. “This has been going on for years. Even when I was teaching here, we would have students who had academic integrity issues.”
Ultimately, the prevalence of cheating ties into an issue concerning the education system, with the pressure of college admissions starting as early as elementary school, but unfortunately, we cannot change that overnight.
What can change, however, is school policies, which is exactly the route the administrators of CHS are taking.
“We see there’s an issue here, we see our kids are under a lot of stress and we see there’s an unconscious decision to make a bad choice,” Arnold said.
Among the many changes happening at CHS, chief among them are technology policies: students are now required to use the new Coppell ISD issued iPads, the latest iPad Air, and there is a no cell phone policy in the halls and in many classrooms.
“The [changes] we’re putting in place are to make it more difficult for cheating to go unnoticed,” Arnold said.
Ultimately, these changes may be frustrating for avid laptop users, and C day, a day in which students have all of their classes in order to build better relationships with teachers, is hard to adjust to.
However, understanding these changes are coming to us not to make our lives harder, but to create a more equal school system, means that regardless of how much an inconvenience the new system is, we are able to grow in a better environment.
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