Nearly half the high school students in a nationwide survey saidthey believe their teachers sometimes choose to ignore students who arecheating in class. And more than half admitted they had used theInternet to commit plagiarism.

Those were two key findings of a survey of 4,500 high schoolstudents from across the country conducted by Donald McCabe, aprofessor of management at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J. Hehas been tracking student-cheating issues at the college level fordecades, but recently turned his attention to how high school studentsare trying to deceive their teachers and how students believe teachersare reacting to such behavior.

According to Mr. McCabe's survey-which included 14 public and 11private high schools-47 percent of the students believe teacherssometimes elect not to confront students they know are cheating. Ofthose students, 26 percent said they believed teachers simply don'twant to be bothered by reporting suspected academic dishonesty.

Mr. McCabe said he expected those findings because similar studieshe's done indicate that about one-third of college students believetheir professors look the other way when cheating occurs.

"[Teachers are] afraid of retaliation by the parents," Mr. McCabecontended. "They'd rather not have to deal with the parents. It's ahassle."

Michael S. Josephson, the founder and president of the Marina delRey, Calif.-based Josephson Institute of Ethics, had similar thoughtsabout why teachers might refrain from confronting student cheaters.

"They're afraid they'll be sued by parents, and that schools don'thave the resources to back them up [in court]," Mr. Josephson said.

What's more, he said, schools have grown complacent about cheating.Most have not drawn up effective policies to stop the practice in thesame aggressive ways they have for other discipline problems, hesuggested.

Janet Bass, a spokeswoman for the American Federation of Teachers,which represents more than 1 million members, said she had "no idea"students perceived that such a large percentage of teachers wouldignore cheating.

Ms. Bass wondered "if any of this is an outgrowth of the increasedpressure put on schools" because of the standards and accountabilitymovement.

Cyber- Plagiarism

As part of the survey, Mr. McCabe also looked into a problem thatmore and more teachers are encountering these days: studentsplagiarizing material from the Internet for school assignments.

In his survey, 54 percent of students admitted to using the Internetto pirate others' material. However, Mr. McCabe expressed surprise thatso many high school students had committed some form ofcyber-plagiarism, given that two to three times fewer college studentstend to plagiarize, according to previous research he has conducted.Mr. McCabe speculated that high schoolers might be more likely toplagiarize than college students because precollegiate teachers lackthe in-depth knowledge of their subject matter and have to teachbroader courses than college professors do. "If there's a [college]course on the Civil War, there's a pretty good chance the professorknows all the major works on the topic," he said.

But some high school educators-well aware of how easy it isfor students to plagiarize material from the Web-are fightingback. They are using software programs designed to detect the practice.("Educators Turn toAnti-Plagiarism Web Programs To Detect Cheating," Dec. 13,2000.)

The survey confirmed earlier studies in which a vast majority ofstudents admitted to committing academic fraud.

In Mr. McCabe's survey, a full 74 percent of students admitted that,at least once during the past school year, they had engaged in what Mr.McCabe called serious cheating-using illegal crib notes, copyinganswers from another student on a test, or helping another studentcheat.