Last year, according to data from School Administrative Specialist Annie Paranjape, the number of referrals reported at Westview rose from 32 to 53—a spike that was particularly evident in the math department.

“There was a big jump in cheating, people getting caught cheating, and the amount of referrals that were going out,” math teacher Matthew Ingham said.

Ingham, who returned to Westview last year after previously teaching here for five years, said the difference was stark. 

“During those five years, I had written referrals for cheating, but not very many,” he said. “Last year, I ended up writing more referrals than all the other five years combined.”

He wasn’t alone. Math teacher Bruce Hubschmitt said he also issued more referrals than usual, and that maintaining fairness in the classroom has continued to be a challenge.

“[Students are] way more tempted in the last five to 10 years than they’ve ever been tempted before to cheat,” Hubschmitt said. “We’re always aspiring to be diligent about it, and we’re keeping the environment equitable in order to protect the honest kids. It hurts when you underperform against somebody who didn’t play by the rules.”

Ingham said that the ways students cheat seems to have changed dramatically as well. The days of scribbling formulas on the inside of a water bottle label or writing tiny notes on an index card are mostly over. Instead, Ingham said cheating is becoming more tech-based.

“[The cheat sheet] is a lost art,” Ingham said. “You used to have to use cheat sheets, [but] with cheat sheets you had to have some understanding of the material to know what goes on a cheat sheet [and] to know how to use it on the test,” Ingham said. “But now, AI just literally looks at the picture of the problem and says, ‘this is how you do it.’”

Ingham said students now often use phone applications to receive instant answers. 

“In math, the most common method is for students to use their phone for AI or Photomath, to have the phone look at the problem and then show them the step-by-step solutions,” Ingham said. “Cheat sheets are almost nonexistent now. The phone is such a better cheat sheet—and it’s easier to hide.”

The convenience and speed of digital tools like Photomath or ChatGPT have made cheating more tempting and more automatic. According to a 2025 survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute, 92% of students were using AI, and 88% admitted to using it for graded assignments. This contributes to a ‘muscle memory’ of looking to AI for a quick answer when confronted with difficult problems.

“There could be some muscle memory,” Ingham said. “As soon as you find a question that has any amount of difficulty or you’re not sure what to do, your immediate student mentality is, ‘oh, Photomath or AI.’”

That reflex, he added, may come from habits built during homework. 

“They’ll tell me [it’s] because, ‘That’s what I do on homework,’” Ingham said. “So in that regard, another lost art is sitting with the difficulty of a question for a little bit and accepting that, ‘I need to think through this for more than three minutes before immediately going to something that tells me what to do next.’”

The reasons behind the uptick in cheating are complex. As Ingham explained, some students fall into a self-perpetuating cycle.

“Students who start to cheat find out how easy it is to use AI or Photomath, and if they continue to do that for too long, then they start to miss too much math and dig themselves into a hole,” Ingham said. “They haven’t learned math for so long that they have no choice but to cheat.” 

Michael Nguyen, another member of the math department, has a different perspective on why relying on AI can be detrimental in the long run. He encourages students to confront this cycle of dependency that comes with the overutilization of AI.

“As a former martial artist, [I think], ‘do you want to win against the person who went easy on you, or do you want to lose to the person who you know did their best?” Nguyen said. “Then you know where you have to improve. I’d rather lose to the person who did their best. [So,] don’t take the easy way out, cheat, and get the A because it is important to get the skill. Eventually, there’ll be the AP exam, and your A won’t mean anything.”

Ingham echoed that sentiment, emphasizing that for students, the fallout from cheating affects more than just grades—it can deprive them of valuable learning experiences.

“Your brain can do it, and it takes time,” Ingham said. “You have to give it that time and be comfortable sitting with frustration and a problem for a little bit. If you go to AI too quickly, you are robbing your brain of that chance to overcome an obstacle on its own.”