My high school is one of the highest ranked public schools in Pennsylvania. Many students take five to fifteen AP courses and work hard to achieve perfect grades and test scores in hopes of being accepted into prestigious colleges. The school doesn't even report class rankings because the difference between the top students' grades is minimal. In such a high-performance atmosphere, it is almost inevitable that some shenanigans will exist. While cheating is a problem, however, implementing an honor code would not be successful. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay There is already a lot of cheating, especially among upper-level classes, but most cheating is relatively inconsequential. Everyone at my school was repeatedly warned about the dangers of plagiarism, and there were clear punishments for students who cheated. Most papers are submitted through a plagiarism detector like Turnitin. As a result, few students are willing to take as big a risk as copying an entire essay from the Internet. However, there is a lot of collaboration going on in other ways. Most students have heard the phrase, “Just change the wording so it's not obvious,” while their friends send them photos of their classwork. In an environment where students may take four or five advanced classes at a time, a challenging assignment cannot take priority over studying for a test or writing a paper. The tasks that students cheat on most often are the ones where no one feels it is a risk to do so. As Donald L. McCabe points out, the success of an honor code depends on a “culture of academic integrity.” Few students see the problem with cheating in such small amounts, especially if integrity comes at the expense of a good grade. Additionally, as Source F points out, many students feel like they have no choice but to cheat to stay competitive. One of the biggest problems with an honor code is that students would not feel comfortable reporting their peers and forcing them to do so. therefore it would only encourage lack of respect towards teachers. Most students believe that cheating is immoral and deserves punishment, but only 8% would actually report one of their peers for cheating. There is a strong sense of camaraderie among the students as they commiserate over how much homework they have or how unfair a certain teacher is. Pitting these people against each other would only create feelings of animosity. Other high schools that attempted to create an honor code, such as Lawrence Academy, faced backlash for such rules and were eventually eliminated. Students simply don't feel comfortable sending their peers to be punished. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper from our expert writers now. Get a Custom Essay Finally, an honor code based on punishment would simply be unrealistic. In some AP classes, teachers are required to create tests from a set of College Board-approved textbooks. As a result, in many cases it is possible to find and study some test questions online before an exam. Should students be blamed for using a useful resource for studying? Should teachers be blamed for following orders to create tests a certain way? While cheating is clearly a problem, the system in place for AP classes..