So... was the aim to reduce cheating, or was it just to disadvantage the richer kids?
Because if the aim was really to reduce cheating, then I can't see how any of the consequences were precisely the reverse of the aims.
Why would I think exam cheating would influence structural problems, advantages and disadvantages, associated with SES levels? Getting rid of cheating doesn't get rid of private tutors, better equipped schools, less distracting home environments, etc.
They aimed to help poor and disenfranchised groups get into their specialized public schools, by forcing a meritocracy, as disproportionately wealthy and white families were accepted because admittance was previously too discretionary and lots of excuses were made about why (hm sounds familiar).
After the meritocracy was established it became disproportionately asian by a huuuuuge margin (stuyvesant high school being ~75% asian with the city having a ~10% asian population) while poor and disenfranchised groups are still poor and disenfranchised. Just even more apparently now.
This is no comment about meritocracies, it is about illuminating how far off base a governing body will be at promoting a particular outcome.
There is a lot of literature behind what those exact quirks in New York City, if you'd like to read about it.
I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to imagine what such an expectation might betray.
What it would betray is the reality that not all wealth is earned equally. Yes, there are plenty of people that earn through effort and merit. But to look at one's environment (wether in a first, second, or third world country) and not see how much wealth is created through cheating is ludicrous. When someone walks into a bank with a gun and empties the registers, it's easy for us to see how that's criminal. But someone who empties a bank via Wall Street, etc. is just doing their job I suppose.
Poorer students are more likely to be lazy and not want to study, due to their upbringing and because their parents are also less educated and have more distrust in the skills that are taught in schools. Richer students' parents are more likely to be well-educated and thus to impose on their children that they need to study harder and take education more seriously.
This is not news or any revelation. Of course, some of the richest kids may also be lazier, but the big difference would be between the poor and the middle-class kids.
It's poorly worded but they seem to hypothesise that poorer students were sort of piggy backing off of those who paid for the cheats. So they were cheating too.
More interestingly, the teachers (which were the invigilators) rationalized this as "everybody is cheating, if you don't than the stupid kids from the country side would have bigger grades than you, so you should cheat too" (I was in an elite school).
The bribe was not huge (around $50 total sum per class per exam), so I don't think it wasn't the primary motivator for the teachers. Way more money was made by private untaxed tutoring.
So I wonder a bit at what makes education ineffective. I coached at risk latino high school students briefly while attending college and for them it was pretty clear that they needed to work to help support the family so they had fewer hours to devote to study. I suggested to the program that paying these kids minimum wage to spend time with a tutor would pay for itself in reduced social services costs and police costs down the road but they were not interested in hearing about that.
*edit: and yeah, when it comes to the exam, you're no longer educating. literally the only important thing for both student and teacher at this point is the score