Plot
Jolie Fitch is a junior at Steinmetz High School who enjoys Dr. Jerry Plecki's English class and is involved heavily in all discussions. Dr. Plecki is offered the position of Academic Decathlon coach, a job all the other teachers consider to be a waste of time. Dr. Plecki holds an open call for the students, but no one arrives to participate. He is about to leave for the day when Jolie convinces him that he needs to look for the smarter students and recruit them. He succeeds in recruiting seven students (Darius, Matt, Paul, Dominik, Irwin, Agnieszka, and Jolie). They spend the next few months studying hard for the regional competition.
At regionals, the team faces their biggest competitor in Whitney Young Magnet High School, who have consistently won for almost a decade. As expected, Whitney Young is victorious and Steinmetz places 5th overall, but still qualify for the state competition. The students are overwhelmed to be facing Whitney Young in the next round, but an opportunity arises when Matt receives a copy of the test. Irwin then brings it to Dr. Plecki, who feels that using the test is the team's best chance to win.
After some persuasion, all seven members agree to copy the answers on various items (calculators, shoes, a piece of gum, etc.). Dr. Plecki then tells Irwin privately that because he had the lowest scores in the group, he will be out of the state competition; however, he will be guaranteed a spot in nationals. Though Irwin is upset, he agrees to go along with it.
At the state finals, Steinmetz meets Whitney Young again. The team successfully gets through the exams with the answers they secretly wrote down and with Jolie coaching them in the Super Quiz. At the end of the day, Steinmetz wins with an overall score of 49,000, raising the ire and suspicions of Whitney Young.
As Steinmetz celebrates, a spiteful Irwin writes an essay, detailing how he feels betrayed by Dr. Plecki and how they received an advance copy of the test. Suspicions heighten when the principal questions Irwin. The Illinois Academic Decathlon board arrives at the school with news that the team will need to take a re-test to validate their scores. If they refuse, they will lose their championship. Feeling betrayed by Irwin and angered by the board's ultimatum, they refuse to cooperate and plan to seek an injunction to halt the state from re-testing them.
As the media siege escalates, Angela Lam, a student on the Academic Decathlon team from the year prior, talks to the press about how she was given the answers to the Super Quiz in the state competition by Dr. Plecki. She encourages the current team members to come clean if they cheated. Dr. Plecki is immediately suspended from his teaching duties and the team members are taken to the Board of Education headquarters where they are interrogated individually. Despite being pressured, they refuse to come clean and insist they did not cheat. However, Dominik ultimately breaks and confesses after a heart-to-heart talk with one of the investigators.
As a result, the state title is stripped from Steinmetz and awarded to Whitney Young. Dr. Plecki is fired from Steinmetz, and the team members are harassed by the other students for ruining their reputation. Dr. Plecki decides to leave Chicago in hopes the media will disperse and leave the team members alone. He meets with his team one last time by Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago, where they present him with a gift: John Milton's book Paradise Lost signed by the team and the gold medal in Language and Literature that they didn't return to the board. With the team disbanded and Dr. Plecki gone, Jolie feels that she's lost a mentor that actually cared about her academic possibilities. In the end, Jolie gets accepted into college and recognizes the merit of her achievements without cheating.
In the epilogue, it is stated that Dominik, Agneiska, and Paul went off to college, Matt worked in a hardware store and was voted employee of the month, Darius' whereabouts are unknown, Irwin went to college to become a journalist, and Dr. Plecki started a business.
As a result of the 1995 cheating scandal, Steinmetz High School was banned from fielding an Academic Decathlon team for ten years. They returned to the competition in 2006.
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