WHAT HEELS: Those Who Can’t Teach, Cheat
Did you ever notice that when you slightly scramble the letters in “teacher” you get “cheater”? Teachers scrambling to demonstrate student proficiency on standardized tests are becoming cheaters as state and local lawmakers have begun linking performance to pay, The New York Times reports:
[I]nvestigations in Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Nevada, Virginia and elsewhere this year have pointed to cheating by educators. Experts say the phenomenon is increasing as the stakes over standardized testing ratchet higher - including, most recently, taking student progress on tests into consideration in teachers’ performance reviews.
Colorado passed a sweeping law last month making teachers’ tenure dependent on test results, and nearly a dozen other states have introduced plans to evaluate teachers partly on scores. Many school districts already link teachers’ bonuses to student improvement on state assessments. Houston decided this year to use the data to identify experienced teachers for dismissal, and New York City will use it to make tenure decisions on novice teachers.
The federal No Child Left Behind law is a further source of pressure. Like a high jump bar set intentionally low in the beginning, the law - which mandates that public schools bring all students up to grade level in reading and math by 2014 - was easy to satisfy early on. But the bar is notched higher annually, and the penalties for schools that fail to get over it also rise: teachers and administrators can lose jobs and see their school taken over.
No national data is collected on educator cheating. Experts who consult with school systems estimated that 1 percent to 3 percent of teachers - thousands annually - cross the line between accepted ways of boosting scores, like using old tests to prep students, and actual cheating.
The Times details cheating scandals at a charter school in Springfield, MA, which resulted in the state revoking the school’s charter; the Normandy Crossing Elementary School in a Houston suburb that forced the resignations of the principal, assistant principal and three teachers; and wide-spread test-tampering in 191 GA schools that could cost more than a dozen teachers and administrators their licenses. More disciplinary referrals, including from a dozen Atlanta schools, are expected.
FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of standardized testing, blames high-stakes standardized testing for forcing teachers to cheat. The Stiletto blames unionized, tenured teachers for cheating instead of continually improving their teaching skills so as to meet performance goals. Teachers consider themselves white-collar professionals, and they get middle-management level (or higher) pay so they should be held to the same standards as employees in the private sector – and subject to the same penalties for underperforming.
Editorial Note: Post updated to add a contextual link in the opening graf.
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