Not long ago, everyone trusted teachers to make sure students didn’t cheat.
These days, however, it’s teachers who are being scrutinized for possible deception.
In Atlanta, 178 public school teachers and principals have been accused of cheating to raise scores on state standardized tests.
In Washington, D.C. the U.S. Department of Education and the D.C. Office of the Inspector General are investigating similar allegations.
And state education officials in Florida have told 14 school districts, including Miami-Dade County, to conduct internal reviews, saying “extremely unusual levels” of erasures on standardized tests raised red flags.
Allegations of testing improprieties by teachers and administrators are spreading across public school districts, from Houston to Baltimore. Educators are accused of giving students inappropriate help and, in some cases, of changing students’ answers — all to raise their schools’ test scores.
The high-stakes tests are used to measure student achievement, teacher effectiveness, and schools’ annual progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. School funding, staff bonuses, and jobs often hinge on the scores.
“It’s easy to look at the individuals who were involved in changing wrong answers to right answers,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. “But it’s more appropriate to think of this as an example of organizational misconduct,” he said, citing examples in other fields such as the widening phone hacking scandal at a British tabloid and price fixing by U.S. corporations.
“We’re seeing some features that are similar among these school districts: pressures inside and outside of school districts to raise scores rapidly,” Pallas said. “There’s a big gap in school districts between targets and goals they’re being held accountable for and legitimate means for reaching those goals. Whenever there’s a gap between goals and having legitimate means for reaching those goals, there’s tremendous pressure and cheating becomes a way of dealing with that pressure.”
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article courtesy of TheGrio.com
