Rotten apples: Coping with educators who cheat

Why do educators cheat?

Experts say many districts face enormous pressure to meet the testing standards they need to avoid penalties under the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, or to ensure positive results for teachers who are rewarded based on student performance.

In an indication of how far some Atlanta public schools went to raise test scores in the nation’s largest-ever cheating scandal, investigators concluded that nearly half the city’s schools allowed the cheating to go unchecked for as long as a decade, beginning in 2001.

Atlanta administrators pressured to maintain high scores under NCLB punished or fired those who reported anything amiss and created a culture of “fear, intimidation, and retaliation,” according to the report. One teacher told investigators the district was “run like the mob.”

“Everybody was in fear,” another teacher said in the report. “It is not that the teachers are bad people and want to do it. It is that they are scared.”

For teachers and their bosses, the stakes are high: Schools that fail to meet Adequate Yearly Progress goals under the federal law can face steep sanctions that include being forced to offer extra tutoring, allowing parents to transfer children to better schools, or firing teachers and administrators who don’t pass muster.

Bob Schaeffer of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, which works to end abuses in standardized testing and wants changes made to NCLB, said many observers are wondering where the “next Atlanta” will be.

In this special report:

Fallout in Atlanta … and elsewhere

Why do educators cheat?

How investigators root out cheating

Consequences for educators—and districts

What states and districts can do

“Because of Atlanta, the media and policy makers are going back and looking at concerns raised about their states,” Schaeffer said. “When you see a story like this and see the incredible impact of the confessions, you start to look and say, ‘Hey, is there something comparable going on here?’”

Schaeffer said he began tracking cheating in the early 1990s, when he’d see two or three stories a year about educators breaking the rules on tests. “Now we’re seeing a couple or three a week in big, big places,” he said. “The pressure is so high to boost test scores by any means possible that more and more educators break and cross the ethical line.”

Mark Simon, the father of a D.C. high school student, blamed the problem on a school culture that overemphasizes the importance of standardized tests.

“When you have that kind of climate in schools,” he said, “it’s a setup for people doing the wrong thing.”

But that’s too simple a response, say those who support federal efforts to ensure accountability in schools.

“Students don’t generally like tests, and a certain number of them cheat. Yet it’s a rare educator who would advocate eliminating tests or not including them in a student’s grade. Why, then, does each new scandal involving cheating teachers and administrators lead to a fresh round of calls to eliminate tests, or at minimum not make them count for anything?” wrote The Los Angeles Times in an Aug. 3 editorial.

“It’s … true that the parameters for what counts as adequate improvement under [NCLB] are out of line with reality,” the newspaper continued. “In addition, critics rightly point out that states’ annual standardized tests are limited measurements of what students have learned; they were never designed to count for half of a teacher’s performance evaluation, as several states and school districts are doing. Yes, those problems must be fixed … but not because they might contribute to cheating. Academic dishonesty is unacceptable no matter the cause.”

The editorial concluded: “Cheating is wrong; accountability isn’t.”

Next page: How investigators root out cheating

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