TESTING AND CHEATING IN U.S PUBLIC SCHOOLS

Testing and Cheating in U.S Public Schools

Testing and Cheating in U.S Public Schools

Introduction

Cheating is a perennial problem in achievement testing. The problem could be alleviated, as some have suggested, by reducing emphasis on, and rewards for, achievement; but there are obvious disadvantages in this solution. A better solution, in general, is to provide sufficient supervision during the test administration to discourage attempts to cheat and to deal with those who do cheat firmly enough to make cheating quite unattractive. In some cases cheating on school and college achievement tests has been discouraged effectively by cultivation of honor systems, in which the students themselves take responsibility for honest examination behavior and for reporting any instances of cheating. This paper discusses testing and cheating in U.S. public schools.

Discussion

In July 2011, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation released a report on the Atlanta Public Schools charging a widespread cheating conspiracy over a ten-year period by 178 teachers, principals, and administrators to fix answers on the statewide Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. The report concluded that unreasonable targets combined with a superintendent who would not accept failure created an atmosphere in which teachers and principals felt they had to cheat to keep their jobs. Atlanta is not the only school system to resort to cheating. The targets mandated by No Child Left Behind are unreasonable and are causing irreparable damage to the education system. (Chuang 2012)

In the current wave of school reform plans that began about a decade ago — including the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), signed into law in 2002 — many seek to hold schools and, increasingly, individual teachers accountable for low student achievement by imposing sanctions if test scores or other measures don't improve. (Daniel 2008, 12-15)

Under NCLB, sanctions include expanded opportunities for parents to move their children to higher-performing schools. And if students' standardized-test scores continue to lag, schools could experience mass staff firings and reorganization. How well such methods work is a matter of increasing debate, however, especially in the wake of several administrative scandals in which schools in several cities were suspected of altering students' test scores, presumably to avoid sanctions.

Throughout the 2000s, the Atlanta school system had gained nationwide attention for repeatedly raising test scores. But in 2008 and 2009, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that, based on the paper's statistical analysis, many of the increases were so unlikely that they raised suspicions that the district had manipulated test results. (Gerald 2009, 85)

In July 2011, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation accused 178 Atlanta teachers and principals of engaging in a “conspiracy” to change students' test answers. In what has been called the biggest school-cheating scandal in U.S. history, 82 of the people named in the Bureau report confessed to the scheme, in which teachers and administrators erased students' wrong test answers and replaced them with correct responses. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation found that administrators rather than teachers were apparently the driving force behind most of the ...