The final report presented to Georgia’s governor in June 2011 by a team of special investigators began, “Thousands of school children were harmed by widespread cheating in the Atlanta Public School System.” Teachers in 30 schools admitted to cheating, although investigators identified cheating in 44 schools by 178 teachers, administrators, and test coordinators, among which 35 educators were indicted. After a 7-month trial, last week a jury convicted 11 former teachers and school administrators of racketeering, a charge traditionally associated with the mafia and activities such as bribery, mail fraud, money laundering, and buying or selling stolen property—not for changing wrong answers to correct responses on a state test of reading and math.
School cheating is not new. Found in regular public schools and charter schools, cheating consists of a broad scope of diverse practices. Following are a few examples I have witnessed. My first position in higher education (several decades ago) was an appointment as assistant professor in the education department at a California state university. I shared an office with a senior professor. One day, I glanced at a short stack of papers on his desk, which appeared to be answers for questions on the standardized test administered annually to students attending public elementary schools. He said, “Oh, those are the answers to the reading and math sections of the state test”—which he routinely distributed to future teachers enrolled in the university’s teacher education classes.
While later employed as a supervisor of student teachers at a different California state university, I watched teachers monitor students as they completed state tests. I recall teachers in San Bernardino who walked up and down rows of students throughout the test. From time to time, some students looked up as a teacher passed by or stopped by a particular desk. The student who looked upward, unsure about a particular answer, saw the teacher smile to confirm a correct response. Incorrect answers evoked a frown.
A few years ago when I was employed in the graduate school of education at a private university, the superintendent of a large school district in Orange County invited me to attend a meeting with the district’s top administrators. The topic of the agenda was singular: “Please tell me how to increase students’’ test scores,” he said. After listening to the concerns expressed, I subsequently developed a plan, not to increase test scores, but a strategy to improve the quality of instruction of any subject throughout the district. It was, and is, my contention, that high-test scores are the residue of effective instruction, and that trying to increase test scores directly addresses the wrong problem. Several weeks passed, and not receiving a response to my proposal, I contacted a senior administrator in the district. “The superintendent wants higher test scores,” he said. “He is not interested in improving the quality of instruction.”
Three years later, I discovered the unethical and perhaps illegal ploy the superintendent selected. Then employed as a researcher, I was examining previous enrollment figures in school districts throughout Orange County. During the year I met with the superintendent, the number of high school juniors in his district was “X”—but during the subsequent year, the number of high school seniors decreased by several hundred, a difference that did not make sense. I again called the senior administrator I knew. “Oh, we changed our criteria for classifying students as seniors,” he said.
During this period, California paid school districts extra dollars when they submitted markedly higher test scores than scores reported during the previous year. In fact, this district did not lose any students; it just did not categorize students as seniors according to the criteria used previously. And who were these missing seniors? They remained classified as juniors, students who did poorly in school, either failing classes or not completing the classes necessary to qualify as seniors—and who just happened to be the same students who recorded the lowest scores on state tests. Voilà. By eliminating low-scoring students from completing tests, the district’s average test scores increased markedly, for which the state awarded the district thousands of additional dollars. Regarding this tactic as unprofessional and unethical, I met with a senior editor of the Orange County Register, who rejected my recommendation to publicize the superintendent’s malfeasance, an administrator who later received widespread praise for his assumed effectiveness.
When student test scores markedly increased in a large school district in Los Angeles County, the newly hired district administrator received high praise. Other district regularly sought his advice, wanting to know the strategies he used to increase test scores. His approach was simple: Use questions from the state tests to create practice tests with highly similar items. For example, suppose this item appeared on a math test: “A $100 watch was reduced 25%. How much did the buyer pay for the watch?” The practice included this item: “A $200 bicycle was reduced 30%. How much did the buyer pay for the bicycle?” Students completed practice tests regularly throughout the school year.
Sometimes schools need money for a special purpose, but funds are not available. For example, suppose the athletic department is committed to start a soccer program, but funding is lacking to pay the coaching staff. A school sometimes lists a “dummy” class in the class schedule, a class with no enrollment. At the end of the semester, the school submits a report of the class to the state—for which the school receives “X” dollars. Voilà. There is money to pay soccer coaches.
Educational cheating is sometimes very costly to taxpayers. For example, a college wants to build another campus but lacks sufficient enrollment to justify the need for the campus. The college, however, conducts scores of off-campus classes throughout the community during the evenings at local high schools. To justify the need for a new campus, hundreds of students attending classes off-site are counted as attending classes onsite, thereby providing justification of the need for another campus.
The justice system sometimes seems unfair. The school administrator cooking the books receives kudos for falsely justifying building a college costing taxpayers millions of dollars, but teachers and administrators in Atlanta face 20 years in prison for changing wrong answers to right answers on Georgia’s state test. Ironically, this test was one of the easiest of all state tests.
Atlanta’s superintendent of schools set impossible goals, threatening demotion and job loss to teachers and administrators whose students’ test scores failed to soar—at the same time awarding cash bonuses to personnel whose students’ scores improved significantly. Her goals were analogous to requiring each sixth grader to high jump six feet, leaving Atlanta teachers at low-performing schools to choose between cheating or losing their jobs. Regrettably, too many politicians and school leaders still believe that high-stakes testing (aka accountability) is the silver bullet for improving classroom performance. Instead, the obsession with high test scores often increases school cheating, an unintended effect of No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002). When Congress passes the next iteration of NCLB later this year, however, the primacy of student testing will remain.
