Recent coverage of the arrest of former Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall and dozens of teachers and other district employees allegedly involved in mass doctoring of student test results misses a larger pattern. Cheating is just one of many responses to heightened pressure in recent years to deliver the impossible: substantially increased test scores, in short order. Yes, district-level cheating problems have risen in tandem with this pressure, but so have other forms of gaming the system, all of which pose similar detriments to students. A new report from the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education documents the widespread nature of this problem.
Changing student test scores after the fact is one way to systematically, one student at a time, make it appear that children who have not really learned what they should have did. It deprives those children of real learning, since it removes pressure to provide them with the enriching instruction and other supports needed to help them develop that learning. It rewards teachers, principals and superintendents for delivering what they have not, and it confuses parents (and students themselves) who know quite well that they are not reading at grade level or proficient at long division...