When No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law a decade ago, education reformers around the country collectively exhaled. Finally, many of them believed, a policy with some teeth would push administrators to push teachers to pull students up out of the abyss of poor academic performance into which too many had fallen.
While reformers saw the law as a way to focus on closing the achievement gap for America’s “left behinds,” NCLB’s heavy reliance on standardized testing drew immediate and passionate criticism from those who predicted it would merely result in “teaching to the test,” that is, teachers would waste precious class time instructing students how to do better on the test rather than focusing on curriculum and content.
The idea that teachers might actually hold “cheating parties” to erase and replace incorrect answers to raise their students’ scores took everyone by surprise.
A Georgia state investigation concluded that cheating occurred at 44 Atlanta schools and involved at least 178 teachers and principals. Former Superintendent Beverly L. Hall (named the 2009 National Superintendent of the Year for the jump in her district’s numbers) was said to have ignored “clear and significant” warnings, punished whistle-blowers, manipulated data and illegally altered documents. Investigators determined that the superintendent and her administration “emphasized test results and public praise to the exclusion of integrity and ethics.”
Many teachers believe those who stooped to cheating had been pressured by administrators to raise test scores by any means necessary. Some were promised bonuses if they improved student performance, and one principal reportedly told teachers, “Walmart is hiring.” Investigators were told, “Everybody was in fear. It is not that the teachers are bad people. … It is that they are scared.”
The Department of Education has stated: “One of the foundational principles of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act is the idea that teacher quality is the single most important school-related factor in student success … students with the greatest needs tend to have access mainly to the least-qualified and least-effective teachers. Numerous studies on what makes a school successful have consistently shown that high-performing schools are run by highly effective administrators and staffed by highly effective teachers.”
Scared or not, there really is no excuse for short-changing students, and it should be noted that the vast majority of Atlanta’s teachers didn’t stoop to cheating. Instead of painting all urban teachers with the “bad” brush, what this scandal should do is redirect our attention to what we know actually does raise student test scores — qualified teachers with access to ongoing, targeted professional development who receive constructive criticism and encouragement from their administrators.
