See clip: Test Teaching Scandal Rocks Atlanta Schools
The intention of the No Child Left Behind Act was to encourage schools to strive for better education for students by providing a measurable standard goal. However by rewarding schools based on student performance on taking the standardised test is causing teachers and principals to cheat the system by creating an illusion that their schools are better than it actually is.
Is the incentive of the system flawed? Yes and no. The intentions are good and the plan can be effective. “But then humans are thrown into the equation.” says Jeff in discussing the reward system. I couldn’t agree more.
Skipping around the rules, taking a short cut, or cheating, just seems like a tendency when a reward is dangled in front of us, people. These actions are predictable but can often be neglected when creating a metric system to evaluate or award performances. It is hard to come up with a “cheat proof” metric, especially when you have to account for all the possibilities of how people will cheat (we are surprisingly creative when it comes to that), but it is essential for a effective metric.
Back to the case of cheating teachers, if it were up to me I might suggest evaluating schools by letting the parents get a say in the evaluation. They might just care more of the actual education than their children or the teachers.
Further Reading: Caught! Teachers Cheating On Students’ Standardized Tests by Tom Ashbrook
No Child Left Behind Act Wikipedia