Pressure To PASS : Is Your Child's Teacher Cheating

Economists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner predicted it more than a decade ago in a paper they called "Rotten Apples" that was later reproduced in their bestselling book "Freakonomics".

By binding teacher pay and retention to student performance on standardized tests, they said, teachers suddenly had a new incentive to cheat.  Because the teachers had so much at stake, the number of cheaters would skyrocket.

While it's hard to measure exactly how many teachers fudge the numbers, erase student answers and give clues to tough questions, we do know this : More teachers are getting caught.

The most shocking example happened just this year in Atlanta.

ATLANTA FEELS THE HEAT

An investigation in Atlanta Public Schools found 178 teachers cheating.  82 later admitted it.  38 school principals were caught up in the same scandal.  

The investigation found suspicious patterns of erasures that suggested that it wasn't the teachers who changed student answers on some of the toughest questions.

What followed was a national scandal.

"When educators have failed to uphold the public trust and students are harmed in the process, there will be consequences," said Gov. Nathan Deal.

Angry parents demanded teacher resignations and principal firings.

Not long after the Atlanta investigation, similar accusations appeared in other major cities including Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.

Experts who studied the results of the investigation all came to the same conclusion, Levitt and Dubner were right, the teachers felt the pressure of high stakes testing.

THE PRESSURE COOKER

Many states have had standardized testing for more than a decade.  It became especially popular with the new popularity of teacher and school "accountability".

But the single most important step in creating a national standard for high stakes standardized testing was the passage of President George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" in 2001.

The bill required testing to evaluate student performance and, more importantly, hold schools and teachers accountable for that performance.

It had strict guidelines and penalties tied to student scores and schools that failed to meet a standard called "Adequate Yearly Progress" or AYP faced sanctions.  The sanctions could cripple or even close low-income "Title 1" schools where a large percentage of the students were below the poverty level.

AYP got tougher to achieve each year.  Students in each school are broken down into dozens of racial and socio-economic strata.  A specific percentage of students in EVERY group, like disabled students, had to meet standards on the test.  If any sub-group failed to meet standards, the entire school failed to meet AYP.

THE SANCTIONS

If a Title 1 school failed to make AYP for 2 years they faced "School Improvement Status"

•  Incorporate scientifically-based research strategies.
•  Spend at least 10% of Title 1 income on professional development
•  MUST provide all students with opportunity to transfer to another school

After missing AYP for three years, "School Improvement Status" remains with more conditions

•  Must make supplemential education services available
•  Must continue to provide school choice

After the 4th year, sanctions grow more difficult for teachers.  This stage is called "Corrective Action Status".  A district MUST take at least one of the following actions :

• Replace school staff
• Institute a new curriculum
• Appoint outside experts
• Extend school year or school day
• Restructure internal school organization

After the 5th and 6th years of not meeting AYP one or more of the following :

• Reopen school as a charter school
• Replace all or most of staff including principal
• Enter into contract with a private school entity
• State takeover

OBJECTIONS TO AYP

Critics of AYP, and they make up a majority of school teachers and administrators, say that beacuse a school has to be nearly perfect in every possible sub-category of student to make the grade, the standards are unachievable.

They offer as proof the fact that very few schools nationwide are able to achieve the current requirements and that by 2014 the law will require all schools to be 100% proficient in every group.

"It's unfair, it's dishonest and it's demoralizing," said SC Superintendent of Schools Mick Zais.

"A system where a school that meets 36 of 37 standards under No Child Left Behind is still labeled as a failing school.  Normally we say that's 97% that's a passing score," Zais said.

Spartanburg District 7 Superintendent Rusell Booker agreed with Zais.  

"The accountability system is punative and you recieve very few rewards for improvement," Booker said.

Those AYP standards did take a toll on at least one school in Booker's district.

The former Whitlock Junior High School never made AYP.  It faced sanctions almost from the beginning.  When students got the ability to transfer away, enrollment in the school built for 900 students dropped to 280.

Today, Whitlock is closed for good.

CHEATING IN SOUTH CAROLINA

Despite the apparent motives, there are very few reported cased of teacher cheating in South Carolina.

The state contracts with a private company that looks for those suspicious patterns of erasures and there are criminal penalties for getting caught.

Teachers caught cheating can face 90 days in jail and a one thousand dollar fine.

So called "security breeches" include leaving test booklets in the wrong place, offering hints to students, and in the case of one Berkeley County teacher, giving hand signals to students during the exam.

"Most of the things that have come to my attention have been accidents. You know, somebody sets a test down and walks out of the room and they have to report that because it's a violation of security procedures,"  Zais said.

In the 2009-2010 school year the state reported 114 security breeches.  Only eight of those cases were refered to SLED for further investigation.

Most cases result in a public reprimand.  That's what happened to a Lexington County teacher for "unprofessional conduct and test security violation".

The state accused the teacher of "looking through an extra test booklet and taking notes", "put(ing) her head down several times during testing", and "told her students to use their rulers if they saw the word measure".

That teacher is still in the same elementary school classroom.

THE ADVANTAGES OF DATA

There are some schools in which this infusion of new testing data may actually be working as intended, without cheating.

At Lakeview Middle School in Greenville County, principal Tracy Hall runs what she calls a "data-driven" school.  Student test scores are pored over and analyized like baseball box scores.

"We not only look at the data, we map the data," Hall said.

Lakeview struggled for years with low scores but has shown signifigant improvement.  The scores have improved so much that Hall's school is no longer considered a struggling "Palmetto Priority".

Hall credits the insight the testing provides for the scores.

"It tells us if they're weak in vocabulary, if they're weak in literary, or they're weak in reading their textbook," Hall said.

Once the staff breaks down each student's performance on each area of the test, kids are given intensive and often individualized instruction.

The reading score, for example, helps structure the teaching the the school's first-floor reading lab.

The darkened lab is full of children wearing headphones, each staring at their own computer screen.  Children sound out words, answer questions that test their comprehension, and advance at their own pace.

"Students that are below (grade) reading level come to me," said reading specialist Donna Wharton.

"Each student in here is given a pretest when they begin. They're all working on an individually prescribed program for themselves," Wharton said.

Perhaps more amazing is a teacher planning room on the building's second floor.  

Here, science teachers Cynthia Agee and Michelle Sentery are pouring over science test results from the previous September. 

"We look at hour our students have done on each area of the test and then we change our teaching strategies based on how they have done," said Sentery.

"I even hold myself differently because there's a sense of pride now, because the students have changed and the scores have gone up," Agee said.

In the room with these teachers, Hall points to a wall covered in multi-colored post-it notes.  On each is a students name and their score in reading.  The scores here are only a few points away from either meeting or failing state standards.  Teachers focus on each one and on how to bring up each score.

If that sounds like teaching to the test, Hall is clear, the test is teaching them.

"We target our strategies and resources," Hall said.

And as for the motive to cheat, Hall says it's bogus.

"It can be done.  You don't need to do the cheating to make it happen. You just need to focus your resources."