Is Education Reform Encouraging Cheating? - International Business Times

Is Education Reform Encouraging Cheating? - International Business Times:

Is Education Reform Encouraging Cheating?

By Jeremy B. White | August 24, 2011 8:24 AM EDT

If the education reform movement has a guiding principle, it is accountability: the belief that test scores can be trusted as an accurate gauge of progress and used to reward flourishing schools or punish failing ones.

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(Photo: REUTERS / Hyungwon Kang )
Gains made by Washington D.C. public schools under former education chancellor Michelle Rhee have come under scrutiny.

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But a series of prominent cheating scandals across the U.S. has exposed a potentially fatal flaw in policies stemming from that belief. Intense pressure to demonstrate rising student achievement can lead educators to fudge test results and alter grades, making the ostensible progress a mirage and undermining the idea that test scores can be relied upon as objective.

The pressure comes partially from within school