More Cheating to Come...& Lessons Reformers Can Take from Atlanta
by Frederick M. Hess • Aug 18, 2011 at 9:29 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
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ShareBulletin: a large urban school district is dealing with a brewing cheating scandal. This time, it's the School District of Philadelphia (the nation's 10th largest district). Again, the situation has been marked by foot-dragging and half-hearted revelations. After being directed by the state to examine 28 schools for possible cheating on the 2009 Pennsylvania state exam, Philly officials now find that thirteen schools "bear further investigation" due to suspicious jumps and dubious erasure patterns. This new scandal in Philly comes in the wake of last month's revelations, after a year-long investigation, of widespread cheating by 178 teachers and principals in 44 schools in the Atlanta Public School district.
I am and have long been an unapologetic booster of achievement-based accountability, including back in the pre-NCLB days before it was cool. For me, the question is not whether to embrace incentives and accountability but how to do it. And, as with much else, I think would-be reformers have been irresponsible,