The Evolution of Denial in Atlanta Test-Score Cheating Scandal
Rachel Aviv’s extraordinary New Yorker magazine essay, Wrong Answer, traces the evolution of the Atlanta Public Schools standardized test cheating scandal. Aviv describes how school administrators, driven by the Adequate Yearly Progress requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, wielded pressure and shame over several years to recalibrate the moral compass of one middle school’s most dedicated teacher.
A researcher at the American Mathematical Society tells Aviv about Campbell’s Law, “a principle that describes the risks of using a single indicator to measure complex social phenomena: the greater the value placed on a quantitative measure, like test scores, the more likely it is that the people using it and the process it measures will be corrupted.” The principle sounds abstract, but what happened to the teachers at Parks Middle School was anything but dry. Little by little, year after year, more and more teachers got involved; administrators condoned the cheating or looked the other way; and everybody celebrated the miraculous scores despite that they were utterly improbable.
Despite that Atlanta’s superintendent Beverly Hall offered cash awards to the staff at schools where scores continued to rise, Aviv’s story is not about the power of prizes and money. Damany Lewis, a middle school math teacher and the protagonist of Aviv’s story, wants desperately to keep his job precisely because he is so dedicated to serving students whose poverty is so severe that he collects their clothes to wash when they have no other options. He finds himself coaching a host of athletic teams along with the chess club as he devotes his life The Evolution of Denial in Atlanta Test-Score Cheating Scandal | janresseger: