<p>I can’t imagine any of the teachers I have come in contact ever doing something like this, but I live in an area with a good school system with strong test scores. But, I wonder what some of the lower performing schools will feel pressured to do. It isn’t that i don’t think performance should be measured and tied to pay in some way, but they better think long and hard about how they are going to measure results before they put any new systems in place.</p>
<p>I agree with baseballmom and there would be 178 teaching positions open to people with ethics. I really feel sorry for the students in all of this though</p>
<p>^ The kids taking honors/AP classes are not usually the ones in danger of not meeting state standards on the standardized tests. And within a given school/district, teachers rarely get to choose which classes they will teach.</p>
<p>Trust me it happens alot here (( I don’t live in the US )) .
If you are in a private school and you are paying a tution fee don’t even bother to go to the school and you will get at least 3.5 Gpa</p>
<p>Requiring unrealistic results with catastrophic consequences if those results are not forthcoming…that scenario could even give an ethically unchallenged person pause.</p>
<p>By my screen name, you might be able to tell I am in Massachusetts. In places like Lawrence, Holyoke, and Springfield, the MCAS (state exam students must pass to receive a HS diploma) failure rate is high, and there are more societal problems than anyone can imagine.</p>
<p>Compare test scores in those schools to those in affluent communities like Wellesley, Concord-Carlisle, and Weston–VIRTUALLY EVERYBODY PASSES THE MCAS EXAMS.</p>
<p>Teachers may not get to choose what courses they teach, but they can choose what community they teach in. If you can teach in Weston, why teach in Lawrence, if your employment is dependent on test scores influenced by factors beyond your control??</p>
<p>It is dangerous territory to tie a teacher’s salary to test scores. How will districts reward a great special education teacher who is working with children who have difficutly with these exams?</p>
<p>The whole thing is really quite sad. The superintendent allowed/fostered a culture of do or die when it came to test results and this is what happened. She won a myriad of awards during her decade at the helm of the city school system and even won superintendent of the year (a national award) a couple of years ago. She is not an idiot and anyone looking at the data had to know that there was something hinky going on. In fact, it was a couple of newspaper reporters who figured it out. </p>
<p>I suspect that the teachers who cheated or went along with their principals’ commands did so because they literally had no other career options. In the poorest schools, generally are the poorest teachers. If you haven’t read any of the actual report, I recommend you do so. Some of the behavior is simply unbelievable – erasure parties for one, school dances held as distractions as another example.</p>
<p>As a resident of the county next to Atlanta, where our superintendent and chief operating officer are awaiting trial after being indicted for multiple crimes, I have to tell you that poor minority children are mostly going uneducated in Metro Atlanta.</p>