District Administration - April 2011 - (Page 50)

High-Stakes Cheating Cheating by administrators and teachers is not new, but it “has escalated considerably” since enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, with its requirement that schools report Adequate Yearly Progress, says Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators. “There is no excuse for it,” he declares. “The reason is the pressure to perform at a certain level.” Job security for principals is a key factor, because “the performance of their school reflects on them,” he adds. “Certainly NCLB has raised the stakes on test results, and clearly teachers and principals feel tremendous pressure to raise their students’ test scores and meet AYP targets,” agrees Joan Herman, director of the National Center for Research on Education, Stan- dards and Student Testing in the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. Although paying teachers based on their performance, a concept advanced by President Barack Obama, “isn’t widespread yet,” it could “put more pressure on teachers and administrators to do well, and potentially stimulate them to Advocating Zero Tolerance Administrators can try to prevent testing irregularities in the future by making clear to teachers and other staff members that there is zero tolerance for cheating, says Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators. “Tell them it is not allowed and will result in their termination,” Domenech says. “If they are worried about losing their job, they will lose it for sure if they cheat and get caught, and they will get caught sooner or later.” Unfortunately, he adds, cheating “has repercussions beyond the people immediately affected.” He cites Beverly Hall, superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools, who was AASA’s National Superintendent of the Year in 2009 and who plans to retire in June although she has not been implicated in her district’s cheating investigation. Hall is “a super lady,” states Domenech, “and what a shame it is that rather than retiring with all the accolades she truly deserves, she is doing it with this cloud hanging over her head.” AASA has a code of ethics that, among other things, calls on education leaders to fulfill their professional duties “with honesty and integrity” and always act in “a trustworthy and responsible manner.” Most districts have similar ethics statements, but cheating happens nevertheless and is likely to continue, Domenech says, under current and potentially new federal laws and regulations. “We see additional things coming down the pike that would create even more pressures, like tying teacher evaluation to student performance in a formal way,” he says. Herman agrees, suggesting that President Barack Obama’s Race to the Top initiative “is going to put even more pressure on test results” that could impact retention and compensation for principals and teachers. Domenech concludes, “We have to be very careful as we implement policies that we’re not putting in place things that can possibly motivate people to behave in such an unethical way as cheating.” ‘game’ the system in ways that may or may not be legitimate,” Herman asserts. Value-added assessment of teachers based on their effectiveness is another increasingly popular, though controversial, policy, according to a report, “Evaluating Teachers: The Important Role of Value-Added,” issued last November by the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization in Washington, D.C. “As the stakes get higher, there is a lot more pressure,” agrees Michael Hinojosa, superintendent of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD), who also cites incentives such as compensation and job security based on performance. Daria Hall, director of K12 policy at the Education Trust, another Washingtonbased nonprofit, agrees that cheating is “unethical and immoral” and maintains that “to claim NCLB or any other law forces us to do it is abdicating professional responsibility. We have not done enough to provide teachers the support they need to meet the high expectations they are being held to.” It’s up to the federal government, she says, to provide “robust educational support” for teachers. “We give them standards and say ‘OK, go teach.’ But teachers need materials aligned with the standards so they can plan their instruction,” Hall says. She suggests giving teachers model assignments and assignment rubrics among other resources that would be helpful. Exposing Problems Allegations of cheating incidents usually are exposed in districts’ own reviews of 50 April 2011 District Administration

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - April 2011

District Administration - April 2011
Contents
From the Editor
Letters
News Update
Labor Relations
Administrator Profile
District Profile
Conversations
Superintendent Staying Power
Helping STEM Take Route
High-Stakes Cheating
Are Your Graduates Succeeding in College?
Problem/Solution
New Products
Product Focus
Online Edge
Going Mobile
Professional Opinion

District Administration - April 2011