Want to stop teachers from cheating? A history lesson from corporate America

Now, imagine that in this very complex system we introduce a measurement of just one, relatively simple, criteria: the success of their students on standardized tests. And say, on top of that, we make this particular measurement the focal point of all evaluation and compensation. Under such conditions we should expect teachers to over-emphasize the activity that is being measured and neglect all other aspects of teaching, and we have evidence from the No Child Left Behind program that this has been the case. For example, we find that teachers teach to the test, which helps the results for that test go up but leaves all other areas of education and instruction (that is, those areas not represented on the tests) to fall by the wayside.

And how is this related to dishonesty in the school system? I don’t think that teachers are cheating this way (by themselves changing answers, or by allowing students to cheat) simply to increase their salaries. After all, if they were truly performing a cost-benefit analysis, they would probably choose another profession—one where the returns for cheating were much higher. But having this single measure for performance placed so saliently in front of them, and knowing it’s just as important for their school and their students as it is for their own reputation and career, most likely motivates some teachers to look the other way when they have a chance to artificially improve those numbers.

Personal Post

More on this Story

• Time to treat teachers as professionals
• Cheating, testing and the great education tradeoff
• A history lesson from corporate America
• Testing and teaching are not at odds

View all Items in this Story

• Greatest teacher incentive: The freedom to teach

So what do we do? The notion that we take something as broad as education and reduce it to a simple measurement, and then base teacher pay primarily on it, has a lot of negative consequences. And, sadly, I suspect that fudging test scores is relatively minor compared with the damage that this emphasis on tests scores has on the educational system as a whole.

Interestingly, the outrage over teachers cheating seems to be much greater than the outrage over the damage of mis-measurement in the educational system and over the No Child Left Behind program more generally. So maybe there is some good news in all of this: Perhaps we now have a reason to rethink our reliance on these inaccurate and distracting measurements, and stop paying teachers for their students’ performance. Maybe it’s time to think more carefully about how we want to educate in the first place, and stop worrying so much about tests.

Dan Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavior economics at Duke University and the author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside Of Irrationality.

Also in this roundtable:

Howard Gardner: Time to treat teachers as professionals

Steven Pearlstein: Cheating, testing and the great education tradeoff