Winner Take All Incentives And Teacher/Student Cheating

Bob Sutton:

Steve Levitt of Freakonomics fame has shown that, when teacher's pay is linked to the the performance of their students on standardized tests, they are prone to cheat -- I mean the teacher's cheat. Levitt's data from Chicago suggest that about 5% of teachers cheated to get bonuses and other goodies. A recent New York Times article shows that this problem persists, and tells a rather discouraging story of a principal from Georgia who "erased bubbles on the multiple-choice answer sheets and filled in the right answers." And if you look check out the Freakonomics blog, there is evidence that Australian teachers cheat too.

The kind of pressures that educators face aren't just financial incentives (although that alone is plenty of pressure as many systems reward only the top performers no matter how well everyone else does), they also risk being fired, demoted, or their schools may lose accreditation, be put on probation, and in some cases, closed for poor performance

The Times article offers an interesting quote that has implications beyond education:

Posted by Jim Zellmer at June 24, 2010 4:55 AM
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