The Mediator 2: High Stakes

Also, if the test prevents poor students from advancing without merit, they wonБЂ™t clog up the higher grades and slow down good students. Opponents, meanwhile, worry that certain students will be unfairly penalized if they donБЂ™t happen to test well, and that teachers may concentrate on the test topics at the exclusion of more important lessons. Schoolchildren, of course, have had incentive to cheat for as long as there have been tests. But high-stakes testing has so radically changed the incentives for teachers that they too now have added reason to cheat. With high-stakes testing, a teacher whose students test poorly can be censured or passed over for a raise or promotion. If the entire school does poorly, federal funding can be withheld; if the school is put on probation, the teacher stands to be fired. High-stakes testing also presents teachers with some positive incentives. If her students do well enough, she might find herself praised, promoted, and even richer: the state of California at one point introduced bonuses of $25,000 for teachers who produced big test-score gains ...»