Cheating Scandals Intensify Focus on Test Pressures

Students at Emma Hutchinson School in Atlanta leave after the day's classes. Hutchinson has been identified as one of forty four schools involved in a test cheating scandal. Investigators have concluded that nearly half the city’s schools allowed cheating to go unchecked for as long as a decade, beginning in 2001.

—John Bazemore/AP-File

By Christina A. Samuels

The cheating scandal that has rocked the 48,000-student Atlanta school system was an egregious, but not entirely unexpected, byproduct of accountability pressures, many testing experts say.

The reason: As long as test scores are used in any field to make decisions on rewards or punishments, including for schools or educators, a small percentage of people will be willing to bend the rules—or break them.

But the allegations of systematic test alteration by teachers and principals in Atlanta, along with recent accusations of cheating in Baltimore, the District of Columbia, Philadelphia and other districts, have highlighted a split between those arguing for improved test management and security and those who ask if it’s better to...