States’ high-stakes testing produces incentives for cheating, harms teacher morale, and results in important decisions about students’ lives being made based on occasionally faulty data, a report contends.
“The Inevitable Corruption of Educators and Indicators Through High-Stakes Testing” is available from the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University. ()
In a review of newspaper articles, two researchers found examples of educators and students cheating to improve test scores, of narrowing teaching to the test, and of using unfair testing practices, such as requiring students to take tests shortly after a sibling’s murder.
The report is the first of two on testing to be published by the Education Policy Studies Laboratory at Arizona State University in Tempe.
