Adult Incentives and School Reform

This morning I saw Eugene Robinson: The racket with standardized test scores - The Washington Post

It is time to acknowledge that the fashionable theory of school reform — requiring that pay and job security for teachers, principals and administrators depend on their students’ standardized test scores — is at best a well-intentioned mistake, and at worst nothing but a racket.
I mean that literally. Beverly Hall, the former superintendent of the Atlanta public schools, was indicted on racketeering charges Friday...

and the problem seems to be that administrators, teachers, and students are all rewarded for doing well on measurements -- measurements which can be faked, so those who are disposed to fake them will do well. Business Insider reports on Atlanta Cheating Indictment Beverly Hall

Former 'Superintendent Of The Year' Could Go To Prison For 45 Years
Thirty-five Atlanta educators were indicted last week for allegedly participating in a cheating conspiracy involving one of America's most storied school superintendents.

and similarly Daily Kos discusses, saying

Robinson writes

Our schools desperately need to be fixed. But creating a situation in which teachers are more likely than students to cheat cannot be the right path.

....the vast majority of teachers do NOT cheat. The statement has the effect of smearing the profession. It is more than unfortunate that Robinson offered those words. For all the cheating scandals he can identify, even where teachers were involved, in some cases they were directed by their superiors to do things that are illegal and unethical....

I don't see that as a correction to Robinson, but as an explanation of part of the mechanism by which some teachers were led to cheat. Sure. Creating a situation in which [administrators and] teachers are [more] likely [than students] to cheat, whether because they are directly ordered to do so or simply because their evaluations depend on it, cannot be the right path. For some reason I am reminded of Twain's The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, found as a Gutenberg text here.

Or then again....

update: I see a better write-up at Cheating in schools: There are no good guys here | The Economist, but not a basically different point of view.