Writer: Focus On Standardized Testing Leads To Cheating Epidemic

Daniel Denvir wrote at Salon (5/26, Denvir) that "rampant and widespread cheating on high-stakes standardized tests has been uncovered in districts nationwide," threatening the education reform movement. The piece quotes former ED official Diane Ravitch saying, "No Child Left Behind has created a culture in which people will do anything to keep their jobs. There are states that have gamed the systems, there are districts that have gamed the system, there are people who have gamed the system." Denvir writes that under NCLB, making AYP "became a matter of a school's - and increasingly teacher's - survival. Test results have been used as the pretext to fire teachers and force schools into becoming privately managed charters, even though research has shown that corruption-prone charters are not, as a whole, better, and are often much worse than traditional public schools."