Could collective bargaining prevent cheating?

Yesterday we brough news of the massive cheating scandal unfolding in Atlanta. The full report to the Governor is now out and it's an absolute doozy.

Teachers, in many cases, were bullied and subjected to intimidation and fear in order alter tests to boost school performances. Indeed the report's findings even has a section titled "Culture of fear". The report cites

Many principals humiliated teachers in front of their peers for failing to meet goals. For example, at Fain Elementary School, the principal forced a teacher to crawl under a table in a faculty meeting because that teacher’s students’ test scores were low.

Pressure from the district's administration was intense

Virtually every teacher who confessed to cheating spoke of the inordinate stress the district placed on meeting targets and the dire consequences for failure. Dr. Hall articulated it as: "No exceptions. No excuses." If principals did not meet targets within three years, she declared, they will be replaced and "I will find someone who will meet targets." Dr. Hall replaced 90% of the principals during her tenure.

You can read the report here:
Report Vol. 1
Report Vol. 2
Report Vol. 3

The report also finds that Atlanta Could Have Averted Its Cheating Scandal If It Had Listened To Its Local Teachers Union. But in Georgia there is no power of collective bargaining so teachers were helpless and unable to apply pressure on the administrators to stop the abuse and cheating. When they tried, they were subjected to retribution and retaliation. Instead of this problem being dealt with early and decisively, the high stakes environment with no employee protections led to widespread cheating, and now serious repercussions for the Atlanta Public Schools system and the children who have been hurt by it.

High stakes testing leads to cheating

It has been well documented that Washington DC schools, while being led by Michele Rhee engaged in widespread cheating of tests in order to artificially boost performances. Now a second large school district that employed high stakes testing to drive high stakes decisions has been found to have engaged in widespread cheating. This time in Atlanta Public Schools

State investigators have uncovered a decade of systemic cheating in the Atlanta Public Schools and conclude that Superintendent Beverly Hall knew or should have known about it, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.

In a report that Gov. Nathan Deal planned to release today, the investigators name nearly 180 educators, including more than three dozen principals, as participants in cheating on state curriculum tests, officials said over the weekend. The investigators obtained scores of confessions.

Cheating was uncovered in 44 of 56 schools investigated involving 38 principals and 178 teachers - 82 of whom confessed to misconduct. The 2 page report, below, states:

Cheating was caused by a number of factors but primarily by the pressure to meet targets in the data-driven environment

Summary of APS cheating scandal

That same pressure will now exist in every school in Ohio as teachers pay and careers will be measured in large part by their students test results - tests that have proven to be unreliable for such uses.

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