Teacher's Suspicion: Article Analysis

Cheating Report Confirms Teacher's Suspicion is an article about how some schools in the Atlanta, Georgia area were cheating on the state's standardized test. Julie Rogers-Martin, an Atlanta school teacher, started doubting her ability to teach as her colleague's student’s scores were better than hers. She eventually started to suspect that something else was going on. Her suspicions grew when she started noticing that her student’s abilities and the previous years standardized test scores were inconsistent. It was later revealed that teachers were immensely altering student’s test scores in order to receive a pay increase. These teachers were giving students the correct answers and some went to the extremes of completely changing the student’s answer to the correct one after student’s answer sheets were back in the teacher’s possession. School officials were aware of this. The pressure was on for teachers to do anything they could in order to get the grades up, and, the pay raises as well.
The economic ideas present in this article are incentives, and opportunity cost. Incentives are present in the fact that the teachers were offered compensation to alter their student’s answers on their competency test because they knew that they would be able to receive up to a $2000 bonus check if the school obtained 100% …show more content…
I do understand that our educators in America aren't paid what they should make and that it can be very hard to make ends meet but there has to be some point where you stand up for what’s right. You have to stand your ground in saying no to those who want you to lie for monetary reasons. I hope that this story coming to the light will give some other teachers the courage to speak up if they know that there is some academic fraud going on in their school and school system, instead of letting their superiors dictate their