Atlanta, Dallas, D.C. – A Predictable Result When Using Incentives in Education
- July 9th, 2011
- Posted in Systems Thinking and Education
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The cheating continues for those with incentive programs to get higher scores when testing students. I hate to say I told you so . . . but I told you so. Tying test scores to performance opens the door to cheating, people will do what they need to survive in a bad system. Administrators and teachers alike are doing the best they can in these poorly conceived systems of education.
My home state, Indiana, just pushed through education (without knowledge) to tie teachers pay and performance to test scores. Governor Daniels and State Superintendent Tony Bennett, here is the predictable result that you have set up by the system you just put in place. Political ideology over knowledge creates bad systems. With great irony . . . ignorance reigns over education.
The response of government will be more oversight to find the criminals, and therefore, more cost to implement these programs. Here is why we have overspending in government. A cycle of damaging legislation without knowledge and then costly oversight to find cheaters. While the “high ethic” Governors can wash their hands of responsibility believing that just a few bad apples are the problem. NO! The problem is the ridiculous system you just put in place.
Performance doesn’t come down to the individual, it comes down to the system they work in. This is true for teachers, workers, management, administrators and yes . . . even a Governor. If we are going to stamp out costs and balance the budget at the state, federal or local level there needs to be less ignorance and more knowledge about what drives performance.
We have started this country down a worse path in education because of wrong theories. Education will be the only way out, but we need theories that work.
Tripp Babbitt is a speaker, blogger and consultant to service industry (private and public). His organization helps executives find a better way to make the work work. Read his articles at Quality Digest and his column for CustomermanagementIQ.com Download free from www.newsystemsthinking.com “Understanding Your Organization as a System” and gain knowledge of systems thinking or contact us about our intervention services at info@newsystemsthinking.com. Reach him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/TriBabbittor LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/trippbabbitt.
This is an issue where we have common ground. I agree with you 100%
I had an interesting back and forth with Tom Peters on Twitter this weekend. He tweeted something that he implied it was good that Atlanta teachers might be jailed. I wrote that jail would be the completely wrong response to something that is a natural human reaction to being put under extreme pressure to hit targets. When teachers fear for their jobs, they will be pressured into all sorts of things they might not normally do.
Peters pretty much took the stance that every individual has to take responsibility for their action, regardless of the “shitty” (his words) system they work in.
Maybe some of the Atlanta teachers should have tried to go to the media or something, but the fear of retaliation or firing must have been pretty strong.
I’m very empathetic to those teachers. My mom was a teacher in the Detroit Public Schools, where there was similar pressure and allegations of cheating by some teachers.
People should try to act ethically, but leaders have a moral obligation to NOT put people in a situation where they feel forced to choose between their ethics and their paycheck and their family’s livelihood.
It seems to me that using test scores to evaluate teachers makes an assumption that is obviously wrong. (It actually makes many assumptions that are obviously wrong.) It would seem to assume that a student’s performance on a standardized test is based only on what that student learned from their teacher during the year that the test was administered.
The reality is that a student’s current year academic achievement is greatly influenced by all of their past work.
For example, I tutored in a GED program for adults. I found that many of the adults could quickly grasp the concepts of algebra. However, they could not answer the algebra questions correctly on the GED test because they did not have a good understanding of fractions or negative numbers.
In general, I believe that trying to blindly evaluate people’s performance based on a single metric is ineffective, and many studies show that it leads to this type of cheating. It’s even worse when the metric clearly is beyond the control of the people being measured.
Agreed. There is a real moral issue with managers, administrators and legislators putting counterproductive systems in place that force a culture of cheating and then wash their hands of it saying “ethics” is the problem. Cultures are influenced by bad systems. The knuckleheads that put the system in place are more responsible than those that are forced to survive it.
Something to build on.
Yet Atlanta is going to fire a bunch of teachers:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/15/atlanta-teachers-accused-in-cheating-scandal-told-to-resign-or-be-fired/
And how many principals I wonder???
Often, the principals have no principles. Make the numbers. Get ahead.