MAROLF: Cheating to achieve No Child Left Behind standards indicates flaws in testing

You've probably heard about cheating epidemics before: Someone gets their hands on a copy of a test answer key and starts spreading it around to their classmates, thinking they're all going to get easy As. It usually doesn't work out as well as they hope.

There have been a few news stories lately about cheating on standardized tests. This time, though, it wasn't the students who were cheating — it was the teachers.

Most notably, an investigation into the test scores of Atlanta students brought to light that several teachers in the Atlanta school district had changed answers on standardized tests to improve their students' scores. These standardized tests are required for all public schools under the No Child Left Behind Act. If teachers cheat on these tests, it reveals the standardized testing is flawed.

According to a July 7 Washington Times article, "Investigators in 2009 conducted over 2,100 interviews and reviewed 800,000 documents of middle and elementary schools before determining that 44 of the 56 schools had engaged in score changing. Seven teachers have confessed to test tampering."

It's pretty sad when you have to worry about not only students cheating, but teachers, as well. Then again, with this problem being so widespread in Atlanta, and possibly in other cities across the United States, maybe we should be wondering why so many teachers felt the need to give their students a little help on their state tests.

The test results are used to determine whether or not each school is teaching its students adequately. Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? This gives the government an easy, albeit not perfect, way to monitor the quality of schools across the nation.

The first problem with the NCLB Act is that it requires schools to show Adequate Yearly Progress on tests. For instance, every year's seventh graders must do better than the seventh graders from the year before. This just doesn't seem feasible. You have to have the best students you've ever had every year? Until everyone is acing the tests, or what?

Schools that consistently underperform — i.e. don't meet AYP — have to take steps to improve the school. If a school underperforms for four consecutive years, for instance, the government may require it to fire its entire staff. All of the teachers.

Because that will obviously do a lot of good. The logic here is apparently, "These teachers aren't doing a good job, so we might as well get rid of them all and roll the dice on some new ones. If that doesn't work out, we'll do it again in five years." There are two major problems with this logic.

First, all schools have at least some good teachers.

Second, trying to replace an entire staff in one year isn't easy, and getting more effective teachers must be even harder.

Maybe instead of turning public education into a high-stakes game of testing, we should try a different approach to improving the education system — one in which the caliber of a school isn't measured by a set of one-size-fits all tests.

Here's one idea: If the teachers are the problem, maybe we should do something to make sure they are "highly qualified," like NCLB requires. Punishing teachers for not being successful might get rid of some bad teachers (as well as, perhaps, some good ones), but it won't replace them with better teachers.

Instead, we should develop some sort of retraining program for the educators at poorly performing schools. That way, they'll already have experience and the good ones won't be lost. Anyway, shouldn't hiring and firing teachers be dealt with at an individual level? Most likely, the administrators at a school know or could figure out which teachers are doing well and which aren't.

Furthermore, if we want our kids to have the best educators in the world, we have to teach those educators how to be the best. I don't mean to disparage education departments, but as a former secondary education major, I must say the classes I took in that department weren't especially rigorous compared to other classes I've had. They were good classes and I definitely learned stuff, but we could have covered more material.

There are several other problems with the No Child Left Behind Act, one of which is known as "teaching to the test." Teachers know what kind of information will be on standardized tests, so they focus on those areas, rather than giving their students a more well-rounded education. You can't blame them. With so much pressure to show good scores on the tests, it makes sense to put more emphasis on whatever is going to be on them.

But my favorite part of NCLB is that it calls for 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014. No joke. This is a ridiculous goal. Not to put anyone down, but not everyone has the ability to be proficient in math and reading, no matter how well you teach them. That's a fact of life, plain and simple. But hey, why not try, right?

This act was created to help young people get the best possible education, regardless of their socioeconomic status or where they go to school. The goal was to get more people to college and improve individual lives, as well as America in general. Instead, it has gotten to the point where teachers are doing whatever it takes to help their students pass these standardized tests.