Education Next – Morgan S. Polikoff
“We have known for quite a while that schools engage in all manner of tricks to improve their performance under accountability systems. These behaviors range from the innocuous—teaching the content in state standards—to the likely harmful—outright cheating. A new study last week provided more evidence of the unintended consequences of another gaming behavior—reassigning teachers based on perceived effectiveness. Researchers Jason A. Grissom, Demetra Kalogrides and Susanna Loeb analyzed data from a large urban district and found that administrators moved the most effective teachers to the tested grades (3-6) and the least effective to the untested grades (K-2).”(more)