Cheating in Atlanta

NPR’s Morning Edition has a piece here about the arrest of the Atlanta school teachers and administrators accused of changing the students’ test scores.

Whew. But I guess this was inevitable. No one at the policy making level seems to have a clue about how really to effect reform, and so there is all of this emphasis on testing.

Here is one simple things that schools could do which would substantially raise reading scores.  Make the development of a love and habit of reading the first goal.  Avid readers read better, write better, concentrate better, and acquire the frames of reference that allow them to do well in all of their subjects.

Unfortunately, the teaching to the test that is endemic in school systems now is just turning kids off to reading, and making a bad situation worse.