Uh, Teachers ARE "Assessed" and Evaluated

and always have been (never mind their evaluators are generally people who are the least qualified to do so, principals, but that's another post altogether, and often downgrade teachers they don't like), and standardized test score results are being twisted to make it look like they are accurate measures of "teacher ability" rather than what the student knows, provided students are stressed out or simply blow the tests off.

Cheating is the result of this poisonous atmosphere. Education is supposed to be collaborative, not competitive, but the privatizers don't know and don't care.

In Atlanta (and in many other areas), honest teachers knew something stunk about the students' abilities.

Though she does not condone any of the cheating alleged in the report, Rogers-Martin is sympathetic to the teachers who may have felt they were pressured into altering scores or giving answers to students.

Teachers, some faced with unreasonable targets, were cajoled and scared into cheating and were threatened with being placed on a Professional Development Program or PDP, she says. Though it sounds innocuous enough, teachers understood that a PDP could be the first step in losing their jobs, she and other Atlanta teachers said.

"I have a husband who has a good job, so I could quit. I could say: 'There's no way! I'm not going to do this,'" says Rogers-Martin.

"If I were a single mother and I had two kids' mouths to feed and this was my only job, I would hate to think what I would do -- I don't know."

They kick you to the curb if you cheat, and they kick you to the curb if you don't. Administrators have obscene power over teachers.