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Playlist: Goldman Sachs and cheating teachers
Posted by Chau Tu
For Marketplace, Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Goldman Sachs reported only its second quarterly loss since going public in 1999. Occupy Wall Street marches on, while Egyptian labor rights activists are growing louder with Mubarak gone. Timothy Geithner testified on Capitol Hill today Treasury's handling of a small business lending fund. Oil companies are taking over in North Dakota. Amtrak ridership is up. And the team from Freakonomics Radio talks about what drives teachers to cheat on standardized tests. Here are the songs we played:
Re: The Freakonomics Radio bit about teachers cheating on tests. I objected to the focus on teachers in this piece. While it's obvious that the teachers are involved in the hands on part of cheating, this focus misses that there are administrative officers here pulling the puppet strings and directing or enticing them to cheat. Teachers are too often the focus of blame in critics of education while a hidden administration are often the villans who escape detection. Teachers have no reason to cheat unless they're trying to apease an adminstrative agenda.
