Those Cheating Teachers! - Freakonomics Radio

In recent years, teachers cheating on behalf of their students have become national news stories. But why is this happening?

The hosts of the show looked through data, and estimated that 5 percent of all elementary school classrooms in Chicago have cheated for their students. The major reason for this is incentives.

With new laws and policies, the stakes are higher for teachers to have their students do well on tests. Because of this, a tiny portion of teachers have been caught erasing and filling in correct answers so their students do better.

While the most common approach to handling this situation is to fire the teachers, an alternate route would be to make it harder to cheat. To do this, teachers from other schools can come in and proctor the tests. They could also hire exam proctors and create part time jobs, much like the U.S. government does with census takers.

Economics is all about incentives and opportunity costs. In order to make the problem of cheating go away, a solution that would yield positive benefits would be the best option. Simply firing these teachers would do no good, because other cheaters would pop in and take their place. Finding out a way to disincentivize cheating would be the most economical solution.