Freakonomics and Arrangement: Chapter 1: Cheating Teachers

1. Freakonomics and Arrangement: Chapter 1: Cheating Teachers By Jasmine B., Alexa P., Chris V., Diamond G., and Brianna M. Period 1

2. Arrangement Arrangement: Exemplification Chapter 1: How incentives attract us human beings to do unethical irrational deeds. According to Freakonomics “ We all learn to respond to incentives, negative and positive from the outset of life.” Basically stating that we as people respond to incentives because it might get us the outcome we are hoping for. Exemplification: If touching a hot stove means that you burn your finger you learn not to do that based on the outcome. But if bringing home straight A’s gets you a new bike, well then those are incentives we can get used too.

3. Teacher Cheating • Exemplification: Page 27-29 shows patterns in teachers “cheating” ways and how it is easy to catch them in the act. • Teachers cheat in numerous ways because of incentives. • Teachers have an incentive to cheat because of the rewards that are offered. • The “No Child Left Behind” act mandates schools to pass a statewide test, or else the school could possibly get shut down. • Teachers need student to go on to the next grade by passing the test. • Teachers can have bonuses up to $25,000 for exceeding test scores. • Teachers cheat in numerous ways because of incentives. • Writing the answers to a statewide exam on the chalkboard. • Collecting students answers sheets and filling in the correct answers.

4. Mode: Example (1) • Schoolchildren, of course, have had incentive to cheat for as long as there have been tests. But high-stakes testing has so radically changed the incentives for teachers that they too now have added reason to cheat. With high-stakes testing, a teacher whose students test poorly can be censured or passed over for a raise or promotion. If the entire school does poorly, federal funding can be withheld; if the school is put on probation, the teacher stands to be fired. High-stakes testing also presents teachers with some positive incentives. If her students do well enough, she might find herself praised, promoted, and even richer: the state of California at one point introduced bonuses of $25,000 for teachers who produced big test-score gains. And if a teacher were to survey this newly incentivized landscape and consider somehow inflating her students' scores, she just might be persuaded by one final incentive: teacher cheating is rarely looked for, hardly ever detected, and just about never punished. Pg.23-24

5. Mode: Example (2) • “A fifth-grade student in Oakland recently came home from school and gaily told her mother that her super-nice teacher had written the answers to the state exam right there on the chalkboard. ” Pg.24There are more nuanced ways to inflate students' scores. A teacher can simply give students extra time to complete the test. If she obtains a copy of the exam early--- that is, illegitimately--- she can prepare them for specific questions. More broadly, she can "teach to the test." Pg.24But if a teacher really wanted to cheat--- and make it worth her while--- she might collect her students' answers sheets and, in the hour or so before turning them I'n to be read by an electronic scanner, erase the wrong answers and fill in correct ones. Pg.24-25

7. Significance (1) • When an author is feeding an audience information, they want it to be accessable to everyone in all forms and levels, a statagy that the authors Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner used through three modes of develpment. The very present mode exemplification was used in many illustrationsin Freakonomics, not only telling but showing facts of the narrations. It is significant in the sense of presenting the reader with exact points that authors are trying to get across using a different medium to portray the information. Using an example of the cheating teachers exam patterns (29) shines a different light on the situation making it concrete, clear and more literal; easy to see both the argument made and the authors stance on the matter. The effect is the desired intent; showing actual examples gets everyone on a similar basic level of understanding. The examples have bits of logos (legitimate information), ethos (the display of the information, in this case, comparison charts) and pathos (seeing the actual cheating patterns of teachers can igite a variety of emotions in the reader). All of these factors effect the interpretation of the infromation by the audience.

8. Significance (2) • More specifically, Levitt and Dubner then classify the examples into compare and contrast and also process analysis modes. Comparison quite drastically changes the concept of teexample, forming it from just sowing the cheating scandal exams to its before and after data shots. This is significant to the mode because its showing back to back visuals and change over time which in effect makes the reader almost feel like this information is in present time; reading it and seeing the effects on incentives versus the basic moral code. Process analysis also works very nicely in displaying the information in a way that is meaningful to the reader. Levitt and Dubner go through the actual steps the prize driven teachers went trough in order to make sure that they got theres without the reeking consequences. We start off with the teacher that would erase and change the answers of her pupils in patterns to the teacher that gave his students obvious questions that required little to no actual thinking. Both were deeply analyzed by the authors, who dug apart each individual segment that could possible result in a said outcome including motives, the incentives etc. After mapping those factors out, they dissecting the true act of cheating in the perspective of the teacher and finally showed the example cheating charts. This pattern was utilized because it explains, in depth, every aspect of the example. This is clears up any gray areas with a step by step tactic, positively effecting the meaning.