Ethics case study
Student’s name
Professor’s name
19th November 2020
Description of the case study
Damany Lewis, 29 years old, was a math teacher at parks middle school in Atlanta in 2006. The school was located in a neighborhood known to be full of armed robbers. Lewis himself had grown up in this neighborhood. There Lewis had a lot of concern for his students and was committed to their academic performance success. At that time, the superintendent of Atlanta school was Beverly hall, who believed that business approaches and market value systems could save public schools from wanting poor performance. Therefore she came up with accountability measures for the Atlanta school and performance objectives that were to be achieved. The objectives were deemed tougher than those of the no child left behind program legislated in 2002. The teacher evaluations were connected to the student’s performance on standardized scores. According to the accountability measures and objectives set, schools in which students were not making any progress on the standardized scores had to undergo some consequences. The consequences were faculty and staff replacement, restructuring, or closing down of the school.
Parks middle school was put into a mirror because of the strict accountability measures and the consequences that followed if there was no significant progress on performance. Park middle school was one of the schools’ categories as those in need of dire improvement, a situation that had been emphasized for the previous 5 years. The school was to escape close down only if 58% of the students passed math standardized scores and 67% to do well in the language arts portion. Closing down of the school meant scattering of the students in the school into different schools in Atlanta.
Lewis, the 29-year-old math teacher, felt that it was his obligation to prevent that from happening, according to THE NEW YORKER. Therefore he pushed his students to work diligently than ever before to avoid such a consequence from happening. However, he clearly knew that most of the students would not make it. The new principle of parks then, Christopher Waller, heard that elementary school teachers had changed their students’ answers on the standardized scores by erasing stray pencil marks to prevent their students from meeting the threshold. The latter event led to asking Lewis and other teachers to do the same for their students. Lewis always found the students who needed more marks to reach the threshold and changed their answers to make them pass. Lewis was afraid that his students would develop the why try attitude if they had not made it in these standardized scores. He was not ready to lose their neighborhood school and the community within which it had grown to that extent.
The strategy of changing answers worked out very well, and everyone was all smiles as the students were performing better each year. Most of the teachers claimed that now the school had achieved no child’s goals left behind federal program. The changing answers process continued at parks through the year 2010. During that time, several nine teachers collaborated with Lewis in doing the act. In October the same year, the Georgia Bureau of investigation visited other Atlanta schools together with parks. After a closer investigation, it was found that 44 schools, not forgetting the park middle school, were using the change answer strategy to improve performance. In July 2012, 110 teachers, including Lewis, were given an administrative leave; most of them had confessed to having used the strategy while others were accused. Later that year Lewis, employment was terminated. Those involved in the whole scandal included forty-four schools, 180 educators, and 35 indictments.
Ethical analysis of the case study
Most of the question in the minds of many remains, how could this happen? How could elementary school teachers get into organized and systematic misconduct that would later lead them to be convicted on racketeering charges? Logically, no one comes with a full well laid out plan to change hundreds of test scores in dozens of schools to improve performance. It simply means there are those responsible for creating a culture of fear, intimidation, and retaliation that lead to cheating at all levels in major American school systems.
When one works in a fear-based environment, they may think that they are the problem, which is a real sense is not the truth of the matter. You may realize that you’re not the only one but your co-workers to be upright about the same issue. A fear-based workplace is where fear is predominantly the basis of performance, while a healthy workplace involves trust being the basis of performance. Trust and fear cannot fit in the same vacuum, and therefore workplaces can either adopt fear or trust as their basis for performance. Leaders in an organization have the two options of trusting their employees or instilling fear to induce performance. The latter is ethically wrong and can lead to outcomes like employees quitting jobs, or in most cases, induced dubious ways of putting performance on the table.
Leaders of organizations can inflict fear in their employees in various ways. The ways may include a close watch on employees during their duties, enacting rules and policies to cover everything, and coming up with control mechanisms within the working environment. Most of the policies set can be a way of inflicting fear to employees.
The following characteristics can portray a fear-based environment; everyone focuses on their goal not because they want to, but due to fear of losing their jobs. Therefore employees tend to use anyway, either right or wrong, to achieve the set goals. A fear-based workplace involves the leaders specializing in assigning work, punishing infractions, measuring results, and maintaining order. A fear-based working environment consists of individuals who don’t want to tell the truth since no one wants to hear it. A more common question will always be, will you put up with a job in a fear based environment or quit? According to research, most people do put up with it to earn a living, especially if they have not doored open for other job opportunities.
Therefore some people will argue in our case study that the elementary school teachers underwent harsh charges. The reason behind is the fact is that they worked in a fear-based environment. An environment that stated that if there was no progress on performance, then a lot was in line. The teachers had to focus on their goal, and since it was a next to impossible task to achieve the target, they had to explore other options. The blame is to be put on their leader’s one of them being the principal since it was an authority from him. Surprisingly, even the principal underwent the fear himself by the accountability measures and tough targets set; he had no choice but to do what he could to save the school. The policies set had inflicted fear in the whole working environment.
Moral myopia is also seen to be an aspect in the case study o the park middle school. Moral myopia refers to a shift of moral vision that keeps ethical issues as a blur and prevents them from appearing clearly to an individual. At first, Mr. Lewis was a focused teacher committed to working hard to improve his student’s grades in the standardized scores. Like Lewis, many people want to achieve their goals by abiding by the rules.
One form of moral myopia is when one does a thing because everyone else does it. The argument behind the underpinning is that I am fine with it if everyone is fine with it. Moral myopia occurs at different levels; it includes the individual, organization, or society. At the individual level, individuals with moral myopia have no problem lying or even changing the records to suit their interests. It is evident in favoring some individuals or groups in the society while leaving others out of the limelight at the organizational level. At the societal level, moral myopia is always evident. For instance, an advertising agency is doing an advert on the lifestyle of models. The advertising agency does not keep in mind that the ad can have significant effects on society as a whole, for instance, bring about eating disorders for some ladies who want to become role models in the future.
Various rationalizations are being moral myopia in our society. For instance, most people believe that if something is legal, then it’s normal, and if it’s not illegal, then it must be ethical. Most individuals get so attached to their organization that they forget the signs that require red flags. An ostrich syndrome is also a form of moral myopia where one ignores the ethical issue in an organization; for instance, students comparing their answers before giving in assignments. According to research, it’s vital to be conscious of moral myopia and its rationalization in ensuring ethical standards. To prevent moral myopia, one can opt to have trusted advisors outside their organization. It’s important to note that moral myopia can affect a whole range of people in our society in a way that can turn out to be detrimental.
Basing the concept of moral myopia in our case study in the text, it’s evident that it brought many effects on all the stakeholders. Most of them suffered from moral myopia from the principal to the elementary teachers and even to Lewis, who was initially focused on improving their performance. However, it seems that moral myopia, in this case, was on a vertical scale stemming from the leadership to the workers. The main thing all of them forgot is to assess the effects it had. The students had indeed performed well, and everyone was happy, but all this was made in a real sense. The students were not at all helped since the performance was induced. It was not through hard work and determination from the students but the cheating strategy from their teachers. Eventually, when the scandal was revealed, most of the teachers were terminated, including Mr. Lewis.
The accountability aspect should also be considered in the case study in the text. Each of the stakeholders in the scandal should be liable for the actions they did. Despite dimensions like moral myopia and a fear-based environment getting in the way of their decisions, there were better options to explore. For instance, Mr. Lewis could have reported the instance beforehand to the relevant authorities but instead decided to be part of the cheating group. His termination at the end is not an accident but a result of the decision he made. Despite forces behind his collaboration, he had the option of saving the children’s education. At the receiving end are the children who are being lied to, given false results that they don’t deserve. They are all smiles but with no idea that the results are tailor-made. Therefore in the case study, the correct objects of sympathy are Atlanta’s children.
Therefore according to the entire dimension in which we view all the case studies from the fear-based working environment to the moral myopia concept and the accountability aspect, conclusions are drawn. At the receiving end were the children, and therefore the judge had to rule in favor of them to discourage such instances from recurring. Despite Lewis and the other elementary teachers having the power of autonomy, they decided to be part of the system; therefore, the detrimental consequences of them being terminated from their jobs were employed.
Evaluation of the case study
Personally, I concur with the judge to some extent, but my position is that the teachers could have been exempted from the charges. The teachers wanted to protect their jobs; they had a fear of being replaced. They had no second option jobs, so they had to protect what was at their disposal. The teaching profession was their way of putting bread on the table, and who could not have done the same to protect what they had? Apart from the fear-based working environment, moral myopia played a part in the decision they made. Mr. Lewis had to do what everyone else was doing; he had to fit in the system. One could say that he acted on the cliché that if you can’t beat them, join them.
Considering the judge’s verdict on charging all the stakeholders, to some extent, seems to be fair but not in my favor. The children’s plight is important, and therefore any action taken to demean actions to develop the child should be condemned. However, those conducting the actions should be put on a weighing scale too. On what basis did they do the act, and what prompted the act? The fear-based working environment and myopia were the protagonists in the teachers employing the cheating strategy. Despite the forces behind the action, the judge imposed a harsh verdict towards the teachers, including terminating their jobs. In my opinion, to an extent, the verdict was a bit harsh, and smaller extent, verdicts could have been imposed instead.
References
Atlanta School Workers Sentenced in Test Score Cheating Scandal
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/us/atlanta-school-workers-sentenced-in-test-score-cheating-case.html
Accountability on Trial
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/04/03/atlanta-school-cheating-convictions-unhelpful-for-education-reform
Landy, Justin F., and Edward B. Royzman. “The moral myopia model.” The new reflectionism in cognitive psychology: Why reason matters (2018): 70-92.
Vosselman, Ed. “Accounting, accountability, and ethics in public sector organizations: Toward a duality between instrumental accountability and relational response-ability.” Administration & Society 48, no. 5 (2016): 602-627.