Tattling on the teacher: a study of factors influencing peer reporting of teachers who violate standardized testing protocol.(Report)

Teacher cheating on standardized tests is a grave problem for public schools. Nichols and Berliner (2005) documented allegations and actual instances of cheating on standardized tests in 30 states implicating administrators, principals, and teachers. Gay (1990) found that 35% of teachers she surveyed were aware of or had participated in testing irregularities and an investigation by the Dallas Morning News newspaper discovered evidence that teachers and administrators at nearly 400 Texas schools helped students cheat on the state's standardized test (Vertuno, 2005). Standardized testing is a hotly contested political issue; advocates argue that it reduces "social promotion" of unqualified students (Milligan, 2005), while opponents argue that its high stakes encourage student, teacher, and administrator cheating (Nichols & Berliner, 2005). Regardless of its pros and cons, standardized testing should be carried out in a systematic, ethical, manner that is free of unwarranted advantages.

A teacher witnessing a coworker violate standardized testing protocol may report the infraction to his or her supervisor. When organizational members step outside of their immediate work group to report a coworker's violation of organizational policy, peer reporting has occurred (Trevino & Victor, 1992). Peer reporting is recognized as one of the primary means of identifying and correcting employee wrongdoing (King, 1997, 2001). It is similar to whistle-blowing as both involve disclosing information about illegal or illegitimate actions to groups or individuals who may be able to affect action (King, 1997; Near & Miceli, 1995). Peer reporting may be especially necessary in professions, such as teaching, characterized by low supervisor monitoring and high employee autonomy (Trevino & Victor, 1992).

Though peer reporting is a communicative process (King, 1997), few studies have explored it from a communication perspective. If viewed from the framework of traditional communication models, however, it is possible to see a number of factors that may influence an individual's peer-reporting decision. Traditional communication models generally include five components: source, message, channel, receiver, and context (Berlo, 1960). For the present study, a source (teacher) communicates a message (testing violation) to a receiver (potential peer reporter) via a channel, e.g., personal observation. The observant teacher then decides whether to report the offender. We argue that the observer's response will be influenced by (a) sender variables, particularly the violator's impression management strategies, (b) receiver variables, including the observer's communication apprehension and attitudes about standardized testing, and (c) contextual variables, including the influence of a school's cultural characteristics and supervisor receptivity to new information. While these variables have been recognized in a number of studies as influencing employees' everyday communication practices, they have yet to be examined as influencers on peer-reporting behavior.

Peer Reporting of Unethical Behavior

Trevino and Victor (1992) suggested peer reporting is a form of whistle-blowing. One key difference between the whistle-blowing and peer reporting is that whistle-blowing usually involves exposing unethical behaviors committed by or with the knowledge of senior officials of the organization (Graham, 1986), while peer reporting involves revealing unethical behaviors committed by one's peers or coworkers. Whistle-blowing has been described as an upward control effort (Graham), while peer reporting has been described as a lateral control effort (King, 2001). Furthermore, reporting one's peer may be more difficult than reporting one's supervisor (Cerrato, 1988; Victor, Trevino, & Shapiro, 1993) because to do so likely violates entrenched group norms.

Peer-reporting research has begun to generate its own body of findings and has been examined in relation to a number of personal, situational, and organizational factors. Personal-level variables linked to peer reporting include perceiving that one has an ethical obligation to report wrongdoing, organizational tenure, perceptions of one's power (King & Hermodson, 2000), individuals' level of religiosity, and their ethical ideologies (Barnett, Bass, & Brown, 1996). Situational-level variables associated with peer reporting include perceptions of whether a wrongdoing was intentional or unintentional (King, 2001), the severity of the wrongdoing, personal observation of a situation, group acceptance of a practice, and whether the situation could be corrected through group discussion (King & Hermodson, 2000). Finally, King and Hermodson found organizational factors linked to peer reporting included whether an activity contradicted written policies and procedures or involved personnel issues. Respondents reported they would be less likely to report if the organizational climate was retaliatory.

While some educational-policy critics argue that teachers reporting peers is the primary means by which cheating teachers are identified (Ohanian, 2005), researchers have yet to examine peer reporting with educational contexts. As states' reliance on high-stakes testing increases, and as incentives are increasingly tied to test performance, we may very well witness an increase in administrator/teacher cheating (Nichols & Berliner, 2005). Therefore, the educational context may be an especially appropriate one to examine peer reporting.