One teacher said her students don’t take their end-of-year tests seriously and draw butterflies with the multiple choice bubbles. Another educator noted that some of his kids have gotten the worst score they could — on purpose. A school board member explained that a few of the smarter ones will write their responses in German as a joke.
The reason: No matter how many questions students get right, their scores don’t affect their grades. So many don’t care and others don’t try.
“What we need is some way to incentivize doing well on these tests,” said Rick Ainge, president-elect of the Utah School Boards Association.