Teacher Cheating Chapter Summary

The beginning of the chapter starts out with a story about a pair of economists who tried to find a solution for all the tardy parents who kept coming in late to pick up their children from daycare. They told the parents that they were adding a $3 fine for coming and picking up their child ten minutes late. When the fine was installed more and more parents showed up later instead of earlier. He did not explain why it happened until later. Levitt then started talking incentives. He said it is defined as the way people get what they want or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. He said that there are three different kinds of incentives. There is social, economic, and moral incentives. He uses crime as an example. People

His example was about a public schools in Chicago. Since their test scores were so low that the teachers at the school could be passed over for promotions or even fired because of it. Many of the teachers had incentive to cheat by either giving them the answers or even changing the answers after they finished the test. Investigators looked in the Chicago public school system and found that there was evidence of teacher cheating in over 200 classrooms per year. Those teachers were fired after there was a retest administered since there was enough evidence gathered. The same type of cheating can be found in athletics like in sumo wrestling. Since a sumo wrestlers ranking determines everything for him like how much money, eat, and sleep that the wrestler gets. A sumo wrestler gets his ranking by his performance in elite tournaments that are held throughout the year. If he wins 8 or more of his fights his ranking rises, but if he does not, his ranking falls. They have the incentive just like the teachers to cheat because the wrestler that is 8-6 going up against a wrestler that is 7-7 will throw the match because of a bribe, which is a social incentive, or any other arrangement that they