A few of the students in your classroom are lagging behind, but you’re under a lot of pressure to bring them up to grade level. What should you do?

Rather than spend the extra time working with them, a few Atlanta teachers decided to fudge the test scores to keep their principal and superintendent happy, as well as satisfy state and national education officials. They convinced themselves that if they were lucky, they’d rate a bonus for doing such a great job of better educating their students. In the end, everyone lost — the kids, the teachers, the school system and the quality of education in their district, city and state. Sad, very sad.

A few former teachers in Atlanta have now been charged with racketeering in the cheating scandal, which reportedly dates back to 2001. They allegedly erased and replaced test answers and sometimes even involved the students themselves in an effort to show that students were doing much better than they actually were.

It was apparently the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper that first questioned test results. Ultimately, at least 50 schools that serve 50,000 students were determined to be misrepresenting their test scores.

A total of 35 educators in the district were indicted in 2013 after it was determined that more than half of the elementary and middle schools in the district were involved in some degree of cheating on test scores.

It’s too bad a few teachers have given their profession a bad name. Teaching is all about encouraging students to learn and strive to reach their maximum potential. If they don’t quite measure up to their peers, you do your best to help them in any way you can.

Every dedicated teacher in America will tell you — or should — that they’re not in it for the money.

When your primary motivation is to get a bonus, or you’re under pressure to show higher test scores if you hope to keep your job, it’s time for our educational system to undergo a major overhaul.

The poor judgment of teachers and higher officials in Atlanta should remind us all how very lucky we are to live in a state and region where students can get extra help if they need it, and where teachers aren’t under great pressure to produce certain test levels, or else.

While a teacher may occasionally be encouraged to find another profession if they consistently demonstrate that the students under their care aren’t progressing as they should, thank goodness our guidelines are a far cry from those that were being used in one particular district in Atlanta.

We can learn from the Atlanta episode that it can be dangerous to place too much emphasis on test scores. Educators nationwide have been taking a good, hard look at test standards in recent years in an attempt to make sure they’re kept in their proper perspective.

We should all be thankful Maine still boasts school systems where teachers still put their students and their education first.