'Waiting for Super Liar': Investigation Alleges Systematic Cheating Led to "Reform" in DC Public Schools

From [HERE] and [HERE] The corporate education reform movement has had no more visible star than Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools. After she left office last fall, she formed a new political organization to raise $1 billion to advocate for the changes she believes in. She has been advising some of the nation's most conservative governors to fight the teachers' unions and rely on standardized tests to fire or reward teachers. Her credibility was her alleged success in lifting up test scores in the low-performing public schools of the nation's capitol during her nearly four years in charge. Now, however, that credibility has been directly challenged by revelations of possible widespread test fraud in the D.C. schools while she was in charge. 

According to a USA Today report earlier this week, one of the schools whose test scores jumped suspiciously is Noyes Elementary in Northeast. In 2006, ten percent of the students in their Headstart program scored advanced or proficient in math. Then in 2009, that percentage jumped to 58 percent.

The USA report stated that more than 100 public schools had unusual rates of erasures, in which wrong answers were replaced by correct ones. On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY. [MORE]