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Saturday, April 13, 2013

Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee Cheating Investigation Memo Renews Calls For Further Probe Of D.C. Schools

Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee Cheating Investigation Memo Renews Calls For Further Probe Of D.C. Schools:


Failed DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee Cheating Investigation Memo Renews Calls For Further Probe Of D.C. Schools

More than five years after Michelle Rhee took over Washington, D.C., public schools, and nearly three years after she left her position as chancellor, critics are still looking for closure and demanding a more rigorous investigation of the seeming rise in student test scores under her reign.

In what's become an annual ritual of sorts, D.C. school administrators on Friday released an investigation into the district's 2012 standardized tests. The report concluded that 11 schools had "critical" test security violations -- and in some cases, teacher cheating -- on last year's DC Comprehensive Assessment System.

A&M investigated 41 testing groups -- students tested by the same administrator in the same environment -- after they were flagged for certain indicators, like having many answers erased and changed from wrong to right and low score variations.

At Kenilworth Elementary School, according to auditing firm Alvarez and Marsal, a student told investigators that a teacher would "point to the question I got wrong and say to pick another [answer]."

Still, only 18 of the testing groups investigated were found have critical violations, amounting to 0.6 percent of all