Michelle Rhee has a knack for saying bold things, and her latest shot around the world came in a statement to USA Today, whose Monday cover story reignited public suspicion over testing gains made under Rhee. “It isn’t surprising that the enemies of school reform once again are trying to argue that the earth is flat and that there is no way test scores could have improved for DCPS students unless someone cheated,” she said.
But since when is USA Today an enemy of school reform?
Calling USA Today’s story “an insult” to teachers and children, Rhee refers to the results of an investigation by Caveon, an independent testing security firm that found no evidence of cheating in the eight schools flagged by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE). The schools had sometimes enormous performance gains, alongside a suspiciously high number of erasures that corrected wrong answers to right ones.
When talking with local political consultant Chuck Thies for The Washington Examiner‘s Wednesday story — DCPS has asked the city’s inspector general to re-examine the schools — Thies brought up an interesting point: “You have dueling third parties,” he said, referring to Caveon and USA Today. “One of whom was hired by DCPS, and the other was independent from DCPS.”
A New York Times article from December says that Caveon is not without its critics:
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Obviously, this is not an indictment of Caveon, which has not been accused of any wrongdoing in its work for D.C. Public Schools. The Washington Examiner has asked DCPS how Caveon solved the “if-teachers-changed-answers-then-why-would-they-say-so” dilemma, and will update with an answer.
Mike Debonis at The Washington Post has an interesting blog about Rhee’s strategy as the successes of her reforms are questioned. “There are teachers who now find their jobs potentially on the line due to their students’ test scores. Same goes for principals, who can achieve hero status with rapid testing gains or sudden unemployment with rapid testing reversals. There are District taxpayers and private philanthropists… And there’s Rhee herself, who has built a reputation and a lucrative career selling a particular brand of education reform that advocates improving teacher quality through the wide use of standardize tests,” Debonis writes. “…And while Rhee says [the USA Today] story ‘lacks credibility,’ the same could be said for an investigation into cheating that “didn’t ask if teachers cheated.”
Rhee’s full statement, below:
