As former Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall basked in the national spotlight, her teachers were rewarded with praise and bonuses for eye-popping gains on standardized test scores, some as high as 20 percentage points over a two-year period. But their amazing success was not because of innovative teaching techniques or a bold new curriculum. They cheated.
First to raise questions about Atlanta’s too-good-to-be-true test scores, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported recently that 178 Atlanta educators, including 38 principals, have been implicated in the “most wide-ranging investigation into test-cheating in a public school district ever conducted in United States history.”
They allegedly erased wrong test answers, altered testing logbooks and threatened potential whistleblowers. One group calling themselves “the chosen ones” met after school or during makeup testing days to change students’ answers.
Georgia investigators were told that one principal wore gloves so she would not leave her fingerprints on the tampered answer sheets. “The district’s priority became maintaining and promoting Hall’s image as a miracle worker,” AJC reporter Heather Vogell said.
Educators were apparently doing the same thing in D.C. under another “miracle worker.” Chancellor Michelle Rhee became a national icon for education reform, appearing on the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines.
But her legacy is now in serious jeopardy as the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general investigates unusually high erasure rates at more than 100 D.C. public schools between 2008 and 2010.
USA Today first reported the widespread problem at more than half of D.C. public schools during Rhee’s tenure, including the Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus, named one of just 264 federal National Blue Ribbon Schools nationwide.
Rhee gave Noyes Principal Wayne Ryan and his teachers cash bonuses in 2008 and again in 2010, referring to the school as one of D.C.’s “shining stars.”
Falling star would have been a more accurate description. In 2009-10, Noyes’ reading scores plunged 23 points. More alarming, 80 percent of its classrooms were flagged by CTB/McGraw-Hill’s electronic scanners for abnormally high wrong-answer-to-right-answer erasures.
So high, USA Today pointed out, “that it could have occurred roughly one in 30,000 times by chance.” Statistically, you have the same chance of being killed by a lightning bolt.
But Rhee and Deputy Mayor of Education Victor Reinoso failed to act on a 2008 recommendation by former State Superintendent of Education Deborah Gist, so no D.C. schools with abnormal erasure rates were investigated — including one that received a TEAM award from Rhee even though its erasure rate was 10 times the district average.
Planned public hearings by the D.C. Council were cancelled. Nobody wanted to acknowledge the possibility that the academic gains that won DCPS $75 million in federal Race to the Top funding last year might prove to be illusory.
But that appears to be the case. Four years after Rhee instituted a slew of long-awaited reforms, 2011 test scores are down slightly for the second year in a row. Overall proficiency rates in elementary reading and math are in the disappointingly low 43rd percentile.
After the USA Today story appeared in March, Chancellor Kaya Henderson finally requested a test-erasure probe, but only one full-time investigator was assigned — compared with 60 in Atlanta.
As Rhee’s former top deputy, Henderson was part of the administration that rightly fired hundreds of teachers for poor performance. But their refusal to get to the bottom of the erasure scandal likely also meant they used public funds to reward cheaters who put their own selfish interests ahead of the District’s schoolchildren.
Erasing your way to the top is no way to run a school system — or leave a legacy that lasts.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
