Michelle Rhee | Education Reform | The Atlanta Post
http://atlantapost.com/2011/03/30/michelle-rhee-was-wrong/
By J. Smith
Michelle Rhee, the former Chancellor of D.C. schools, was praised for her visionary and innovative approach to education reform. Not even a full year after she and the mayoral administration that employed her left office, it is revealed that the innovative vision was actually the oldest trick in the book: cheating.
A new report discovered student testing irregularities at the Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus in D.C., where – under Rhee’s reign – the school and its administrators were deemed shining stars. According to The Daily Beast, the percentage of students at the school who reached proficient on D.C. tests soared from 10 percent to 58 percent in a two-year period. Parents eventually started complaining after the students’ test scores improved but their comprehension of basic mathematics had not.
Rhee became the popular kid in elite education circles after garnering media attention for encouraging governors to fight teachers’ unions and rely on standardized test scores to determine if a teacher would be fired or rewarded. Her “success” came from the alleged improvement of test scores in low-performing public schools. However, more than