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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Inquiry sought into D.C. test scores - USATODAY.com

Inquiry sought into D.C. test scores - USATODAY.com

Inquiry sought into D.C. test scores

By Marisol Bello and Jack Gillum, USA TODAY

Updated 4h 12m ago |

10 | 1

WASHINGTON — Former D.C. Public Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee is criss-crossing the country, establishing her profile as a national education leader.

  • Michelle Rhee, founder and CEO of StudentsFirst and former chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools, says she supports a broader probe into test erasures.

    By Charlie Nye, The Indianapolis Star

    Michelle Rhee, founder and CEO of StudentsFirst and former chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools, says she supports a broader probe into test erasures.

By Charlie Nye, The Indianapolis Star

Michelle Rhee, founder and CEO of StudentsFirst and former chancellor of the D.C. Public Schools, says she supports a broader probe into test erasures.

She is headlining education rallies with parents and chatting about teacher evaluations with governors.

Yet as she pushes efforts to assess teachers based partly on their students' test scores, parents and teachers in the nation's capital are calling for a federal investigation of high scores during Rhee's tenure.

More than 3,700 teachers and parents are petitioning the U.S. Department of Education and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate.

The petition follows a USA TODAY investigation that found 103 schools — more than half of D.C.'s public schools — with unusually high rates of wrong answers erased and changed to right ones on student tests from 2008 through 2010, while Rhee was schools chief.

The petitioners, led by a group of teachers and parents who opposed Rhee during her