DC Schools 'Cheating' Scandal Heats Up
By M. Catharine EvansTop educator Wayne Ryan of Noyes Education Campus in Washington DC resigned his post after having been promoted by super school reformer Michelle Rhee. What precipitated the change? Following a timeline going back three years reveals questions which cannot be explained away. The story involves possible cheating on tests by "erasure corrections," bonuses handed out to those teachers and principals overseeing the testing, and Rhee's feigned innocence about the matter.
A year after StudentsFirst founder Michelle Rhee assumed the Chancellorship of DC schools she toldCharlie Rose that standardized test scores should be given "the greatest weight" in performance-based teacher evaluations. That was 2008. Her nonprofit website bio makes the audacious claim that "under her leadership, the worst performing school district in the country became the only major