“Juking the Stats”* in El Paso and DC
The New York Times reported this weekend about fraudulent student test scores in El Paso and the scandal that led to the superintendent’s jail sentence :
“It sounded at first like a familiar story: school administrators, seeking to meet state and federal standards, fraudulently raised students’ scores on crucial exams.
“But in the cheating scandal that has shaken the 64,000-student school district in this border city, administrators manipulated more than numbers. They are accused of keeping low-performing students out of classrooms altogether by improperly holding some back, accelerating others and preventing many from showing up for the tests or enrolling in school at all.“
But banning likely low performers from test-taking is nothing new to those who follow Michelle Rhee’s tenure in DC. Bill Turque of the Washington Post reported that Rhee took several steps to prevent groups of low-performing students from bringing down test scores. Turque wrote:
“Less-visible strategies pursued by Rhee and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty] involved cleansing and reorganizing the
“It sounded at first like a familiar story: school administrators, seeking to meet state and federal standards, fraudulently raised students’ scores on crucial exams.
“But in the cheating scandal that has shaken the 64,000-student school district in this border city, administrators manipulated more than numbers. They are accused of keeping low-performing students out of classrooms altogether by improperly holding some back, accelerating others and preventing many from showing up for the tests or enrolling in school at all.“
But banning likely low performers from test-taking is nothing new to those who follow Michelle Rhee’s tenure in DC. Bill Turque of the Washington Post reported that Rhee took several steps to prevent groups of low-performing students from bringing down test scores. Turque wrote:
“Less-visible strategies pursued by Rhee and DC Mayor Adrian Fenty] involved cleansing and reorganizing the