NOW HERE'S A SHOCKER:
Catania: No plans to investigate Rhee-era cheating allegations
The chairman of the D.C. Council’s education committee said Sunday that he has no plans to reinvestigate allegations of widespread cheating on standardized tests during the tenure of former Chancellor Michelle Rhee.
Council member David Catania (I-At Large) said he will instead focus on improving the integrity of future tests, which are used to evaluate schools and teachers.
Catania’s statement came three days after the public airing of a 2009 memo indicating that as many as 191 teachers in 70 D.C. public schools may have committed testing infractions in 2008.
The memo, based on an analysis of wrong-to-right erasures on answer sheets, contained no proof of cheating and warned that there wasn’t enough information to draw firm conclusions. But it stoked questions about whether Rhee and other school officials, including current Chancellor Kaya Henderson, were aggressive enough about responding to suspicions of cheating.
Rhee and Henderson both said they did not recall receiving the 2009 memo, and school system officials pointed to multiple investigations — including by local and federal
