The City Council in Washington will hold a hearing next week after a memo warning officials of cheating on standardized tests during the chancellorship of Michelle A. Rhee surfaced Thursday night.
Allegations of cheating have dogged Ms. Rhee — now a lightning rod in education circles for her advocacy through StudentsFirst, a nonprofit group she founded — since an investigation by USA Todayfound high rates of erasures on standardized tests at a Washington elementary school.
Although subsequent investigations by both the city’s inspector general and the federal Education Department concluded that widespread cheating had not occurred, a memo that said 191 teachers in 70 schools were “implicated in possible testing infractions” in 2008 has ignited calls for further inquiries.
The memo, disclosed by John Merrow, the education correspondent for “NewsHour” on PBS, was written by a consultant hired by the Washington school system to investigate data that showed a high number of test answer sheets on which wrong answers had been erased and changed to correct answers. The memo, which Mr. Merrow said had been written by Fay G. Sanford, a consultant, offered a detailed discussion of a high number of