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Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Subpoena everyone in D.C. cheating scandal -- including Rhee - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Subpoena everyone in D.C. cheating scandal -- including Rhee - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Subpoena everyone in D.C. cheating scandal -- including Rhee

One surefire way to learn whether a D.C. public school that made big gains when Michelle Rhee was chancellor actually cheated — a possibility raised by a newspaper investigation -- is to subpoena everybody in D.C. with potential involvement or knowledge and have them testify under oath. That includes Rhee.

An investigation published this week by USA Today brought new focus to previous concerns about erasures on standardized tests at D.C. schools. USA Today mentioned there were erasures that were flagged as outside the norm at 103 schools at least once since 2008 but it focused on one, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus, where big gains on tests were reported during the Rhee era.

The newspaper obtained documents and data through the Freedom of Information Act and discovered an unusually high number of erasures at Noyes, with a “consistent pattern” of wrong answers being erased and