Rhee Admits Testing Irregularities

The more Michelle Rhee realizes that an investigation of her tenure as D.C. schools chancellor is going to happen, the more she seems willing to admit that some cheating might have, you know, happened.

But of course, she's blaming teachers:

WASHINGTON (WUSA) -- Former DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee says she welcomes an investigation into erasures on standardized tests during her tenure.

Rhee was talking in DC Monday, more than a week after USA Today uncovered an incredibly high number of erasures that suggest the improved test scores by some students may not have been earned.

The former chancellor is standing by those results, but she is also admitting they found an incredibly high number of erasures on some standardized tests, and it could mean there was cheating. She admits her administration found some irregularities, but Rhee won't confirm information that irregularities were so high in four classrooms that people charged with administering the tests were removed from their positions.

Exclusive reports in USA Today targeted the high erasures on student test papers at Noyes Elementary in Northeast. Rhee said on WAMU-FM that Caveon consulting firm looked into the erasure rates from Noyes and other schools in 2009. She said investigators found no evidence to indicate there was widespread cheating.

Sure, they didn't find any cheating - but they also didn't look very hard.

Here is USA Today on how the "investigation" went:

When Atlanta investigators announced in August that teacher-led cheating on standardized tests appeared to be limited, then-governor Sonny Perdue slammed the investigation as "woefully inadequate" and appointed his own team to reopen the probe — with the weight of law behind it.

Now, after a USA TODAY investigation found high rates of erasures on tests in Washington, D.C., public schools, schools officials there are considering how to reopen a probe into possible cheating.

On Wednesday, the D.C. education board will convene a hearing to discuss the matter, and investigators and testing experts familiar with such cases say they should take basic but decisive steps.

"You've got to ask yourself this simple question," says former DeKalb County district attorney Bob Wilson, one of two high-profile attorneys now leading the Georgia probe. "Do you really want to investigate the matter? Because if the answer is 'Oh yes, we really do,' you've got to put the right tools in place to do it."

Those include criminal penalties and permission to pursue a wide-ranging probe — with a team large enough to handle it.

In August, Perdue brought in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to handle the matter. GBI spokesman John Bankhead quickly set the tone. He said any educator found to have tampered with student test papers could face up to 10 years in prison for falsifying public documents; anyone who lied to state investigators faced a $1,000 fine and up to five years behind bars.

The state team initially included 50 GBI investigators. Since August, it has conducted 1,700 interviews and plans to analyze almost 750,000 documents.

"This is not an audit," Wilson says. "This is an investigation."

Yeah, threatening teachers with jail and fines ought to open the spigot on who engaged in cheating.

But how about the people who put these policies into place that created this mess in the first place?

Let's be honest here - politicians at all levels have encouraged this garbage by emphasizing tests and test scores as the only legitimate way to assess students, schools and teachers.

They looked the other way while teachers and administrators did anything they could to save their schools from closure and themselves from firing.

Then when they KNEW that something odd was happening as school after school reported double digit increases in scores, they did nothing or papered over the "irregularities" with nominal investigations.

But it is only when they were blatantly caught that they actually investigated and then they only held the little people - the teachers - accountable for this stuff.

That's what is happening in Atlanta and I suspect the same will happen in D.C.

The investigation will pursue teachers and administrators at the school level, but you can bet they won't go after Rhee or her deputy at the time and now the current schools chancellor, Kaya Henderson.

It's just like in the economy at large where wide scale fraud by financial players and real estate moguls was ignored while little people have their homes foreclosed upon and lose their savings and retirement accounts to the crooks.

Teachers will be fired in D.C., perhaps even jailed for cheating - but Rhee will continue on with her fundraising and education lobbying.

Hope I'm wrong about this, but given the current level of oligarchy, this is just how things go.