Can Rhee Skip Increased Scrutiny After The "Cheating Memo"?

So far, Michelle Rhee has refused to answer any questions surrounding cheating allegations in DCPS and has relied on two limited investigations by inspectors general for the District of Columbia and the USDOE that exonerated her as proof positive for why everyone should move on.

But the "cheating memo" John Merrow reported on last night, and USA Today reported on today, makes it much more difficult for her to rely on those two limited investigations as evidence no cheating occurred in DCPS during her reign and that she wasn't aware of cheating allegations as chancellor.

Even bloggers at Education Week think this is the case:

In a very long piece on his Taking Note blog, Merrow writes that even in the face of the red flags raised by her own consultant, Rhee opted not to aggressively investigate. Two separate inspectors general—one for the District of Columbia and the other for the U.S. Department of Education—concluded that no widespread cheating took place in D.C. in the spring of 2008.


It's those two findings that Rhee cites in a carefully worded statement to Merrow when he asked her to respond to Sanford's memo. In her statement to Merrow, Rhee also claims not to remember Sanford's memo. Given the subject matter and nature of the memo, that claim really stretches credulity.

So the big question now is, so what? Will this memo lead to harder, more probing questions about cheating that Rhee, founder and chief executive of StudentsFirst, cannot ignore? With the indictments of 35 former educators in Atlanta, including former superintendent Beverly Hall, for their alleged role in widespread cheating, I would at least expect the calls for a deeper investigation of what happened in D.C. to get a whole lot louder.

Had no new evidence surfaced that suggested Rhee knew about the cheating allegations and, at best, did nothing about them, I think she could have ridden this out pretty safely.

Had the Beverly Hall/Atlanta scandal not culimated in 35 indictments for allegations that seem very similar to what happened in DC, I think Rhee could have ridden this whole thing pretty safely.

Couple the two of those things together and I think it becomes much more difficult for her to continue to stonewall questions about alleged cheating and what she did or did not do as a result of those allegations.

I still think her connections to the Obama administration, to Gates and Broad, to so many rich and powerful figures, and her continued actions to promote education reform policies that those figures want, keeps her, in the end, safe.

But she is much closer to receiving the scrutiny she deserves after the release of this memo than she was before it.

When even the Rhee-friendly bloggers at Education Week start to question how much longer she can stonewall an investgation, you know she's got some trouble.