D.C. City Council To Hold Hearings On Rhee Cheating Memo Revelations

Well, this is at least something:

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 Today found 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 erasures at Aiton Elementary School. But the memo noted that “Aiton is NOT the only school in this situation.” 

Ms. Rhee issued a statement saying that she did not recall receiving the memo. She added that both the city inspector general and the Education Department had already “reviewed the memo and confirmed my belief that there was no widespread cheating.” 

Blanche Bruce, the deputy inspector general in Washington, declined to comment on whether her office had reviewed the memo. 

A spokeswoman for the Education Department’s Office of Inspector General confirmed that the agency had reviewed the memo.

The Washington D.C. City Council hearing is a good start at getting to the bottom of this mess, but it certainly is not enough.

There have already been two limited investigations, and both were as ineffective at getting to the truth as Michelle Rhee claims most teachers are at teaching kids.

City Council hearings themselves may bring attention to the contradictions in Rhee's and Henderson's stories, they may bring a little more heat onto the principals involved, but they certainly won't move the story forward any.

But a criminal investigation will.

As Valerie Strauss wrote at The Answer Sheet:

The memo does not offer conclusive evidence that cheating occurred, but it literally begs for a thorough probe to be conducted — this time by investigators with subpoena powers.

The indictment of former Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 other educators on test cheating charges — under a law used against mobsters — shows that the only way to get to the truth about these suspicions is by approaching it as a criminal case and sending in investigators who can subpoena witnesses. You don’t investigate criminal activity by going in and asking, “Did you cheat? Are you sure you didn’t cheat?” Everyone should have to testify under oath, including Rhee, who appears to have done her best to keep a lid on the allegations.

Unless Rhee and Henderson are interrogated under oath on what they knew about the cheating allegations, when they knew that information, and what they did about it, they are going to continue to evade and stonewall.

We have the blueprint for how to get to the bottom of a cheating scandal - do what they did in Atlanta and have an investigation that is run just the way Governor Sonny Perdue ran his in Atlanta, with special prosecutors and subpoena powers and a substantial budget that allows for a real investigation.

Anything other than that, and we know that the people in power in Washington D.C. municipal government, Congress and the Obama administration aren't interested in getting to the bottom of this.