Rhee Still Using Flawed Caveon and USDOE Investigations As Proof No Cheating Occurred In D.C.

Michelle Rhee has learned her political lessons well from her time in Washington.

Repeat a deception often enough and maybe it will be reported as truth.

To wit, she defended herself to the LA Times editorial board against the cheating memo accusations with the two flawed investigations that were done in D.C. that have been debunked by Jay Matthews at the Washington Post.

She also did this in her official statement in response to John Merrow's release of the cheating memo.

First, here's her defense:

In an interview with The Times editorial board, Rhee said that although she "didn't see the memo" at the time, consultant Sandy Sanford "was just writing a memo based on something that we already broadly knew." She noted that the testing company had expressed reservations about the erasure analysis the memo relied on, and she added that later investigations found no widespread wrongdoing.

Usually Rhee gets away with repeating a lie and never getting called on it by the press.

But the L.A. Times does a good job of calling her on the deception:

Similar allegations about erasures that surfaced in Atlanta recently resulted in a grand jury indictment against former schools Supt. Beverly Hall and others.Authorities have alleged that Hall conspired to cheat or conceal cheating. The result was fraudulent bonuses for employees and a false read on student achievement, prosecutors said.

Some education activists and journalists have alleged serious flaws in the investigations cited by Rhee. They noted that early probes in Atlanta also turned up limited wrongdoing. At one point, Rhee hired a firm to conduct a narrow review in D.C. — the same company whose findings Atlanta officials cited in their defense.

There have been sharp drops in test scores at some D.C. schools that were flagged in the past for high erasure rates, according to the Washington Post. Such declines could indicate cheating, but are not proof of it. To date, no in-depth erasure analysis of the 2008 answer sheets has been conducted.

Let's repeat that last sentence - "To date, no in-depth erasure analysis of the 2008 answer sheets has been conducted."

That's the L.A. Times' way of saying, Rhee's defense, based upon the two D.C. investigations that were both limited in scope and flawed, doesn't hold water.