No Wonder De Blasio Didn't Want An Open Process For The Chancellor Pick

With the news that Bill de Blasio's team may have reached out to Michelle Rhee acolyte/DCPS chancellor Kaya Henderson to interview her for the NYCDOE chancellor position, we now can see why he got snarky yesterday over his flip flop on having an open process to pick the chancellor.

To recap, De Blasio said the following about picking a chancellor last year:

He said at a mayoral forum a year ago that schools chancellor candidates must undergo a “serious public screening...We need a chancellor who is presented to the public, not just forced down our throat.”

This week he said:

But Monday, as he mulls his own schools chancellor pick, he said there would be no “beauty contest” where finalists for the job are publicly identified and scrutinized. The change angered some education advocates.

“I want to be very blunt about this. That was clearly a reference to an unfortunate chapter in our city’s history related to Cathie Black,” de Blasio said of his earlier comments. “And I am going to ensure that we will never have a situation like that on my watch.”

...

“We are talking to a number of individuals who have extraordinary careers in education,” de Blasio said. “This is an open process in the sense that any name could be put forward, and names are being looked at that clearly have extraordinary educational credentials. So there’s not going to be a Cathie Black situation here.”

A reporter pressed de Blasio on how a public screening could be possible if the public is not informed of who the candidates are. An irritated-sounding de Blasio replied only: “I’m defining what I was saying then and what I’m saying now.”

With Henderson's name surfacing in a Times article about the chancellor search, it turns out de Blasio was quite right - "any name could be put forward."

Henderson's is the kind of name you wouldn't expect from a candidate for mayor who ran on turning back the clock on the standardized test-based school system that uses test scores as bludgeons against students, teachers and schools.

I must admit, I have a little skepticism that Henderson really was interviewed for the chancellor gig.

But with de Blasio already flip flopping on having an open process to choose the next chancellor, it is quite possible that he is set to flip flop on the kind of chancellor he wants to run the system and the kind of system he wants to run.

And if this is the kind of person he is interviewing for the chancellor job, then I can see why he would want no public scrutiny.

Michelle Rhee Still Trotting Around The Country Without Her Accountability Moment

Beverly Hall is under indictment and out on bond.

Michelle Rhee is still basking in the glow of corporate deform politicians and the ed press shills.

When will Rhee be called to account for ErasureGate?

When will she be put her under oath and asked her if she saw the cheating memo?

Jay Matthews: Ask The Students In D.C. How Many Erasures They Made On Rhee's Tests

From Jay Matthews at the Washington Post:

Five years ago, analysts found statistically improbable numbers of wrong-to-right erasures on D.C. test answer sheets. Several investigations have failed to determine the cause. But those investigators never asked students with many changes on their answer sheets what they remembered doing.

Did they really make as many as 10 wrong-to-right erasures each? D.C. data shows the average student rarely makes more than one or two. What led students to make so many mistakes and then switch to the right answers?

This year — finally — investigators from the Alvarez & Marsal consulting firm, hired by the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE), tried to find out. They spoke to 16 students at Meridian Public Charter School whose answer sheets were full of changes on the 2012 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System tests. The school had 1,807 wrong-to-right erasures, an average of eight per student.

When asked what happened, the Alvarez & Marsal report said, “most students initially indicated that they had changed only a couple of answers.” Their recollections led investigators to conclude that administrators had gone rogue. Four Meridian administrators were asked how so many corrections were made. They offered no explanation.

Why didn’t investigators in earlier probes ask students how many answers they erased?

An Alvarez & Marsal spokeswoman said this was the first time OSSE provided erasure data for each student. OSSE officials have not said what took them so long.

...

There are thousands of other D.C. students whose answer sheets were full of corrections. If you have such kids at home, e-mail me at mathewsj@washpost.com. Does your child remember erasing any answers? When? Where? Maybe we can find a way to take their memories and illuminate events at your school.

For instance, was your child at the Community Academy Public Charter School in spring 2012? There were 214 wrong-to-right erasures in just one third-grade classroom, with one student’s answer sheet showing 17 such erasures on the math test.

At Langdon Education Campus in 2012, 11 students had 10 or more wrong-to-right erasures on a reading test.

During the 2011 D.C. tests, one classroom at J.O. Wilson Elementary School — the grade was not specified — averaged more than nine wrong-to-right erasures per child, a rate higher than all the other schools investigated that year. At Langdon in 2011, one classroom had nearly that many.

Ludlow-Taylor and Martin Luther King Jr. elementary schools each had a classroom averaging more than six wrong-to-right erasures in 2011.

If your child’s memory of such tests doesn’t jibe with the score sheets, that merits more investigation. Maybe students can help us uncover the truth.

It seems D.C. politicians, Obama administration officials and many in the mainstream media aren't all that interested in getting to the bottom of Rhee's ErasureGate.

Will anybody take Jay's suggestion or will this continue to be swept under the rug?

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.

Both Kaya Henderson And Michelle Rhee Deny Seeing The Cheating Memo

The Associated Press reports that both Henderson and Rhee claim in statements they have never seen the internal DCPS memo from 2009 that pointed to possible widespread cheating on high stakes standardized tests in the school system.

Henderson also said in her statement through a spokesperson that the memo was based on incomplete information and flawed methodology.

She didn't say how she knew the memo was based on incomplete information or flawed methodology since she claims she doesn't remember seeing the memo, but I guess that's neither here nor there.

John Merrow, the reporter who broke the story about the memo, says he has a highly placed and reliable source who told him Rhee spoke about this memo at DCPS brass staff meetings.

It is clear that neither Rhee nor Henderson are going to be forthcoming about the memo or their actions after they were made aware of potential cheating DCPS in 2009.

The only way to get these women to, perhaps, come clean on the matter is to put them under oath in a criminal investigation.

Certainly the only way to hold these two purveyors of teacher accountability accountable themselves is to put them under oath in a criminal investigation.

Anything less will mean the powers that be in D.C. do not want to get to the bottom of the matter.

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/04/13/2722899/the-buzz-the-bee-eater-was-here.html#storylink=rss#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/04/13/2722899/the-buzz-the-bee-eater-was-here.html#storylink=rss#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2013/04/13/2722899/the-buzz-the-bee-eater-was-here.html#storylink=rss#storylink=cpyThere were also some tweets on the Students First twitter account on Thursday April 11, but then everything went silent right around 1 P

How Much Longer?

Here is a devastating 7:42 video for Michelle Rhee personally and for her "legacy" as both an education reformer and DCPS chancellor - John Merrow's appearance on MSNBC with Chris Hayes last night.

She of course wouldn't go on the program to respond to Merrow's report of the cheating memo.

How much longer can she get away with ignoring the allegations?

How much longer can she get away with stonewalling a full investigation of the charges of cheating in DCPS schools and her handling of those charges?

Can she continue to release "state education reform report cards" and the like through her PAC, Students First, and not have to respond to these charges?

I'm going to repeat what Jersey Jazzman first wrote when the Merrow report of the memo came out Thursday night:

We are at a crisis point. Either we are going to step up and demand the truth about Michelle Rhee and the Washington, D.C. cheating scandal, or we're going to sweep this entire thing under the rug and pretend that Rhee's vision of the world is valid: that our nation's massive inequity can be laid at the feet of a few "bad" teachers.

It is time - once and for all - to have an honest conversation about the legacy of Michelle Rhee.

How much longer will the media continue to let her run with her Students First jive like nothing happened?

How much longer can Rhee float above it all?

Jersey Jazzman Gets This Exactly Right

This crystallizes the Rhee mess:

We are at a crisis point. Either we are going to step up and demand the truth about Michelle Rhee and the Washington, D.C. cheating scandal, or we're going to sweep this entire thing under the rug and pretend that Rhee's vision of the world is valid: that our nation's massive inequity can be laid at the feet of a few "bad" teachers.

It is time - once and for all - to have an honest conversation about the legacy of Michelle Rhee.

For Rhee to dash around the country pushing ed deform policies like they actually worked for her and appearing on Morning Joe and Oprah and elsewhere to be feted as a "warrior woman" putting "students first" against the greedy, lazy tenured teachers who just want to hold onto the failed status quo is no longer tenable.

There are major indications a whole lot of cheating took place at DCPS schools while Rhee was chancellor, Rhee was informed of this cheating and did NOTHING about it.

She disciplined one teacher for alleged cheating while firing over 600 for low test scores.

That there is now a memo showing DCPS brass were alerted to the cheating and instead of looking into it, they fired hundreds of teachers for low test score results puts her in Beverly Hall indictment territory.

If the powers that be - Obama, Duncan, her media shills, Gates and Broad and the Wall Street/hedge fund crooks that pony up the money for Rhee's lobbying group - want to continue to back her despite the now deafening evidence that something funky took place under Rhee, she knew about the funkiness, and did nothing about it, that's fine.

But they can no longer pretend that the ed reform character Rhee portrays during the day bears any semblance of reality with who and what Rhee really is.

Rhee/D.C. Cheating Memo Leaked - But Will It Lead To A REAL Investigation Of Rhee's DCPS Tenure?

Someone leaked a memo from outside data consultant to Michelle Rhee that informed her that widespread cheating on the high stakes tests in the DC school system had taken place.

John Merrow was the recipient of that leaked memo and went public with it last night:

Michelle A. Rhee, America’s most famous school reformer, was fully aware of the extent of the problem when she glossed over what appeared to be widespread cheating during her first year as Schools Chancellor in Washington, DC.  A long-buried confidential memo from her outside data consultant suggests that the problem was far more serious than kids copying off other kids’ answer sheets.  (“191 teachers representing 70 schools”).  Twice in just four pages the consultant suggests that Rhee’s own principals, some of whom she had hired, may have been responsible (“Could the erasures in some cases have been done by someone other than the students and the teachers?”).

Merrow reports there is a "reliable witness" who says Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of the DCPS, discussed the memo with her deputy chancellor (now the current DCPS chancellor) Kaya Henderson:

The rash of “wrong to right” (WTR) erasures was first noticed by the DC official in charge of testing, who, after consulting with the test-maker, asked Rhee to investigate, in November, 2008.  Through her data chief,  Rhee turned to Dr. Fay G. “Sandy” Sanford for outside analysis.

I have a copy of the memo[2] and have confirmed its authenticity with two highly placed and reputable sources. The anonymous source is in DCPS; the other is DC Inspector General Charles Willoughby. A reliable source has confirmed that Rhee and Deputy Chancellor Kaya Henderson discussed the memo in staff gatherings. Sanford came to Washington to present his findings in late January, 2009, after which he wrote his memo.

In response to my request for comment, Rhee issued the following careful statement:  “As chancellor I received countless reports, memoranda and presentations. I don’t recall receiving a report from Sandy Sanford regarding erasure data from the DC CAS, but I’m pleased, as has been previously reported, that both inspectors general (DOE and DCPS) reviewed the memo and confirmed my belief that there was no wide spread cheating.” After receiving this statement, I sent her the memo; her spokesman responded by saying that she stood by her earlier statement.

Chancellor Henderson did not respond to my request for a response.

Sanford wanted the memo to be kept confidential. At the top and bottom of each page he wrote “Sensitive Information–Treat as Confidential,” and he urged, “Don’t make hard copies and leave them around.” (The memo.)

The gist of his message: the many ‘wrong to right’ erasures on the students’ answer sheets suggested widespread cheating by adults.

This "smoking gun" memo that shows Rhee, Henderson and other DCPS brass knew of the allegations of widespread cheating in DCPS and did nothing to investigate them shows us why there needs to be an independent, Atlanta-style investigation of Rhee's tenure at DCPS.

But who's going to call for that investigation?

The education reform establishment long ago hitched their wagons to the Rhee wagon train.

They're not calling for an investigation.

The Obama administration has close ties to Rhee and Arne Duncan in particular has a conflict of interest in the matter.

There is no way you're going to get the USDOE to conduct an independent investigation of Rhee and DCPS.

And those in power in the DC municipal government don't seem too interested in learning the truth either.

So far, we have had the USA Today investigation which showed just how many red flags are up over the test scores during Rhee's reign.

Then we had the Frontline investigation wherein a former DCPS prinicipal said she witnessed adults tampering with students' tests at a school that had been flagged by USA Today for an inordinate amount of wrong to right erasures.

Now we have the memo from the outside data consultant telling Rhee and Henderson that something was indeed funky throughout the system and a witness saying Rhee and Henderson discussed this memo at staff meetings.

Yet Rhee denies she had knowledge of the memo and Henderson refuses to respond to questions about it.

Will Rhee and Henderson continue to get help from the Obama administration, the education reform community and even the media in their stonewalling of this scandal?

So far, it seems it doesn't matter what evidence emerges about Rhee - she seems to be impervious to the scandal.

Must be nice to made of this kind of teflon, have such great friends in high places and be so central to the corporate education reform narrative that nothing can happen to you.

Unlike Beverly Hall, Michelle Rhee Is Too Big To Be Brought Down

After hearing about the indictment of former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall on charges of racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements in a test cheating scandal, it's natural to wonder if such an indictment could be brought against former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee.

Hall, after all, was a lower-profile Rhee - a darling of the test-based, teacher accountability/education reform movement who ran the Atlanta schools with an iron hand, relished firing principals and teachers when their scores didn't increase as she had prescribed and, at least for awhile, basked in the glow of rising test scores and acclaim for increasing student "achievement" in Atlanta schools.

It was all based on fraud, however:

On Friday, prosecutors essentially said it really was too good to be true. Dr. Hall and the 34 teachers, principals and administrators “conspired to either cheat, conceal cheating or retaliate against whistle-blowers in an effort to bolster C.R.C.T. scores for the benefit of financial rewards associated with high test scores,” the indictment said, referring to the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test.

As with Rhee's tenure in D.C., there were rumors circulating for years that so-called test gains in Atlanta schools were fraudulent.  Reporters for the Journal-Constitution wrote stories about the so-called "Atlanta Miracle" and questioned how the test scores could increase so dramatically from one year to the next.  

But it wasn't until 2010 that Governor Sonny Perdue, despite pushback from the Atlanta business community, decided to investigate those rumors and get to the bottom of the miraculous test score increases:

In August 2010, after yet another blue-ribbon commission of Atlanta officials found no serious cheating, Mr. Perdue appointed the two special prosecutors and gave them subpoena powers and a budget substantial enough to hire more than 50 state investigators who were overseen by Mr. Hyde.

Mr. Bowers, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Hyde had spent most of their careers putting criminals in prison, and almost as important, they could write. They produced an investigative report with a narrative that read more like a crime thriller than a sleepy legal document and placed Dr. Hall center stage in a drama of mind-boggling dysfunction.

Investigators turned an informer, got her to wear a wire, and slowly but surely got the evidence they needed to get 35 indictments of various educators in the Atlanta system, including the former schools superintendent.

Beverly Hall now faces up to 45 years in prison.  

Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million dollar bond for her.

She is no longer a darling of the education reform movement.

Which now brings us to that other famous darling of the education reform movement, the official once feted by Oprah Winfrey as a "warrior woman," the former schools chancellor famous for ruling her district with an iron hand, firing principals for not getting scores to increase, and pictured on TIME magazine cover with a broom in her hand, ready to sweep out the "bad teachers."

As with Hall, there have been rumors for years that the test score increases D.C. schools saw under Michelle Rhee's tenure were fraudulent. 

As with Hall, Rhee ran her school system under a "culture of fear" and a "conspiracy of silence."

As with Hall, reporters have looked into the test score increases and found convincing evidence that the increases in many of the schools were fraudulent, based upon erasures.  

As with Hall, there have been several "blue-ribbon commissions of officials" who have looked into Rhee's tenure at DCPS and the allegations of test cheating and decided there is no criminality there.   

As with Hall in Atlanta, Rhee hired Caveon Consulting Services LLC to look into cheating in DCPS public schools.  Caveon eventually reported it "did not find any evidence of cheating at any of the schools" in DCPS.

This is the same testing security firm that Hall hired to look into cheating allegations in Atlanta schools.

The Atlanta cheating scandal investigators hired by Governor Perdue found "many schools for which there was strong statistical evidence of cheating were not flagged by Caveon."

In other words, Caveon gave Hall a pass when they should have flagged her.

Have they given Rhee a pass when she, too, should be flagged for potential wrongdoing?

Yes, there are many, many similarities between the Atlanta cheating scandal and the D.C. cheating scandal, many similarities between Hall and Rhee and how they ran their districts, how the scores miraculously increased, how there were red flags all over the place about those increases.

Could Rhee end up like Hall, the victim of a dogged politician like Perdue and dogged prosecutors looking to get to the bottom of the erasures in DC public schools that a USA Today report found to be so extraordinary that you would have a better chance at winning the lottery twice than having students erase all those wrong answers and change them to the right ones the way had happened at some DC schools?

The answer is no, this will not happen to Michelle Rhee.  

Unlike Beverly Hall, who was a lower-level functionary in the education reform movement in a city that, while big enough to warrant national attention, does not enjoy the prominence of a place like Washington D.C., Rhee is the very face of the test-based, teacher accountability/education reform movement who worked at the very center of power in the United States.  

After she left her DCPS post, she has remained a focal point of that test-based, teacher accountability/education reform movement when she started her Wall Street- and corporate-funded Students First education reform lobbying group which has very prominently lobbied for test-based, teacher accountability "reforms" all over the country, along with providing the funding needed to ram some of those "reforms" through.

Chief among those "reforms" is ending the power of the teachers union, curtailing work protections for teachers like seniority and tenure, and promoting "school choice" and charter schools over traditional public schools.

These are items on the education agenda that the people in power very much like.

You can bet that the powers that be in this country do not want anything to tarnish Ms. Rhee, her tenure at DCPS or her lobbying group, Students First.  

This is why there has been little real action on the very convincing evidence USA Today found for cheating under Rhee's DCPS tenure.

That Rhee has connections to some of the most powerful and most connected people in the country also ensures nothing will happen to her.

The American Thinker published a piece on March 18, before Hall and 34 other educators were indicted in Atlanta on cheating charges, that took a look at the possibility that Rhee and her tenure at DCPS could undergo the same rigorous investigation that Hall and her tenure in Atlanta underwent.

They too are skeptical that will happen, primarily because of her prominence in the education reform movement and her connections to people in power:

A year after the USA Today exposé, Rhee, the media darling, is still riding high.  Appearing on cable news shows, PBS, and network television; crisscrossing the country, speaking to varied audiences; pushing legislation; and heading up StudentsFirst, the advocacy group she founded, Rhee appears unstoppable.  If her public image remains mostly untarnished, it may be due to nothing less than friends like Arne Duncan and former White House operatives.

In late summer 2011, after a USA Today reporter made a number of attempts to get Ms. Rhee on the record about the cheating scandal, Rhee's StudentsFirst PR representative, SKDKnickerbocker's Anita Dunn (also President Obama's former communications director), advised the D.C. chancellor's office to "just stop answering his [Jack Gillum's] e-mails." 

Hari Sevugan, Rhee's VP of Communications at StudentsFirst, served as former national press secretary for the DNC and before that worked as senior spokesman for President Obama's 2008 campaign.  Along with Dunn, he covered for Rhee, saying reporters "were provided unprecedented time and access to report their story."  Answering for D.C. officials last fall, Sevugan suggested that they were running out of patience with reporters' attempts to get a statement from Rhee. 

Rhee did answer written questions submitted by USA Today last May, but out of the eleven pertaining to the cheating scandal, she refused to respond to ten.

Secretary Duncan's closeness to Rhee poses a significant obstacle to getting to the bottom of the D.C. investigation.  In Atlanta there were "subpoenas for signed copies of any and all oaths of office" taken by the former superintendent Beverly Hall.  Where are the subpoenas for information from Michelle Rhee and DCPS?  After nine months, there are still no definitive conclusions from the DOE inspector general's office.  Who's protecting whom?

There is little doubt in my mind that the USDOE and the DOJ will NOT look into Michelle Rhee's tenure at DCPS and the evidence of test tampering and cheating because if they find anything, it will a near-fatal bullet into the heart of the test-based teacher accountability/education reform movement.

Hall's fall from education reform grace is happening far from center stage and while it hurts the movement that someone with Hall's education reform credentials has been taken down by evidence of cheating and fraud, it is not fatal to the movement.

If the same were to happen to Michelle Rhee or Joel Klein, the other education reformer and former schools chancellor with the same prominence and notoriety as Rhee, it would be, if not fatal to the movement, a very grave wound from which the movement might not recover.

Rhee, along with Klein, are the very public faces of the education reform movement.

Whatever happens to them, happens to the test-based, teacher accountability/education reform movement as well.

So in the end, the Hall indictment and trial will provide Rhee and the other functionaries who worked around her with perhaps some uncomfortable moments in private, but I believe there will be no Sonny Purdue to ride to the rescue and run an thorough, honest and independent investigation of Rhee and her DCPS tenure, no dogged prosecutors in D.C. as there were in Atlanta to get to the bottom of the scandal, root out the wrongdoing and work their way up to the people at the top. 

Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Jeb Bush, Oprah Winfrey and Rhee's other powerful connections will ensure that will not happen. 

The fix is in, folks.  As The American Thinker story notes:

A February 26, 2012 New York Times article questioned Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's appearance with Michelle Rhee at a January education conference given the DOE's pending involvement with the case. 

When asked by the Times about the apparent conflict of interest, Mr. Duncan's spokesperson called the columnist "irresponsible ... to presume guilt before we have all the facts."

Richard L. Hyde, who led the Atlanta investigation, disagreed:

I'm shocked that the secretary of education would be fraternizing with someone who could potentially be the target of the investigation.

But the same Times article fails to mention that the DOE's inspector general, Kathleen Tighe, also heads the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board overseeing Stimulus fund distribution.  How can the IG of the DOE be a watchdog over $100 billion in Stimulus funds designated for that same institution?  Another conflict of interest to add to the growing list?

  
Indeed, Rhee is ensconced in what seems to be a bubble of invincibility so that even when this happens:

A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.

Noyes is one of 103 public schools here that have had erasure rates that surpassed D.C. averages at least once since 2008. That's more than half of D.C. schools.

...

A trio of academicians consulted by USA TODAY — Haladyna, George Shambaugh of Georgetown University and Gary Miron of Western Michigan University — say the erasure rates found at Noyes and at other D.C. public schools are so statistically rare, and yet showed up in so many classrooms, that they should be examined thoroughly.

Or when this happens:

Student standardized-test scores at an award-winning D.C. school dropped dramatically in 2011 after the principal tightened security out of concern about possible cheating, according to a new “Frontline” television documentary to be broadcast Tuesday.

The hour-long program raises questions about whether District officials have adequately investigated persistent suspicions that public school employees may have tampered with tests during the tenure of former schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee.

Adell Cothorne was principal of the District’s Noyes Education Campus for one year, in 2010-11. She told “Frontline” that just after students took a midyear practice version of the city’s annual standardized test, she stumbled upon three staff members sitting late at night in a room strewn with more than 200 test booklets.

One of the adults was at a desk, holding an eraser. The other two sat at a table, booklets open before them.

“One staff member said to me, in a lighthearted sort of way, ‘Oh, principal, I can’t believe this kid drew a spider on the test and I have to erase it,’ ” Cothorne told filmmakers, offering the first such direct testimony about potential tampering with answer sheets in D.C. schools.

Cothorne told “Frontline” that she reported the incident to the central office, but to her knowledge nothing was done.

Even after both of these very damaging allegations, Rhee and her tenure at DCPS will STILL not undergo a thorough, rigorous and independent investigation.

There is too much at stake here - for Rhee herself, of course, but also for Arne Duncan, for Barack Obama, for Jeb Bush, and for the rest of the corporate education reform movement.

In short, just she is "Too Big To Be Brought Down." 

As always when I write these kinds of things, I hope to be wrong.  I hope Rhee does undergo a thorough, rigorous and independent investigation and, if wrongdoing is found, she is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law the way Hall is enjoying right now.

But I've seen nothing from DC officials, the Congress, the USDOE or the DOJ that makes me think that will happen.