Serious Allegations of Cheating Under Rhee

U.S.A. Today has a lengthy article  about some serious allegations of cheating on standardized tests under the leadership of Michelle Rhee.  It gets worse, the reporters also reveal a concerted attempt to avoid investigating the allegations, as well as what could be interpreted as a cover up.  Parent concerns were ignored and a principal, who was central to what appears to be the most glaring example of test tampering, was promoted.  The schools, where tampering is suspected, showed dramatic gains in scores that did not hold up over time.  The allegations center around a high number of erasures of wrong answers changed to correct answers.  The average in the D.C. district of these types of erasures is less than one per test.  Some schools had has high as ten per test.  District officials made feeble attempt to explain these high numbers, but if you have any experience with this sort of testing you know that there is no  legitimate way to justify large number of tests that have ten questions changed from wrong to right.  When I was a testing coordinator I reprimanded over two tests with a high number of erasures.  You can read the whole article at USA Today.