As one can read in this New York Times story, the posting by John Merrow about the previously unreleased memo on the 2008 cheating in DC public schools is beginning to have an impact. As the first paragraph of the article notes,
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.
It is worth noting several things as this story continues to unfold.
1. The memo by Fay Sanford was about test scores in 2008, the first school year under Rhee's tenure.
2. The USA Today story that first brought close attention to Rhee's tenure focused on one school in 2008, Noyes Elementary, which not only saw bonuses from Rhee, but an award from the US Department of Education under Arne Duncan.
3. The subsequent independent investigation done by a firm other than the one that produced the memo about 2008 cheating, Caveon, was about cheating in 2009 and 2010.
4. The investigation by the DC Inspector General only led to interviews with about 60 people, and was not done under subpoena authority, unlike the investigation in Atlanta.
5. The investigation by the US Department of Education in response to the lawsuit by Adell Cothorn, who was principal of Noyes Elementary AFTER the 2007-2008 school year, did not investigate the possibility of cheating in Rhee's first year, even though Deborah Gist, at the time a subordinate of Rhee, had been warned by the test's producer of the large amount of wrong to right erasures on the 2008 version of the test.
Please keep reading.
There has to date been no thorough examination of what happened that first year in Rhee's tenure. John Merrow is on record as having a reliable witness to Rhee's discussing the memo pointing out the probability of widespread cheating in 2008.
The story is getting further coverage because last night Merrow was on with Chris Hayes, who was well versed on the issue, and Merrow spoke bluntly. Here is the complete video:
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When Merrow was asked by Hayes what happened after the memo on the 1st year's cheating, he responded, according to the transcript:
no investigation. There's never been an investigation of the 2008 erasures. There have been five semi-investigations, none of them involved the serious important work of a deep erasure analysis. They were all limited and were more or less security audits.
Merrow also noted the limited scope of the DC Inspector General's examination as compared to that in Atlanta:
but of course, the chancellor was able to say, this investigation proves that the d.c. inspector general spent 17 months. during 17 months he interviewed 60 people. you interview 60 people in a week. in atlanta they spent a year and interviewed 2,000 people. he went to one school. there were 91 schools implicated by that time. he never looked at the first year.
One has to wonder whether the US Department of Education will go back and do a more thorough investigation than what they did.
One has to wonder if someone with subpoena power will be interviewing people under oath.
Will this story continue to develop, or are there those who simply will want to move on, letting Michelle Rhee skate on this?