If you have followed the story of the D.C. Cheating scandal, you know that suspicious test scores were flagged at a large number of schools in the district during Michelle Rhee’s tenure. Rhee met with every single principal and got a commitment to raise test scores or be fired. This pressure was effective in perverse ways.
Jay Mathews here explains what happened in stark and alarming detail.
The epicenter of the cheating scandal was Noyes campus, where the gains were meteoric. The principal, Wayne Ryan, was given star treatment and elevated to the central office. The school received a Blue Ribbon award for its incredible test score gains.
Ryan’s successor, Adele Cothorne, came from Montgomery County, a high-performing district in Maryland. She quickly realized that the students’ skill levels did not match the claims. She suspected cheating. She reported her suspicions to two administrators in central office. (One of them, Josh Edelman, is the brother of Jonah Edelman, head of Stand for Children.)
But who got into trouble? The principal who reported her suspicions.
Now, the matter is in the courts. Adele Cothorne has left education, and D.C. officials deny all her claims, as they deny that there was ever cheating, anywhere, in any school. They apparently hope the matter will disappear if they stand together, attack Cothorne’s credibilty, and deny everything.
Just close your eyes, click your heels twice, and try to believe that passing rates can jump up by 40 points, bonuses given out, high-fives for all, then drop down another 40 points. But nobody did nothing.
Move on, move on, nothing to see here.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a person who lost her job after speaking out about the standardization of student teacher evaluation being pushed by Stanford, the AACTE and Pearson–I can relate to Adele Cothorne’s experience. There is a profound silencing happening in education-k12 and teacher education. It is both direct and indirect. For Dr. Cothorne and I, it is very direct: speak out and lose your job. For others it is more indirect: accept the discourse of standards and accountability or be marginalized. The direct actions work very well to send a message that supports the indirect actions. But here is where I just cannot untie the knot: why are teacher educators who speak out against the Pearsonization of k12 education, teacher educators who have nothing to fear, silent and silencing about the juggernaut that is the newly branded edTPA–an instrument of technical rationality that does as much to deprofessionalize teacher education as high stakes testing does to k12 teachers, and a money grab for Pearson? The silencing is teacher ed is profound. You can read more about it here: http://cantbeneutral.org
Unreal. And yesterday Gov. Cuomo announced, among other education reforms/initiatives in his State of the State address that merit pay would be introduced in NY. How long until NY has a similar scandal to DC’s? I’m so happy I can retire in 3 years. If I had 10 more I’d quit and work the drive thru at McDonalds.
Merit pay has never worked anywhere.
NYC tried it and blew away $57 million before dropping it.
It failed in Nashville and it failed in Chicago.
The idea is popular because it sounds right.
There was a time when using leches to cure people sounded right too.
And many people are sure there really is a man on the moon. They see him every time there is a full moon.
BEST procedure would to be put video cameras in classrooms and see WTF they are doing. BUt the UNIONS would NEVER allow that to happen. Sighhh
teachers and unions have tried and would welcome cameras in the classroom, fact is states with highest scores (if you value that) are union states: NJ, MA, Conn….while non-union states like Carolinas, Ms, Ar…are at the bottom..go figure? No unions to shakle any administrator and yet the results are very poor….that blows a hole in the big bad union theory.
CUomo is one of those morons who think teachers are inherently honest! He actually thinks teachers are above cheating and corrupting students for more money.
What a MORON!
“Teacher ed” is one thing, but I can assure you that the vast majority of veteran, and even greener teachers, are not even aware of what’s going on.
I asked a group of teachers at lunch the other day if they watched the Michelle Rhee special the other night. The only response I received was, “Michelle who”?
Most teachers don’t have a clue. That is actually where our problem starts.
I would love to poll teachers nationwide to see how many of us would know who Arne Duncan is.
We have a real communication problem among teachers. I think teachers are thrown RED HERRINGS to work on and this focuses them on the wrong things about which to be concerned.
Having teachers write standards and test items is one of the RED HERRINGS. People tell teachers to be part of solution. What the teachers don’t realize is they are being USED.
Teachers need the testing.
If you think your child is the victim of incompetent teaching, allow videocameras in the room to check. Have the teacher EVALUATED by panels of experts.
Adele Cothorne may well be the Rosa Parks of our generation.
Adele Cothorne bravely stood up for a wrong, and like Rosa Parks, was punished for it. With time, I know Adele’s legacy too will be one of truth and courage.
I honor your character, your self-respect, your courage.
I read a book a while back (“Beautiful Souls: Saying No, Breaking Ranks, and Heeding the Voice of Conscience in Dark Times”, by Eyal Press) that explored whistleblowing a bit. According to Press, whistleblowing almost always ends with the whistleblower being persecuted, if not prosecuted. The whistleblower assumes that what they’re seeing is an anomaly, the work of a few bad apples operating under the radar. Certainly if The Powers That Be knew what was going on, it would be stopped immediately. Except that what they learn is that it’s not an anomaly. It’s systemic and deliberate. Not only do TPTB know about it and allow it, they actually condone it and they like it that way. Therefore, they react like cornered animals against anyone who dares to shine a light on what’s going on and they attack. The whistleblower, usually a pretty honest, straighforward and possibly even naive person, is completely unprepared for the assault they never saw coming.
Good luck to Ms. Cothorne. Sadly, she’s going to need it.
We need to polygraph teachers to get the cheaters and criminals out of the ranks!
I would like to think someone in Congress who values education of all kids along with careful spending of taxpayer dollars would take a look at this. I know I’m dreaming.
The Obama administration has not protected whistle blowers either. People who speak out are really on their own. It’s very scary stuff.
Here is a comment that was posted to the article:
“The portion of Noyes students proficient in reading fell from 61 to 32 percent, and in math from 54 to 28 percent. How does Henderson explain this dramatic drop in scoring in one year? She should start rehearsing her Nixon, “I am not a crook speech.””
This should have been the opening of the story on Rhee because the numbers tell the story.
Unreal. It just keeps going on and on. Here in NY, Gov. Cuomo announced yesterday that he’d like to institute merit pay for “Master” teachers. NY will have it’s own scandals if that happens. I love teaching but I’m glad I only have 3 years left. If it was more I’d quit and work the drive-thru at McDonalds.
Here’s my piece on the documentary and the cheating scandal: http://www.good.is/posts/students-need-more-than-michelle-rhee-s-education-reforms/
Well, first, I’d like to hear what Malcom Gladwell would say about the statistical probability of these jumps in improvement.
Second, if you have an $8,000 bonus tied to improvement, and the people getting that bonus have custody of the tests and the answers, that does not pass the safeguard test of any honest money accounting system.
An analogy would be to let kids take the SATs at home and let their parents proctor the test and send it back in. A recipe for the frailty of human nature.
… will they fire those cheating teachers and administrators? We anxiously await the word ….
Start with their “leader”.
Diane,
When I attempt to leave comments directly on any of your blogs I receive a message that my email address is not recognized. So I am responding by clicking on the reply button and hope this reaches you.
It is sad to hear about an educator of Adele Cothorne’s calibre needing to leave education because she stood up and spoke out about the corruption and cheating. This story also reveals how the pressure for high test scores can result in cheating which is sanctioned at high levels.
I want you to know how much I appreciate your fighting the good fight for education. You have inspired me to speak out more strongly in my articles about the problems with high stakes testing. I have three articles on the home page of http://www.educationarticles.com on this subject.
Best regards,
Raymond Gerson
Thanks, Raymond, your reply came through. I personally don’t know how to leave a comment, except on my own site.
Sorry, the articles are on edarticles.com.
http://www.edarticle.com is the correct web address.
And speaking of Josh Edelman, check out this from a post at Schooling Memphis:
http://schoolingmemphis.blogspot.com/2013/01/memphis-connection-to-rhees-cheating.html
Salient passage:
“So what’s the Memphis connection? In the complaint, head to paragraphs 83, 84, and 85, where you’ll read about the two DCPS administrators that the principal contacted after walking into a room where three Noyes teachers and administrators were holding the bubble-in sheets and erasers. One of them is Josh Edelman, the current Senior Program Officer for Empowering Effective Teachers at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. At the time, he was the Deputy Chief, Office of School Innovation for DCPS, reporting to Ms. Rhee. You can often see him at the school board meetings, and he’s a regular visitor to the MCS central offices. His role, as I understand it, is to monitor MCS’s administration of the Gates Foundation grant money.
The principal claims that neither Josh Edelman nor Hilary Dilarek (the DCPS “Director of Principal Human Capital”) escalated her report. Both now claim, as part of the DC and federal investigations into the matter, to have no record of these conversations.”
And the Gates Foundation grant money? Well, that funded the Teacher Effective Initiative (see the recent self-congratulatory and terribly spurious report from the GF) in Memphis City Schools. MCS has pushed to implement the TEI in the forthcoming unified Shelby County Schools district. Tonight the board decides whether to dole out $340,000 to a consulting group to help implement it next year. Good times, good times.
Cothorne’s story reveals that Rhee and her people were rotten to the core. They had no interest in serving anyone but themselves. What corrupt people. It’s funny, the most unethical and corrupt person (principal at Noyes) got promoted to the central office. How does stuff like this just get swept under the rug?
I teach Kindergarten at a “no-excuses” charter school in Washington, D.C. The accounts of cheating on which you report are certainly appalling and unsurprising, but – as you’ve mentioned – they are only the tip of the iceberg. Even if scores were left unaltered, and even if these tests measured knowledge that we as a society deem important, we mustn’t forget that these assessments are so poorly designed that they lack validity or reliability. One telling example: my school has adopted the TerraNova as our indicator of choice. Our status as a DC charter, our funding, our esteem in the reform community and our enrollment all hinge on the TerraNova scores that we report out. Since the start of the school year, administration has drilled staff on the importance of this one test. Teachers are pressured to study copies of last year’s test (legal? ethical?), instructional coaches design unit tests to mirror exactly the questions that appeared on last year’s TerraNova, students are prepped extensively on the importance of filling in only one bubble, and all dialogue about student learning has been framed around what they “need to know for the TerraNova.” Of course none of this is uncommon in schools such as mine. However, today I was informed that this year’s test will be *identical* to last year’s. Apparently the test makers only revise the test every few years. So we are quite literally training our students to answer this one set of questions correctly. And schools across the country do the same thing, resulting in higher and higher scores, despite lower and lower levels of actual knowledge. What sort of game our we playing? It’s like we’re stranded in the desert, racing toward a well of water that turns out to be nothing but a mirage. We as a country need, first of all, to have a national conversation about the purpose of public education; perhaps then we will come to realize that putting all our energy toward scoring well on a meaningless test is doing our children nothing but harm.
On another, related note… Part of the conversation about the meaning and purpose of public education is the status of teachers and the teaching profession. TCRecord recently published a commentary I wrote regarding the failure of teacher preparation programs, the danger of alternative certification, and the need for a respected, professional knowledge base among educators. I hope you’ll check it out: http://www.tcrecord.org/Opinion.asp
Lastly, I haven’t been able to find any information about the TerraNova, its creators, or its reputation. Are you familiar with the test? Do have any data about it?
Thanks for your comments. I will post them and seek answers from the blog community.