Mercedes Schneider has assembled data on a scandal in D.C. In recent years, Michelle Rhee and Kaya Henderson claimed that it was the fastest improving district in the nation. The national media repeats their claim.
Retired D.C. teacher Erich Martel alerted me to what appeared to be the cooking of the books, and I connected him to Schneider. She confirms that D.C. cooked NAEP data to overstate gains for the district.
She reviews the data and concludes:
“Rhee took the DCPS helm in June 2007; when she left in 2010, her deputy, Kaya Henderson, took over.
“According to NAEP, they both failed. So has the mayoral control of schools responsible for both Rhee and Henderson. And what is particularly striking is that these “reformers” would rather lie to the public about their success by concealing information than confront their failure and change their corporate-reform-fed course.
“I challenge DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to offer a public response to Martel’s NAEP story as publicized in this post, and I challenge DCPS to post the full spectrum of DC’s NAEP results, beginning with the 1998/2000 results; to make such posting easily accessible on the DCPS website, and to use accurate numbers.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
gentrification: make sure the students live in million dollar brownstones and have last names that match the local law firms (in Boston or in Swampscott where charlie charter chatter baker lives) and you will have a test score miracle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! if you think education is all about the PARRC tests (invalid and not reliable but Commissioner Mitchell Chester goes around the country telling commissioners to sign up with Jeb Bus and Michael Barber)….. I am tired of their lies.
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Exactly. In early days of a suddenly forced NCLB inside our very low-income neighborhood, we began to see signs that the test-scores school “reform” game was actually about pushing unwanted home-owners/renters out of the neighborhood. NCLB quickly became not No Child Left Behind, but No (unwanted) Child Left In The Neighborhood.
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ciedie aech: a while ago someone far wittier than I deciphered the acronym more precisely—
NCLB (NoChild’sBehindLeft).
And knowing you are a fan of truth in labeling: RTTT aka DashForTheCash.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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The most damning fact: DC’s rate of improvement decreased under Rhee/Henderson. Doesn’t that mean that whatever they were doing before Rhee was superior?
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The trick will be to get the information out to the public as “reform” friendly stooges manage most of the major media outlets. A blog like the Coffee Party may be willing to disseminate this story as they have recently run several anti-privatization stories.
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Why anyone gives a damn about invalid NAEP scores for anything is beyond me.
I can understand the “coin of the realm” idea of test scores being the “coin of the realm” that all the edudeformers and privateers use to lie through their teeth.
But in reality tis just all a bunch of mental masturbation. While it may be pseudo-intellectually stimulating it certainly doesn’t satisfy any criteria of truthful discourse.
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Thanks, Diane.
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