There is a new scandal in the District of Columbia that has shaken true believers in Rhee-style reform to their core. An independent investigation of the high school graduation rate determined that 1/3 of the district’s graduates should not have received a diploma.
Reformers have been touting the District of Columbia public schools as a model of success ever since Michelle Rhee wielded her broom and swept away every “bad” teacher. Although she had no prior experience as an administrator or principal, she was chosen by Mayor Adrian Fenty to overhaul the school system. She did so in a spirit of meanness. She openly scoffed at collaboration, which she said was for losers. She set out to fire as many teachers and principals as she could, and she set test score goals that every school was expected to meet. She left when the mayor who appointed her was defeated in 2010, but the District has remained true to her cold-hearted vision. Rhee then formed a group called Students First, devoted to firing teachers, busting unions, and promoting charters and vouchers. Betsy DeVos’s American Federation for Children honored her with an award for her service to the cause of destroying public education, an award she shared at the time with Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker.
But not long after her departure, there was a major scandal in 2011, when USA Today conducted an investigation and determined that the test score erasures at Noyes Educational Complex were literally incredible. Rhee scoffed at the claims of cheating, as the principal of Noyes was one of her stars.
Her successor Kaya Henderson continued Rhee’s policies, and the new chancellor Antwon Wilson (a graduate of the unaccredited Broad Academy) is also a true believer in Rheeform (at his most recent post, in Oakland, he nearly bankrupted the district by hiring large numbers of administrators).
D.C. continues to be a reform shrine, but it is really a monument to Campbell’s Law. When the measure becomes the goal, both the measure and the goal are corrupted.
The graduation rate scandal is probably the tip of the iceberg.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
cross posted at https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/D-C–Model-School-Distr-in-General_News-Charter-School-Failure_Fraud_Graduation_Michelle-Rhee-180202-377.html#comment688032
with this comment which has embedded links at the comment:
Diane Ravitch posts more on the enormous fraud; https://dianeravitch.net/category/fraud/
just a few at that link.
*”An Atlanta charter school founder has pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing more than half a million dollars from local public school systems.
“Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, explains here how Mike Pence expanded and deregulated Indiana’s voucher program, with substantial cash infusions from Betsy DeVos and Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com.
*This article by Gus Garcia-Roberts won a prestigious journalism awardfor exposing the disgraceful conditions in schools that receive McKay scholarships for special education students in Florida.
Arizona, however, is still the Capital of Charter Corruption, as this article shows. It was written five years ago, but since then, nothing has happened to curtail cronyism, conflicts of interest, or nepotism.
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The tech industry is under fire. A day of reckoning is coming soon too for education metrics. People will wake up and realize that data analytics is no better than eugenics. Was that statement too strong? Too bad.
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I found the comments section at the WaPo article interesting. Locals underscored that dcps have had poor results for 50 yrs & Rhee’s tenure/ policies no improvement, the ‘success story’ a political sham. Some called for a return of Rhee &/or her policies, apparently unaware that they continue virtually unchanged since she up-ended things 10 yrs ago. Rhee supporters say she’s been gone 7 yrs & can’t be blamed for current crop of 1/3 unqualified hsgrads– ignoring that ’17 grads came up thro primary, mid & hs under Rhee/ Henderson & Henderson continuation. This group calls for mayor to ‘take responsibility’– as tho mayor had not grabbed all ed power from board 10 yrs ago, & have no one to blame but themselves. ‘Changes’ under Bowser consist of a couple of tweaks to lottery preferences, & bringing in a chancellor who left Oakland schools in worse debt than ever by plumping admin payroll.
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Good reading, Bethree. Can’t “return” to Rhee policies when DC never abandoned them. They also carried on tradition of lying and juking the stats. Watch “The Wire” to see how that is done. Or memorize Campbell’s Law.
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Someone needs to investigate Credit Recovery. Students can pass a whole year of classes in weeks and classes they failed in days by reading excerpts and taking tests all on line. It is popular in Michigan and I suspect all over. It is easy to raise graduation rates in high school or college: just print diplomas.
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Just as a side issue — what happened to Michelle Rhee and StudentsFirst?
Rhee had married Kevin Johnson, mayor of Sacramento, CA. StudentsFirst, promoted with a giant blaze of glorious publicity and supposedly destined to rake in vast sums in donations to transform public education, set up its alleged headquarters in Sacramento.
Then StudentsFirst just quietly, quietly faded away.
I went to look for the HQ when I was visiting Sacramento a couple of years ago, and it was an all-but-anonymous office over a cellular phone store in a downtown neighborhood called Alkali Flat. Not that I would fault an organization for not having a glamorous office, but StudentsFirst hasn’t accomplished anything visible, either, beyond the blaze of publicity and massive gushing that began with Oprah.
Meanwhile, Rhee’s husband, Johnson, was credibly accused of sexual harassment of a minor and also of at least one Sacramento city staffer. He decided not to run for mayor again. He had Rhee have quietly faded out of the public eye. It’s not known what happened to the vast sums that StudentsFirst may have reaped, though presumably Rhee and Johnson are not living a life of deprivation and penury now, put it that way. — Caroline Grannan, San Francisco
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