John Merrow really takes Michelle Rhee to the woodshed. I don’t spend much time thinking about education policy, but it seems like I’ve been missing out on quite a scandal. I suspect that Atlanta and DC are just the tip of the iceberg. Rhee’s specific policies seem custom-made to encourage cheating by teachers and administrators, but the emphasis on test scores is nationwide. You give the educators the carrot of bonuses and stick of getting fired, and of course some of them are going to fix the students’ wrong answers.
I hope the DC case blows up, because we need hearings on this so we can get the momentum we need to repeal the worst aspects of No Child Left Behind.