Rhee says her remarks on test erasures were “stupid”

03-31-2011

Blog by Jay Mathews/Washington Post

I am one of those people who like former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle A. Rhee. The number of Rhee fans has dwindled in the District as she has become more famous and popular across the country. But I still think she did much good for D.C. children — reviving a moribund school headquarters, closing half-empty schools and getting achievement back on an upward path. So I was unpleasantly surprised to read the statements she made Monday, quoted in newspapers throughout the country, saying people like me were “enemies of school reform” for thinking that a story that day in USA Today had exposed a serious problem of cheating on D.C. tests. The Post quoted her telling talk show host Tavis Smiley that the USA Today story, which revealed more than 10 cases per child in which erasures caused an answer to go from wrong to right in some schools, was not credible and it was wrong to suspect that such changes might have been made by adults throughout the system after the test was over. Wednesday morning, I got another surprise in the form of a phone call from Rhee. She told me that what she said Monday — her word, repeated often in our conversation — was “stupid.” (more...)

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Rhee says her remarks on test erasures were “stupid”

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