Scrutiny of Michelle Rhee’s claim to success during her tenure as chancellor of the Washington, D.C., schools has intensified after two reports have surfaced on suspected cheating on standardized tests in the district.

One is a confidential report from 2009 by a consultant to a senior staff member of Rhee’s, which recommends further investigation of 70 schools that had an unusually high number of wrong-to-right erasures on standardized tests. No such investigation was ever done, according to John Merrow, the education correspondent for “PBS NewsHour” who obtained and published the report on his blog.

In addition, a new report from the District of Columbia’s office of the state education superintendent indicates that cheating on such tests occurred again last year, during the tenure of Chancellor Kaya Henderson, who had been Rhee’s deputy. This report, released in April, found cheating in 18 classrooms in 11 schools. In six of the schools, the standardized test scores have been invalidated.

In separate statements, both Rhee and Henderson said they did not recall getting any reports about erasures. Both maintain that widespread cheating never occurred.

Since leaving her chancellor’s position, Rhee has parlayed her reported successes in D.C. into a career as a leader of the so-called education reform movement. She is founder and CEO of StudentsFirst, a national organization that has opened a New York chapter and which advocates for the weakening of teacher tenure and the expansion of charter schools and school vouchers.

USA Today, April 11
Washington Post, April 12