Michelle Rhee's Kryptonite

The former chancellor of the Washington DC schools (and key figure in Waiting for Superman), Michelle Rhee, has some explaining to do. Seems that one of her highly touted schools might be guilty of excessive erasing on standardized tests. With erasing comes a second chance at a correct answer.

A USA TODAY investigation, based on documents and data secured under D.C.'s Freedom of Information Act, found that for the past three school years most of Noyes' classrooms had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests. The consistent pattern was that wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.

I can't wait for Diane Ravitch to get ahold of this. Wait! She has!
(after the jump)

(Rhee's) celebrity results from the fact that she has emerged as the national spokesman for the effort to subject public education to free-market forces, including competition, decision by data, and consumer choice. All of this sounds very appealing when your goal is to buy a pound of butter or a pair of shoes, but it is not a sensible or wise approach to creating good education. What it produces, predictably, is cheating, teaching to bad tests, institutionalized fraud, dumbing down of tests, and a narrowed curriculum.

Rhee is schedule to appear tonight on The Tavis Smiley Show on PBS. Let's see how she spins this one.