Rhee record probed

Former District of Columbia school chancellor Michelle Rhee, who attempted to influence Nevada school policies was the subject of an investigation on the public broadcasting program Frontline. The report examined Rhee’s three-year tenure as D.C. schools chief.

It featured an interview with a D.C. school principal, Adell Cothorne, who said she discovered teachers having a late night erasure session with test papers, an incident she reported to the school district. Nothing was done, she said. In addition, Cothorne said text scores dropped sharply after she installed new security provisions to prevent cheating.

In January 2011, Rhee attended Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval’s message to the Legislature, and he mentioned her favorably in the speech. Subsequently, her political organization ran a $132,000 broadcast advertising campaign in Nevada to promote two measures that sought to tie teacher pay and jobs to test scores.

At the time, the D.C. inspector general was investigating test scores in the wake of a USA Today investigation that reported abnormal test numbers and erasures on test papers (“Rhee charged with deception,” RN&R, May 19. 2011). Later the IG released a report that found no reason to question the test scores, though critics noted that the IG examined only a single school in the district. Cothorne said she was never interviewed by investigators.