Pa. Joins States Facing a School Cheating Scandal

[n2doc]

By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: July 31, 2011

PHILADELPHIA — In April, Dale Mezzacappa attended a panel discussion on cheating sponsored by the Education Writers Association. At the time, she was one of three staff reporters for The Notebook, a community newspaper and Web site that covers the Philadelphia public schools.

While few know of The Notebook, many know of Ms. Mezzacappa. For 27 years, until the newspaper industry’s near collapse, she was a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer. She is also a former president of the Education Writers Association.

People trust Ms. Mezzacappa to get it right. After the panel discussion, an executive for a testing security company suggested she ask state officials if they had done a study flagging schools with suspicious numbers of erasures on state tests. In May, the state responded, sending Ms. Mezzacappa a file so large she needed technical assistance to download it.

For two months, that 2009 study sat unexamined. (Being one-third of the reporting staff, Ms. Mezzacappa doesn’t have a ton of free time.) Then last month, The Notebook’s editor, Paul Socolar, entered into a partnership with the local public radio station, WHYY, which enabled him to hire a fourth reporter, Benjamin Herold.

more

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/education/01winerip.html

[Reader Rabbit]

1. Wonder if B-ball Arne is still "stunned" by all this cheatin'.

Yong Zhao has a good take on Arne's stunned-ness:

http://www.thefrustratedteacher.com/2011/07/yong-zhao-on-arne-duncan-being-stunned.html

[Smarmie Doofus]

2. Obama's education policies are beyond moronic.

Any ten year old could have predicted that this would logically follow teacher/school evals tied to test scores.

NOW can we have a primary challenge?

Please??

*Please*.