Cheating in schools?

Following the ground-breaking work The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published a few years ago -- which documented massive cheating at Atlanta Public schools -- they've just published a database including most school districts in the country, aimed at discovering whether your child's district is cheating or not. You can find the database here.

The problem with this database is the methodology used is flawed, says Gary Miron, a professor of education at Western Michigan University who has extensive experience evaluating school reforms and education policies. In this piece published in the Washington Post blog on education, Miron says the analysis used is based on schools, not on individual student data, which means different students could have been measured in different years. And if the data used is flawed, well, the conclusions cannot be trusted.