This afternoon I have been studying a scandal from the mid-1990s in which someone at a very hoity-toity upper-middle-class elementary school doctored the kids’ tests to give them roughly 40% higher test results than any other school in the district, consistently, for years. The school board eventually found out because 89% of the “erased and changed” answers on the tests were changed from incorrect to correct, which is what we in the data business call “statistically anomalous” and Houghton-Mifflin agreed.
To this day they’re not positive who did it; the principal, who “retired” at the end of the investigation, was blamed because he was the only one in the chain of custody who couldn’t be ruled out. I think he probably did it based on the fact not that he said he didn’t do it, but he said it didn’t happen when it really obviously did. (The kids were retested and their scores dropped sharply, some of which could be attributed to the stress of everyone you know thinking you’re a cheater, but not 40%’s worth across the board.)
The shock of this revelation was so severe that real estate values dropped in the school’s attendance region, which is pretty bananas and also, wow, capitalism.
The school psychologist wrote a mystery thriller based on it years later, which I intend to purchase the next time I get a gift certificate. Judging by the fact that copies of it retail now for higher than the price of the book originally, it’s either spectacular or terrible.
In the meantime, my most favorite reaction of all came from one of the kids who was a student during “erasergate”:
I’ll never figure out whether or how he did it, or if he did it. Any of it. I’m not smart enough to figure it out. I’m sure someone with my test scores could, though.
MILLENNIAL SALT AT ITS FINEST.
School Schandals
Published
Mooncustafer 