Dive Brief:

• A draft report leaked to Politico by Roy Germano, an ethnographer hired by Success Academy to study the New York City-based charter network, finds it was "possible if not likely that some teacher cheating is occurring at Success on both internal assessments and state exams."
• Although no hard proof was offered, Germano, who was allegedly fired by Success Founder and CEO Eva Moskowitz over the report's content, noted multiple staff members alleged that Success Academy teachers may have prepared students for specific questions on tests, allowed them to copy answers from each other and fudged scores on exams.
• In a statement to Education Dive, Success Academy spokesman Stefan Friedman said the network found no evidence to substantiate the allegations.

Dive Insight:

Success Academy is facing a spate of recent problems, including a high-profile "Got to Go" list of 16 students a principal apparently wanted to purge from the school due to "severe" disciplinary problems, a U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights complaint alleging discrimination against students with disabilities and ongoing criticism over the network's extremely strict behavior policies. 

The latest allegations of rampant cheating again bring to the forefront national concerns around tying teacher evaluations to student performance, with critics saying linking the two will continue to lead educators to manipulate the outcomes to preserve their own self-interests.

The Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal was a catalyzing event for opponents of high-stakes testing, and eleven former educators were found guilty of conspiring to falsify students’ test scores; eight were sentenced to spend time in jail. Many attribute the extreme pressure that the schools were under to perform as the reason for the incident. Nashville schools have also had the veracity of their success questioned over allegations of cheating, after whistleblower teachers are telling local news outlets that the worst-performing students aren’t being included in test results.