Almost 600 employees in the Columbus, Ohio, district received bonuses totaling $390,000 for fabricated academic gains, according to a Columbus Dispatch analysis of corrected state report cards.
One-third of the schools that received bonuses in the 2010-11 school year shouldn’t have. And hundreds of students missed out on state vouchers to attend private schools because the data-rigging made their assigned schools appear to be doing better than they were, the new data show.
The recalculated report cards go back only to 2010-11, but a state investigation found that cheating had been going on as early as 2002. The Associated Press reported that the state education department is making more than 100 revisions to district and school ratings statewide.
