But President Bush is now suggesting that more high-stakes decisions be tied to school testing. It's time that the public and press got a better idea of just how troubled those programs may be. Go back to 1987-88, when Dr. John Cannell, a West Virginia pediatrician and education activist, issued several remarkable reports. Cannell ran an ad in an education journal, soliciting first-hand accounts from teachers. According to Cannell, over 300 teachers wrote to tell him about outright cheating in their schools.
Teachers provide the right answers during the testing.
These practices have all been documented, again and again, in incidents all around the country. Indeed, Donvan's predecessors had voiced the same shock when Cannell spoke up twelve years before. Like Potomac Elementary, the crusading Cannell got his fifteen minutes back in the late 1980s. Education czar William Bennett praised his work. So did conservative education activist Chester Finn.