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Rhee faces renewed scrutiny over depiction of students' progress when she taught
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The reading scores, when converted to percentile rankings, indicate that students moved from about the 14th percentile as second-graders in 1993-94 to the 46th or 47th percentile as third-graders the next year.
The math scores for the same span suggest movement from the 37th percentile to the 53rd or 54th. (Percentiles are used to compare student performance. A student at the 50th percentile would have scored higher than half of all students tested and lower than the other half.)
The study found that the number of students tested varied each year, injecting another element of uncertainty.
Rhee addressed questions about her resume in 2007. At the time, she acknowledged that there was no documentation to back up the assertion of performance at the 90th percentile. She said then that the source of the information was the school's principal, Linda Carter.
In 2007, Carter and others connected with the school corroborated Rhee's account in general terms without citing specific figures. A Baltimore schools spokeswoman said Thursday that Carter no longer works for the system. Efforts to reach the former principal were unsuccessful. On Wednesday, Rhee reiterated what she had said in 2007. "All I can go off of is what my principal told me," she said.
Brandenburg, who retired in 2009 after teaching for more than 30 years, said the study presents "clear evidence of actual, knowing falsehood" by Rhee.
Frederick M. Hess, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, disagreed. "There's simply no way with these data to say anything, good or bad, about Rhee's teaching performance," he wrote in a blog post Thursday.
Staff writer Bill Turque contributed to this report.