Resources
Sources, data & further reading
Shareable brief
- HEA one-page brief Short summary for social, partners, and interviews.
Letter to the Secretary of Education
- Federal advocacy to Secretary McMahon (April 2025) Substance of the letter: Lake Wobegon history, state-vs-NAEP honesty gaps, international comparisons, and four reforms—plus the supporting research library.
HEA research papers
- Nationally Normed Elementary Achievement Testing (1987) The original Friends for Education report: how all 50 states reported above the national average. ERIC EJ374428.
- Lake Wobegon White Paper (2026) Thirty-seven years of educational fraud: history, state-vs-NAEP gaps, and two reforms.
- Testing Resistance Across Administrations The Unseen Obstacles: Union and Testing Company Reactions to Honest Testing Initiatives Under Clinton and Bush. How Congress, state agencies, testing companies, and unions resisted honest testing reforms—and why the Lake Wobegon Effect persisted under high-stakes accountability.
Primary reports by Dr. Cannell
- Nationally Normed Elementary Achievement Testing (1987) How all 50 states reported above the national average. ERIC EJ374428.
- How Public Educators Cheat on Standardized Achievement Tests (1988) The “Lake Wobegon” Report. ERIC ED314454.
- “Lake Woebegone,” Twenty Years Later (2006) Nonpartisan Education Review, Vol. 2, No. 1.
- Thirty-Seven Years of Educational Fraud (2026 White Paper)
NAEP & national data
- The Nation’s Report Card (NAEP results)
- NAEP program site (NCES)
- NAEP Data Explorer
- PISA (OECD international assessment)
Historic news coverage
- Education Week — “Normed Tests Skewed to Find Most Pupils Above Average” December 1987 coverage of the Cannell / Friends for Education findings.
-
Washington Post — “Above Average Has Become Testing Norm”
Lawrence Feinberg, February 8, 1988.
washingtonpost.com (search title / archives)
- New York Times — “Standardized Test Scores: Voodoo Statistics?” Edward B. Fiske, February 17, 1988.
-
Wall Street Journal — “Classroom Scandal”
Gary Putka, November 2, 1988.
wsj.com (archives / search)
- 60 Minutes — “Teacher is a Cheater” CBS, March 25, 1990.
- Education Week — Testing Arkansas teachers (1985) Early reform politics and teacher testing.
- UPI — Tight security around controversial teacher testing (1985)
Contemporary examples cited in the white paper
-
Texas Tribune — teacher certification fraud reporting
Coverage referenced for October 29, 2024 reporting on fraudulent certifications.
texastribune.org (search “teacher certification” fraud)
- Columbus Dispatch — Westerville graduation-rate records Coverage referenced for August 23, 2023 investigation.
- Mississippi Department of Education State-reported assessment results (compare with NAEP).
- Mississippi First — Contextualizing Mississippi’s NAEP scores
- Oxford Eagle — Mississippi NAEP gains reporting
- New York State Education Department State assessment reporting for NYC and statewide.
- CNN — Recent standardized test score reporting
Accountability trail (public only)
- Education Week — Critic requests FTC probe of test publishers (Oct. 11, 1989) Contemporaneous report on Friends for Education’s letters to the FTC, state attorneys general, and the Secretary of Education.
- Cannell — “Lake Wobegon, Twenty Years Later” (2006) First-person account of the 1980s fraud complaints and why reforms stalled.
- Atlanta APS cheating scandal (Georgia RICO) Public criminal case; not an HEA filing.
From the letter to the Secretary — research & studies
- Methods for Improving Standardized Test Scores: Fruitful, Fruitless, or Fraudulent? Classic research on score-boosting practices.
- Teaching to the Test: Family of Fallacies
- The Source of Lake Wobegon — Nonpartisan Education Review
- Norms, Test Results, and Lake Wobegon: A Cautionary Tale
- Koretz review materials — Nonpartisan Education Review / Foundation
- ERIC ED311087 — Related achievement testing / measurement document
- ERIC ED418138
- ERIC ED499390
- ERIC ED570879
- ERIC EJ874474
- CRESST technical reports — UCLA National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing
- Item banks: What, why, how
- ProCon — Standardized tests (time & anxiety context)
- Atlanta public-schools cheating scandal (Georgia RICO — largely concluded) State criminal prosecutions of educators for organized test cheating; convictions from 2015, with remaining defendants largely resolved by 2024 plea agreements. Separate from Friends for Education or HEA.
- Lake Wobegon effect — Wikipedia
- National Assessment of Educational Progress — Wikipedia
Texas Miracle, NCLB & state standards
- RAND — Texas assessment / “miracle” analyses
- Education Week — “The Texas Miracle Revisited”
- Education Week — Testing system in Texas (2000)
- Education Next — Keeping an eye on state standards
- Education Next — Despite Common Core, states still lack common standards
- NCES — Mapping state proficiency standards onto NAEP
- NCES publication 2007-039
- NEPC — Bi-partisan failure: misreading education gaps
- Fordham Institute — The case for standardized testing
- PBS NewsHour — Congress and testing in schools
- Tennessee Assessment Task Force report
- Arkansas Education Reform of 1983
International comparisons (letter appendix)
- PISA / OECD
- Singapore — Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE)
- Finland — student assessment approaches
- Netherlands — primary assessment (Cito / CVTE)
- Germany — VERA low-stakes assessments
- Japan — national education policy (MEXT)
- South Korea — KICE
- Fraser Institute — Student testing: an international context
- ACER — Australian / international assessment context
Test security, proctoring & independent administration
- NIST — Proposed independent scientific home for national assessment oversight in the letter.
- National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB)
- SURF (Netherlands) — Online proctoring white paper
- ERIC EJ1329482 — Lessons from remote proctoring
- Computerized adaptive testing & constrained adaptive design
- Handbook — Item banking (going deeper)
Business, workforce & assessment data advocacy
- U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation — Future of Data
- U.S. Chamber Foundation — Timely state assessment results are overdue
- U.S. Chamber Foundation — K–12 learning gaps & economic risk
- College Board — SAT redesign & digital suite
- Education Week — College Board SAT redesign (2014)
- Hoover Institution — Chester E. Finn Jr.
- ASCD — Teaching to the test (classic)
- AFT — Testing more, teaching less (context)
Analysis & commentary
- A Tribute to John J. Cannell, M.D. — Richard P. Phelps, Nonpartisan Education Review
- The Source of Lake Wobegon
- Point-Counterpoint: The Lake Wobegon Effect Twenty Years Later
-
Thomas B. Fordham Institute — “Still swimming in Lake Wobegon”
fordhaminstitute.org (search Lake Wobegon)
- Education Week — Debunking the case for national standards
- Cato — Common Core: the great debate
- Kappan — Should U.S. schools participate in PISA?
About the author
- John Cannell — Wikipedia
- On this site
- Letter to the Secretary of Education
Sec. letter substance Read the white paper Join the mailing list