The mostly black Promise Academy middle school students posted mediocre scores on the English and Math state tests in 2005, 2006, and 2007. (e.g. 2007 7th Grade English % at level 4: Statewide- Asian 11%, White 8%, Black 2%, Promise Academy- Black 0%; 2007 7th Grade Math % at level 4: Statewide- Asian 42%, White 24%, Black 6%, Promise Academy- Black 6%) No doubt the pressure was building on Mr. Canada and the teachers to prove that black students--despite having a mean IQ of only 85--could never the less perform as well as whites with a mean IQ of 100. Then miraculously in 2008 the Promise Academy students performed better than the white average.

One possible explanation is that Mr. Canada and his teachers finally figured out how to teach the material better between 2007 and 2008.

Another possible explanation is that Mr. Canada and/or the teachers helped the students to fill out the correct answers on the tests. Richard Rothstein has found that sudden high scores on tests in prior low-performing schools are not to be believed at face value because they usually turn out to be either due to selection for high ability students, statistical fluke high scores for one year, or cheating. Steven Levitt, in a chapter in his Freakonomics book, has discussed how cheating is not uncommon in urban school systems that are under enormous pressure to get low performing minorities to perform at higher levels on achievement tests.