Charter Debate to Continue on KET

Charter schools will be debated on

KET’s “Kentucky Tonight” show

at 8 p.m. Monday, January 18.

Scheduled guests include:

• Rev. Jerry Stephenson, chair of the Kentucky Education Restoration Alliance
• Jim Waters, director of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions
• Sharron Oxendine, president of the Kentucky Education Association
• Superintendent Sheldon Berman of Jefferson County Public Schools

Charter schools are public schools contracted out to the private sector. In 1992, the first two charter schools operated in St. Paul, Minnesota. By September 1999, almost 300,000 students attended 1,682 charter schools operating in 33 states. By 2000, 38 states had laws allowing charter schools and a year later there were 2,372 such schools in America.

More recently the heat has been turned up on states lacking permissive charter school laws because Education Secretary Arne Duncan tied billions of federal dollars to state acquiescence. Pass a charter school law and better your chances in the Race To The Top sweepstakes.

WFPL reported that several Louisville pastors have been working with Republican Rep. Brad Montell of Shelbyville who filed a bill to allow charter schools in the state. Rep. Stan Lee of Lexington filed a similar bill in July. Both would have permitted charters to operate in competition with successful schools. The vote on Montell's bill was tied in committee, so lacking a majority, died. But supporters sense they are close and vow to push on.

• Expect Stephenson to say that the greatest need for charter schools is in inner city Louisville where a number of schools are failing.
• Expect Waters, the BIPPS communications director, to swear by Carolyn Hoxby's widely discredited study and offer it as proof of charter school effectiveness despite substantial evidence that charter performance is as varied as that of the public schools they would replace.
• Expect Superintendent Berman to defend JCPS's continued efforts to turn around their most challenging schools despite years of stagnant results.
• Expect Oxendine to question the need for charter schools based on their mixed performance nationally.

The data on charter schools is far from conclusive. Taken as a whole it's impossible to conclude that they are any better, and are sometimes worse, than the public schools. But in places, they have shown success. As I have said before, if education were a natural science, it would be like meterology; highly-localized and ever-changing. Successful charter schools seem to focus on the success of each child, building relationships, and a high quality faculty working their butts off - like in successful public schools.

As early as 1999, Arizona researchers found "evidence of substantial ethnic segregation," and that charter schools "were higher in white enrollment than other public schools." (Cobb & Glass)

In "Does Choice Lead to Racially Distinctive Schools?" Weiher and Tedin (2002) found "that race is a good predictor" of the school choice families make. Whites, African Americans, and Latinos transfer into charter schools where their groups comprise between 11 and 14 percentage points more of the student body than the traditional public schools they are leaving.

In "Decade of Charter Schools: From Theory to Practice, Bulkley and Fisler (2003) at Rutgers
found that "although some successes are evident, there is still much to learn about the quality of charter schools and the experiences of charter school stakeholders. There is strong evidence that parents and students who remain in charter schools are satisfied and that charter schools are more autonomous than other public schools. But the jury is still out on some of the most important questions, including those about innovation, accountability, equity, and outcomes."

In "The effect of charter schools on charter students and public schools ," Bettinger (2004) at Case Western Reserve found that "test scores of charter school students do not improve, and may actually decline, relative to those of public school students," but charters had no significant effect on test scores in neighboring public schools.

In "Charter Schools and Student Achievement in Florida," Florida State's Tim Sass (2006) found achievement to initially be lower in charters. However, by their fifth year of operation charter schools "reach a par with the average traditional public school." Charters targeting at-risk and special education students demonstrate lower student achievement, as do their public counterparts. He found no difference between charters managed by for-profit entities than charters run by nonprofits.

In "Skimming the Cream" West, Ingram & Hind (2006) of the London School of Economics and Political Science found evidence suggestive of both "cream skimming" and "cropping off" educational provision to particular groups of students. "It is concluded that the introduction of market oriented reforms into public school systems requires monitoring and effective regulation to ensure that autonomous schools do not act in their own self-interest."

In "The Charter School Allure: Can Traditional Schools Measure Up? Bowling Green State's May (2006) found that "urban school districts are losing significant resources to charter schools" and that "despite the lack of statistically significant evidence of academic gains, parents perceive an enhanced educational experience." The author surmises that the chasm between perceived charter school success and traditional school failure is a "perception gap"

In "The Impacts of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina," Bifulco at U Conn and Duke's Ladd (2006) found that "students make considerably smaller achievement gains in charter schools than they would have in public schools" and say there is "suggestive evidence" that "about 30 percent of the negative effect of charter schools is attributable to high rates of student turnover."

Then came the study that defined the debate.

It was the first peer-reviewed detailed national assessment of charter school impacts since its longitudinal, student-level analysis covers more than 70 percent of the nation’s students attending charter schools. In “Multiple Choice: Charter School Performance in 16 States,” reasearchers at the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University found that "there is a wide variance in the quality of the nation’s several thousand charter schools with, in the aggregate, students in charter schools not faring as well as students in traditional public schools."

While the report recognized a robust national demand for more charter schools from parents and local communities, it found that 17 percent of charter schools reported academic gains that were significantly better than traditional public schools, while 37 percent of charter schools showed gains that were worse than their traditional public school counterparts, with 46 percent of charter schools demonstrating no significant difference.

Then, something unusual happened.

Education Week reported Stanford colleague Caroline M. Hoxby, an economics professor, issued a memo critiquing the CREDO study in tandem with results from her own study of charter schools in New York City. That study showed that charter schools in the city were having the opposite effect on their students’ achievement as the CREDO researchers found.

In a memorandum titled "Fact vs. Fiction: An Analysis of Dr. Hoxby’s Misrepresentation of CREDO’s Research," the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, (CREDO), fired back.

The memo, "A Serious Statistical Mistake in the CREDO Study of Charter Schools," by Caroline Hoxby, does not provide any basis whatsoever for discounting the reliability of the CREDO study’s conclusions. The central element of Dr. Hoxby’s critique is a statistical argument that is quite unrelated to the CREDO analysis. The numerical elements of it are misleading in the extreme, even had the supporting logic been correct. Unfortunately, the memo is riddled with serious errors both in the structure of the underlying statistical models and in the derivation of any bias.

This is all going on at Stanford University, the same campus where the conservative Hoover Institution does its work with such notable conservatives as Condolesa Rice and Donald Rumsfeld. It the same place where Eric Hanushek tries to prove that money doesn't matter in education. One gets the distincitive au de political bias from the place. Turns out that Hoxby works there too. What a surprise.

“I don’t think the field of education research or policymakers are well served by scholars going back and forth with dueling memos, without peer review and without ample time to think it through,” said associate professor of education and sociology Sean F. Reardon, a colleague of both scholars at Stanford told Ed Week. “But I don’t think either side got it right,” he added.

Neither study has been published yet in a peer-reviewed journal. But that won't stop political operatives from citing them as definitive evidence.

The Set Up

Maybe social conservatives are different these days, and I'm just behind the times.

Maybe they really-o truly-o love diversity and would like nothing better than to see our tax dollars go toward lifting up the marginalized. Safe housing for the poor; better healthcare; close those gaps! Maybe they think in retrospect that Reganomics was a mistake for its undoing of LBJ's Great Society programs, which were helping close achievement gaps in the 70s. Maybe they are, but I'm just not hearing it.

Perhaps today's creationists have disavowed former claims of Biblical acceptance of slavery, former support for state's rights over constitutional rights and oppressive local decisions that created a social system of haves and have nots based on race. Perhaps today's social conservatives are sorry the achievement gap was deliberately created and perpetuated throughout the Jim Crow era. Perhaps they regret funding schools for blacks at one third those of whites throughout much of the past century. Perhaps they do, but I just missed it.

If that's true, then please accept my apologies, in advance.

Forgive me, I beg you, if by chance I have only heard the fringe few social conservatives who cry out against diversity and urge the disestablishment of the public schools in favor of a system of free-enterprise options. And forgive me if I missed hearing the mass social conservative movement that calls for justice in a divided world.

But if that's not the case, then the Bluegrass Institute's latest stunt is simply shameful. It is a set up.

This from BIPPS:

ACTION ALERT: Ask Kentucky’s new education commissioner to develop a plan to close longstanding achievement gaps in math and reading between white and black
students in Jefferson County Public Schools, Kentucky’s largest school district
(97,412 students).

SUMMARY: Efforts to improve education, especially for black students, have failed to produce anything close to acceptable results in Jefferson County. It’s time to take action!

ACTION REQUESTED: Please contact the new commissioner, Terry Holliday, and ask him to do what he did as superintendent of the Iredell-Statesville, N.C. school district between 2002 and 2009: focus on, and close, the gap. Please do the following today:

1. Call Commissioner Holliday’s office at (502) 564-3141 or e-mail: terry.holliday@education.ky.gov.
Politely ask him to:

•Do what he did as superintendent of the Iredell-Statesville, N.C. school district in less than seven years: Relentlessly pursue closing gaps in math and reading between Jefferson County’s white and black students.

•Require the districts’ highly paid leaders to develop and publicize their plan to close the gap.

•Convene a task force that will hold public hearings to gather input from all stakeholders in the district: students, parents, teachers, clergy, business and political leaders, teachers, objective researchers and taxpayers.

•Require the district to set a timetable and deadlines for closing the gap.

There is not a thing wrong with citizens expressing their opinions.

But this cynical advocacy favors rallying town hall refugees to pressure school leaders while BIPPS argues against adequate resources. It is disingenuous, at least, but probably worse.

The public schools in Kentucky would exist on greatly reduced funding if the Bluegrass Institute had its way. Vouchers for private religious schools would abound if the Bluegrass Institute had its way. The Kentucky Education Association would not exist if the Bluegrass Institute had its way. If the Bluegrass Institute had its way, I suspect they'd put the system on life support and monitor the the schools using every measure available....if only to know when the patient was dead.

I've got an idea. Call Jim Waters, director of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, at (270) 782-2140 and tell him we'll believe his new found concern for the achievement gap when he speaks out in favor of adequate funding for each and every Kentucky school child; that he opposes any move to teach any specific religious views, including intelligent design, in the public schools; and that the Bluegrass Institute will support healthcare options for all American citizens .

Prefer to email him? Try this, jwaters@freedomkentucky.com.

SOURCE: BIPPS Action Alert

BIPPS has Faith in School Choice - and Creationism

This week the Bluegrass Institute came out in favor of both creationism and Kentucky's school reform - and then compared the two in terms of faith.

BIPPS Communications Director Jim Waters undertook the curious task of rationally comparing the relative amounts of faith required to believe in creationism versus believing in school reform in Kentucky. Waters writes,

You might be surprised to know it takes even more faith for a creationist like me to expect the current bureaucracy to reform Kentucky’s public-education system than to believe the earth, universe, humankind and all life forms happened by accident.

And it takes nearly as much faith to believe Kentucky’s schools will improve without giving parents power where it counts — the right to determine which school gets their children to educate and tax dollars to operate.

To Waters, creationism makes good sense.

Having a localized organizational system of school districts does not.

I wouldn't normally comment on someone's faith - but he brought it up.

I must confess, this position surprised me. I have always taken folks at their word when they described their own political inclinations. Foolishly naive, perhaps. But I had it "on good authority" that BIPPS was a "libertarian think tank." In Waters hands, BIPPS is cast as a faith-based neo-con political effort that would eliminate school distirct organization and move public money into private hands - all while promoting a religious agenda and removing control from local officials. I was immediately suspicious of Water's motives - but perhaps there is another explanation.

Waters finds it "outrageous" that local elected officials are being empowered by state law to decide if and where school attendance boundaries should be allowed to exist - in favor of his proposal that would impose a free-for-all on every local community in Kentucky.

"Parents may send their children to the public school of their choice."

Forget school districts. Forget school board authority. Parents can just send their kids wherever they want.

This dangerous and highly inefficient proposal may sound good to the selfish, politically connected and well-heeled, but consider for a moment how that plan would utterly fail to work in real life.

Imagine a young couple selecting their new home right around the corner from the best school in their community. They have children who grow to school age only to be locked out of their neighborhood school because folks from the next county over have filled the school to capacity. I think I know how those parents would feel. Tough luck, Junior. Where should we move now? Such scenarios would happen repeatedly across the state.

One can only imagine the hostility school officials would face from angry displaced local taxpayers. But Waters seems not to care. They're merely "bureaucrats" after all. Maybe that's why BIPPS also likes the idea of guns on campus. Perhaps such disputes could be settled according to the code of the west.

But we should all appreciate Waters for clarifying where BIPPS stands on issues related to religion and public schools. For all of BIPPS's posturing as small-government libertarians, one may have drawn a wrong conclusion about the neo-con aspirations of the Bluegrass Institute if it weren't for Water's clarifications.

Thankfully Waters offered his readers an alternative way to think about his motives in the form of Hanlan’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

BIPPS Corrects Errors

It took a while, but in a note attached to yesterday's weekly audio blast, Bluegrass Institute Communications Director Jim Waters corrected errors pointed out by KSN&C in last week's audio.

A Bluegrass Audio commentary released Monday contained the incorrect date for implementation of the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System (CATS). House Bill 53, which established CATS as the state's testing system, was passed into law by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1998. Also, schools no longer receive funding based on CATS scores.

Waters stopped short of admitting that, as a result, his conclusions were all wrong.

He had used some factually incorrect information...

"KERA...gives money to schools based on their test scores. The higher its students score on CATS the more money the school gets."

as a basis for an argument...

"Therefore, schools have focused class content solely on CATS material."

The conclusion was 180 degrees wrong -not solely because it was based on faulty information - but partly because Waters formed his conclusion before he gathered his data. It's what researchers call pseudo-science.

In fact, the only schools to receive assistance were those that were not performing well on the CATS.

Schools have focused largely on CATS material because a strong state accountability system had put great pressure on schools to produce better numbers. Since school principals were unable to control for serious problems - like insufficient funding to deliver enhanced instructional services or the fact that too many students' home lives negatively affected school performance -they were left with the only tools they had - "motivation" of teachers.

Of course, that system is now gone.

It is only because we had an accountability system that we knew a lot of schools weren't going to make the grade. That prompted some administrative folks to panic and wade into instructional areas with broad "solutions" that they might not have implemented otherwise. They ratcheted up the pressure on teachers to perform at higher levels as measured by the test.

As for BIPPS, factual mistakes and other errors can happen in any human endeavor. It is only proper that Waters made the corrections.

But those errors when added to BIPPS's prior exaggerations of research data - threaten to place BIPPS on the very edge of credible scholarship. And BIPPS uses its role in scholarship as partial justification for its 501 (c) 3 tax-exempt status. If BIPPS is going to claim that its work is based on scholarship, then we are owed at least one more retraction.

On the other hand, If BIPPS is simply a political group expressing its opinions without any particular adherence to the principles of good science - as seems more likely - fine. But claiming to be one thing while acting like another is inherently dishonest and should be guarded against.

Yesterday's retraction is a step in the right direction.

Warning: Bluegrass Institute Proclamations may be Total Horse Hockey

Lousy scholarship has apparently become business as usual at the Bluegrass Institute. ...and don't expect them to retract a thing. That's just not how they roll.

At BIPPS it's all about the message. Facts are mixed with errors and wild speculation to slant any story toward their predetermined goals. Modestly paid functionaries toil over reports and studies looking for anything that can be twisted into a on-going narrative about the big bad government. Public bad. Private good. After all, if rich folks are going to spend their money to hire underlings to express a point of view - they expect to get what they paid for.

And how much are these donors willing to spend? About $320,000 in a given year. Later in this post I'll attempt a BIPPS-style expose...of BIPPS. But first, Mr Waters.

The latest misinformation is from JWaters@freedomKentucky.org and hit my email inbox Monday as an audio file titled "KIRA-Testing."

That was my first clue, it was going to be about KERA. Close enough for BIPPS.

The audio didn't come with a warning label. But it should have.

The speaker opened with,

"Hello Kentuckians. I'm Jim Waters for the Bluegrass Institute."

I'm pretty sure he got that part right.

Waters begins with the premise that,

"Kentucky's school testing system just doesn't work."

This, three days after the legislature acted to dismantle the system. In support of his premise Waters offers the following:

"In 1988, Kentucky implemented the Commonwealth Accountability Testing system."

Uh oh. Factually inaccurate. First KIRA, now 1988. Just 14 seconds into the piece and the only thing Waters has convinced me of is that he doesn't know what he's talking about.

But he persists,

"In 1990, the legislature passed KERA, the Kentucky Education Reform Act, which gives money to schools based on their test scores. The higher its students score on CATS the more money the school gets. Therefore, schools have focused class content solely on CATS material."

That's three. He is using present tense, so one must assume that Waters is either years behind the times - just where I suspect he'd like us all to be - or he is intentionally misinforming his listeners. As informed people know, Kentucky's rewards program was removed by the Republican-controlled legislature a number of years ago. Schools that have received assistance in recent years are those who did not fare so well on the CATS assessment.

And of course Waters ends with the obligatory punch line about how school choice will solve everyone's problems.

One way to overcome this is to offer parents choice on where to send their children to school.

He closes,

I'm Jim Waters for the Bluegrass Institute, advancing freedom, defending liberty, and building a more prosperous Kentucky online at BIPPS, B-I-P-P-S.org.

At this point I had to laugh aloud. All he needed was a sound track of the Superman theme playing in the background.

I'm Jim Waters for Bluegrass institute; trafficking in hyperbole; spewing propaganda based on misinformation; and promoting the free-market principles that have made the nation's economy what it is today at BIPPS, B-I-P-P-S.org.

The piece is in error and ought to be retracted.

I wonder how the world would look to the folks at BIPPS if their microscopes were turned on themselves. What would they find if they looked inward? Would there be a big expose' in it?

I imagine a story something like this:

Inefficient Operation Wastes Donor's Money at BIPPS

In a shocking development that is sure to rattle the foundations of freedom-minded Kentuckians everywhere, a lone investigator has uncovered substantial evidence of financial inefficiency and waste at the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions based in Bowling Green.

According to the Institute's IRS Form 990, total revenue in 2007 was $332,534. But since the group's inception, circa 2005, BIPPS fundraising has accounted for as much as 24% of its total funding.

Outrageous! That means the group spends about a quarter of its money soliciting people for more money! This is a really big deal, one that has implications for future BIPPS donors and even the group's survival, given the current economy.

To make matters worse, it was revealed that only 32.1% of BIPPS funding ended up going toward the "program services" BIPPS tells its donors it will deliver, while another $106,277 or 31.9% of BIPPS funds were spent on "management and general expenses."

Whadyaknow. A libertarian jobs program!

In reaction to press reports of outlandish non-purposeful spending by some non-profits, researchers at the Urban Institute's National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS)/ Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University explored issues of nonprofit fundraising and administrative cost
reporting. They found that,

"The percentage of total expenses going to program costs is the most common measure of nonprofit organizational efficiency. Focus group research has found that donors expect worthy organizations to have low fundraising and administrative costs. Consequently, nonprofits frequently tout their low overhead ratios in their mailings to the donors. Most striking, the federal government's Combined Federal Campaign, which raised nearly $250 million for nonprofits in 2003, requires that participating organizations certify that their combined fundraising and administrative costs constitute no more than 25 percent of the organizations' total revenues."

Combined fundraising and administrative costs at the Bluegrass Institute, however, exceed 50%, a level of inefficiency not seen in the public school system since the removal of the highly localized Trustee System, where an almost complete lack of government regulation led to the misuse of untold thousands of Kentucky taxpayer dollars in the early 20th century.

If the astounding inefficiencies discovered at BIPPS is any indication of the level of operational efficiency we can expect from other privately-operated groups, then the public should move cautiously before offering privately-operated school choice options - and then, only if ethical and financial safeguards are in place to prevent profit from becoming the reason to open a school in Kentucky.

So, how'd I do?

All the facts will check out. It's all truth and opinion. I even believe almost all of it myself. But when do facts, misinformation and spin simply become a lie? Ask our friends at the Bluegrass Institute.

No stone unturned? Between now and November?!

Jim Waters over at the Bluegrass Institute gives Joe Brothers a good early review and some encouragement to keep his word when he said, “This board will leave no stone unturned until we find a commissioner that is worthy of our state.”

Sounds great. But the last plan I heard from the board sounded more like "quick and dirty" than it did "scour the Earth."

...So far, Brothers gets an “A” for communicating a clear vision: the kids come first.

But leadership is more than just talk. It’s also about action, the right action.

Hiring a competent, reform-minded commissioner willing to make the students, not the system, top priority – even if it ticks off the bureaucrats – would show that Brothers’ actions speak louder than his words.

The board could find numerous candidates without turning over any stones. These likely would be lifelong bureaucrats who have shuffled along in the system and now want to do the same as Kentucky’s top education leader. They want the money or prestige. It’s a safe bet none would vigorously challenge the status quo.

The status quo isn’t close to good enough.

During its April meeting, the board heard from education department officials that less than 40 percent of the state’s public schools – and only 12 percent of its high schools – are on track to meet requirements of 100-percent academic proficiency in critical subject areas by 2014.

“We have to do better,” Brothers said...

Bluegrass poll says Kentuckians favor open enrollment

...but the headline spins "vouchers and tax credits"

Before we look at the poll, let's do a little thought experiment. Start by answering the following for yourself:

How satisfied are you with the amount of money you pay for health care?
Very satisfied
Somewhat satisfied
Somewhat unsatisfied
Very unsatisfied

Do you believe the quality of health care services has gotten better, gotten worse or stayed about the same over the last few years?
Gotten better
Gotten Worse
Stayed about the same

Do you think patients should have choice in determining where their children receive health care services?
Yes
No
Don't know/No opinion

Medical vouchers are a type of service delivery in which a state issues certificates which allow parents to select the doctor of their choice for their child. Do you feel medical vouchers would be good for Kentucky health care?
Yes
No
Don't know/No Opinion
~
Now, let's think about how the average Kentuckian might have answered these questions. Do you think a substantial percentage of Kentuckians might have responded positively to the idea of the government making it possible for them to choose the best doctors for their children's health care?

I do.

Do you think the average Kentuckian would have stopped to think through the complexities of how such a program might affect, the healthcare system as a whole, the doctors - or other people's children?

I don't. Some folks would...but I suspect most folks would take a couple of seconds, give an answer, and move on.

How much weight would you give such a poll?

For me...not much.

Such is the nature of polling data these days. Many polls make it easy for respondents to be led toward a predetermined conclusion.

And it is the case with a poll done recently by Dr. Larry Caillouet and Kalisa Hauschen for the Bluegrass Institute. The questions above were modeled off the questions used in their "School Choice Survey." (Summary only) That survey formed the basis for an article by BG Communications Director Jim Waters which says:

• The random telephone survey was conducted between March 11 and April 1 from Western Kentucky University, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
• 79 percent of the 493 respondents support the concept of choice.
• Nearly 73 percent said they supported open-enrollment policies, the most of any option polled.
• Nearly 70 percent of respondents favored allowing parents to obtain a tax refund equal to the amount of tuition they might pay to send their child to a school outside their residential school district.
• 64 percent agreed, after receiving a one-sentence description, that "education vouchers would be good for Kentucky education."
• Only 4 percent of respondents were "very familiar" with charter schools, and 65 percent said they were "not familiar" with vouchers.

The results didn't surprise Adam Schaeffer, a policy analyst with the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom either.

"People do like the idea of choice, generally speaking, in most areas of public policies. In education, it's no different," Schaeffer said. "However, most people don't know a whole lot about policy. After all, you can poll people on who the vice president is, and many won't know. It's amazing how little people know off the top of their head about some of these issues."

Waters says, "While Kentucky currently has a form of open enrollment, the option is controlled by local education bureaucrats rather than by parents."

This statement spins like a curveball. School districts are controlled by the local school boards - made up of parents and others elected by the community. Local control. But Waters seems to infer that some distant force - the bureaucracy - is actually in control. Boards fire bureaucrats all the time and they will continue to do so whether it's a local school board or or a charter school board.

Just as with open health care options - school vouchers, tax credits, open enrollment and scholarship tax credit programs are complex. Each choice carries unintended (cynics would say intended) consequences that must be carefully thought through - before implementation.

That's not the kind of insight one can attain through a poll.

There's nothing wrong with opinion polling, per se. But you can't give this kind of opinion poll, built on one sentence descriptions of previously unknown concepts, with undefined terms, much weight.

Education commissioner missed lesson on telling the truth

Jim Waters, of the Bluegrass Institute adds to the voices

calling for the Kentucky Board fo Education

to reconsider Erwin appointment.

It's not too late to do the right thing!

~
I bet the Kentucky Board of Education hopes the flap over Education Commissioner Barbara Erwin goes away.

It won’t, and it shouldn’t.

After all, how many companies would tolerate someone misrepresenting his or her career on a mistake-ridden resume in order to secure a job with a salary higher than the governor’s?

And this isn’t just any company. The Kentucky’s education commissioner plays a critical role in the future of every student attending the commonwealth’s public schools, regardless of grade.

Most people don’t realize it, but many of the key decisions affecting a student’s education in Kentucky are not made at the local level. Instead, the real power lies with the commissioner and her minions who issue edicts from the education department’s castle atop Mount Frankfort on spending, curriculum, testing, teaching methods and dropouts.

This power includes signing contracts worth millions, among them a contract renewing the state’s testing system at an annual cost to taxpayers of $10 million.

If the commissioner can’t even get it right on her resume, should she make crucial decisions about the direction of education or sign off on millions in spending?

On her eight-page resume, Erwin stated that the Texas Association of School Administrators named her “Superintendent of the Year” in 1998. However, the association doesn’t have such an award and never did. Erwin called the mistake “a typo.”

I doubt it. Don’t you?

For many seeking a high-paying job in the private sector, such a fatal mistake would end a candidate’s chances, but not for Kentucky’s education elite. They hired Erwin and turned a deaf ear to all criticism of their decision.

Erwin also claimed she made an important presentation at a prestigious education conference in Chicago in 2006. But conference officials said she did not. Erwin explained that error away by saying that she signed off on presentations made by others in her district.

Nevertheless, she took the credit for having made the presentation. So what’s next, President George W. Bush wearing a Congressional Medal of Honor simply because one of the troops he commanded earned it?

At the very least, more than enough reasonable doubt exists about Erwin’s credibility and the respect she needs to lead Kentucky’s education system during a critical juncture.

The board claims it didn’t know about most of the errors on Erwin’s resume when it announced her hiring. I accept that. But now that it does know, it should act – just like RadioShack Corp.’s board did when it recently accepted the resignation of David J. Edmondson, its president and chief executive officer, who admitted errors on his resume.

Edmondson wrongly claimed to have earned two degrees from a California college. It cost him a job that, including bonuses, paid him more than $1 million a year.

He rose through the corporate ranks of an internationally known company to become CEO. But his erroneous resume and bad judgment outweighed whatever business accomplishments he piled up in his pursuit of the top job.

RadioShack’s board recognized that for whatever success Edmondson achieved, his credibility – believability and trustworthiness – evaporated. Without those, what else matters?

The RadioShack scenario provides a great model for how Erwin – who leads 650,000 students, and their teachers and administrators – and Kentucky’s board should handle the current commissioner debacle: Erwin should tender her resignation. The board should accept it and resume its search.

Some might think it’s too late. It’s not. The board can terminate the contract with a majority vote and 90-day notice.

It’s not too late to do the right thing.

This from Jim Waters the director of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. You can reach him at jwaters@bipps.org. You can read previously published columns at www.bipps.org.