Brothers says Kentucky board will resolve issues and alleviate apprehension in Erwin hiring, but June agenda shows no plan to discuss the matter

The last time the Kentucky Board of Education met they discussed the first of six alleged errors on Barbara Erwin's resume. Erwin presented plaques and rings to support her claim that she was named 1998 Superintendent of the Year by the Texas Association of School Administrators. Subsequently, Dr. Johnny Veselda, Executive Director of TASA told reporter Ronnie Ellis, "I believe it is reasonable for her to say she was twice named Superintendent of the Year." He made this comment despite the fact that his organization presents no such award.

Erwin claimed the error was a "typo."

But let's give her the benefit of the doubt. After all, if the organization gave her hardware that says superintendent of the year, even if that wasn't the actual award, Erwin is not the one to blame for the confusion.

But what does the Kentucky Board have to say about errors #2, #3, #4, #5 and #6?

#2 Contrary to assertions made in her application, Erwin was not a presenter at the 2006 Triple I Conference. Erwin justified listing it on her resume because she had to "sign off" for the real presenters to go to the conference. No kidding. That was her explanation. Really.

#3 Error #3 shows us what a real typo looks like. She lists her membership in Kappa Delta Phi, when it should have read, Kappa Delta Pi. Sloppy.

#4 Erwin claimed to be an AASA Executive Board Member for ten years, when she only served on the "Executive Committee" for three years. Ten sounds better than three. Board sounds more important than Committee.

#5 Erwin says she served from 2000 to 2007 on the board of directors for the Scottsdale, Ariz., Chamber of Commerce. She served three years.

#6 Erwin's resume reads, "Teacher, Lafayette School Corporation, Lafayette, IN, Enrollment 8,000, 1971-73." In fact, she taught until May 1974. More slop. But what's intriguing about this one is how she was able to teach anywhere in the winter/spring of 1972. She didn't receive her degree from Indiana University until May 1972. Indiana certification officials are mystified and Erwin won't say how she pulled it off. Indiana licensing rules in 1971 and since, have required that the minimum degree requirement for a teaching license is the Bachelor's degree and Erwin didn't have one when she was first certified.
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Kentucky board of education members made it clear to the Kane County Chronicle that despite questions about Erwin's background and the ongoing issues in St. Charles, there is no plan to reconsider the May 9 decision to hire her.

But yesterday, Kentucky Board of Education member Joe Brothers told the Kane County Chronicle, “Obviously there’s been issues raised, but [Dr. Erwin will] exercise due diligence as well as the board to resolve and alleviate any apprehension.”

But the Kentucky Board of Education has a meeting coming up June 13th & 14th in Frankfort.

Discussion of the Erwin matter is NOT on the agenda.

• Is the board concerned about these questions?
• Is the board planning to ask Dr. Erwin to explain errors 2 through 6? If so, when?
• How should one properly characterize the board's decision to ignore these issues at their June meeting?
• How is the board going to exercise their responsibilities for due diligence if they don't even plan to discuss the matter?

KDE communications director Lisa Gross told Kentucky School News and Commentary this morning, "The board discussed all relevant issues during its executive session with Barbara Erwin at the meeting in Bowling Green in May. There are no plans to add formal discussion of any further issues to this meeting's agenda. However, the board members can raise any issues (related to Dr. Erwin or not) at any time during the meeting."

If that's the case, do any members plan to bring the matter to the floor?
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In a related story, the Herald-Leader reports:

Three high-profile employees with the Kentucky Department of Education announced that they will retire several weeks before new education commissioner
Barbara Erwin takes the department's top post.

Erwin, who was hired in May despite controversy over errors on her resume and outcry from critics in other districts she's led, will now need to replace three commissioners -- Linda France, Pam Rogers and Starr Lewis -- when she arrives in July.

KDE spokeswoman Lisa Gross said the retirements are not related to the hiring of Erwin...

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Meanwhile, the Chicagoland papers continue to express frustration with Erwin's modus operandi and some can't wait for Erwin to pack her bags and go.

The St. Charles Board of Education will meet in closed session today at 4 p.m. and again tomorrow at 4 p.m. with potential action on alleged willful violations of the Open Meetings Act to follow.
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Yesterday the St Charles Sun wrote:

Board President Kathy Hewell was quoted in the Louisville Courier-Journal as claiming Erwin was a victim of an "abuse of power by the board president." ...The only victims I see are the residents of District 303. We have Erwin retiring and coming back faster than Roger Clemens. And when that "retirement" turned into a job in Kentucky, we learned those spiffy "superintendent of the year" awards so proudly placed in her resume are fictional! Erwin chalks this up to an inaccurate typist, but four errant words is one heck of a typo! And in a final flip of the bird, after insisting her departure was Aug. 4, she changed it to July 13. Add mass staff defections to rock bottom morale to a growing divide between North and East and all I can say is, if you have kids, avoid the bluegrass state.

I do believe those who run for school board undertake that endeavor with the best of intentions. It's the failure to admit those ulterior motives to oneself that causes problems. It's when making that mark becomes more important than teamwork. It's when serving on a school board becomes all about you and not about your students.

...The St. Charles School Board needs a leader who understands that vain self-interest weakens the very institution entrusted to them by the voters.

That's true in Illinois.

It's equally true in Kentucky.

Resume lies a major concern for employers

MSNBC reports:

As dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Marilee Jones was responsible for ensuring that applicants represented their academic backgrounds honestly. So it was more than a shock when the 55-year-old resigned Thursday, admitting that she had misled school officials over a 28-year period into believing that she held three degrees from New York institutions. In fact, she had never received even an undergraduate degree from any school.

While Jones's case is extreme, it points to a major concern for any corporation or institution that hires employees: embellishments and outright lies on résumés. Sue Murphy, association manager of the Human Resources Association, says... "We used to try to have the applicant provide two or three business references. But now … employers are being much more aggressive about checking applicants' backgrounds, and if they can afford it they are even hiring third parties to do background checks."

One of those third parties, ADP Screening and Selection Services, said it conducted 5.8 million background checks in 2006, a 20 percent increase from 2005. Out of nearly 500,000 reference verifications ADP did last year, 41 percent came back with some sort of discrepancy between the employment, education or credentials information provided by the applicant and what the source reported...

But if an employer doesn't catch the falsehoods, how does an employee live with such a big lie..?

...Psychologist Paul Ekman from the University of California Medical School in San Francisco (who has not spoken with Jones, and only knows of her situation from media reports) speculates that Jones's case is likely related to self-esteem...

Ekman says many people are tempted to exaggerate their credentials for the same reason a kid exaggerates his father's strength, but that most people resist. "They either know from past experience that they could never get away with it—perhaps because they are bad liars, they don't like taking risks—some people are risk takers so it attracts them to lying, or they are religiously observant," Ekman says...

But while Ekman says everyone tells little white lies, which don't have any serious repercussions, the potential damages caused by hiring a poorly qualified employee are serious for companies. In fact, citing an example where a man lied on an application for a job as a bridge engineer (his dishonesty was discovered before any bridges were built), Murphy says there is serious liability for employers. "We live in a much more litigious society, so employers are trying to protect themselves against liability," Murphy says. "In today's hiring process it is very rare that employers are not going above and beyond trying to verify people's backgrounds."

...With such diligence, it's much riskier for today's job hunters to lie than it was 30 years ago when Jones filled out her first application at MIT, Murphy says. "When she moved up, she may not have had the degrees but she had the work experience to be good at her job, so were we cheated?" Ekman asks. "The real issue here is what does she represent to young people. Clearly she's not a good role model on how to get ahead in the world, so at least you could say she is a good lesson."

The Texas Two--step

Care to dance?

Ronnie Ellis of the CNHI News Service posted a story yesterday which, at once, clarifies and muddies the issues surrounding one of Barbara Erwin's four resume indescretions.

What’s being discussed are three lines from her resume; a central part of her application for the position of commissioner of education.

"AASA 1999 National Superientendent of the Year"
"TASA 1998 Texas Superintendent of the Year"
"TASB 1997 Texas Superintendent of the Year"

Three lines.

Three Awards.

Three different years.

As Ellis reports, Erwin has offered different explanations for her claim that she was Texas SOY in 1998, "depending on her audience." She originally told reporters the error was a "typo" and that it should have been written to say she was nominated by TASA for the AASA award.

Then she said that it must have occurred as various unnamed persons typed and re-typed her resume "over several years" and she never caught the mistake.

But in executive session, she presented hardware for the board to examine persuading them that items on her resume "check out."

When reporters asked her to explain why she didn't tell them she had plaques and rings in the first place she said it was because she didn't have the resume in front of her. Then she shifted her position and said the typo she was referring to was in the spelling "Superientendent" on one of the listed awards. See above.

Huh? Not the 1998 date?

Dr. Johnny Veselda, Executive Director of the Texas Association of School Administrators told Ellis, "I believe it is reasonable for her to say she was twice named Superintendent of the Year." He made this comment despite the fact that his organization presents no such award. He explained the date confusion as a matter of timing - that she was considered for the 1999 nomination during 1998.

So that's the news on resume Error #1. Clear as mud. TASA doesn't give such an award - but maybe they do - or at least it's reasonable for us to think of it that way - whatever the year.

Ellis goes on to discuss her explanation for resume error #2. The lines in question here are:

"Triple I Conference
Presentations on School Improvement, AP, Superintendent Search Process
Chicago, Illinois, 2004 & 2006 Conferences"

What do these lines say to you?

Well, to Barbara Erwin they seem to say, 'If I signed off on it, I did it.' When the Illinois Association of School Boards officials could not verify that she presented anything during the 2006 conference, Erwin seemed to argue that it was sufficient that she might introduce the real presenters, and that she had to "sign off on" their participation. When these individuals returned to the district and made their report to the St Charles Board of Education, there was no representation that she presented anything. That would have been an audacious thing to say in front of folks who knew better. The difference between the professional activity necessary to present at a conference (and therefore deserving of credit) - and the professional activity needed to introduce the real presenters is - everything.

For some, Error #3 is a throw away item. She confuses her membership in the education honorary Kappa Delta Pi (unconfirmed), with and undergraduate mens fraternity. But others who value high academic standards for students express frustration with Erwin's obvious carelessness with the preparation and review of her resume - a document that should command extreme care. These critics decry her apparent lack of technical writing/editing skills as a major flaw.

But let's not become confused. The real issue is about her character as demonstrated through ethical practice. (For you school administrators: the problems lie in ISSLC Standard Five.) There is, indeed, a bothersome pattern here.

Error #4 is Erwin's claim that she served on the AASA Executive Board from 1991 to 2001, a ten-year period, when in fact she only served three years on what the AASA calls their executive committee.

Again, a bothersome pattern. Everythng is presented in a style that is just a bit grander than reality. Sounds great; we want it to be true, but it doesn't quite test out.


I was touched by a comment made to me by a St Charles resident the other day. After viewing Trevor Frye's terrific photo from the Herald-Leader, this sympathetic person, who has seen Erwin in action, was taken aback, saying the stress on Erwin's face was visible; the tight lipped smile; the resolve; brassing it out; grace under pressure…

When she's not hacking off the folks she works with, you've gotta know that Barbara Erwin has personality and skills.

But that's not the concern here. Kentucky's schools do a whole lot of good for a whole lot of people, but the board of education was not created to be a benevolent society nor a guarantor of employment for the charming. The example set by our leader, in this crucial position, must be above reproach. We cannot hope to raise the expectations for our teachers and students while simultaneously lowering them for our commissioner; their leader. We can not hope to convince our legislators to make the necessary investments in our schools if the message is undermined by questions about the messenger.

Typos?
Poor secretarial help?
Exaggerations?
Sign offs?
The twistifycations?

Whatever happened to "no excuses?"

Employers Crack Down On Candidates Who Lie

The Wall Street Journal's Career Journal reports:

Carl Norcross of Boulder, Colo., a corporate recruiter for high-tech companies, interviewed a sales-rep candidate who said he had a bachelor's degree.

On checking, Mr. Norcross discovered that the man had left college after three years. "My wife typed my resume," the candidate explained. "She thought I had a degree, and I didn't have the heart to tell her I didn't." But he didn't get the job. "A person who lied on his resume is going to lie on sales reports," Mr. Norcross says.

But many job applicants don't seem to get the message about the risks of lying. Numerous surveys by search firms show that job applicants continue to falsify or embellish their credentials. "They lie most frequently about education and employment, particularly about duties and dates of employment," says Lisa Gallagher, vice president of operations at background-checking firm HireRight Inc., Irvine, Calif...

...After discovering repeated falsehoods, CEO Jude Werra started checking credentials even before interviewing candidates. "In the old days, you assumed you could rely on what was represented and checked references at the end of the process when you and the client had already invested several hours," he says. The firm tracks education because it's easy to check. "It's hard to evaluate other representations," he says. For example, it's hard to argue with "I was responsible for the growth of my former employer."

Misrepresentations can be sly. "Someone told me he was on the Harvard football team," reports Richard Taylor, CEO of Stamford, Conn.-based executive-search firm Taylor-Rodgers & Associates LLC. "He actually attended summer courses, never graduated and was never on the team." Mr. Taylor has also been told of fictitious ranks in the armed forces and attainment of Eagle Scout status.

...Falsehoods often are discovered after employees are hired. "I've seen division presidents get fired because they falsely represented that they had a college degree," says Mr. Taylor. "If five years later the company is sold, the new people may do a check and find it out. They don't want someone with a character issue. Then, too, they'll have their own people and be looking for reasons to get rid of the old ones. Lying is just not an option. It will catch up with you."

And the hits just keep on comin' - Erwin claimed 2 Texas SOY Awards as a candidate in Illinois

A reader of Kentucky School News and Commentary just pointed out that Erwin pawned off her claim of two awards for Texas Superintendent of the Year on the good folks of St Charles, too.

(See the post earlier today: "More on the Commish mess from the Bluegrass Policy blog")

From the Chicago Tribune, 13 January 2004. I posted it (April 19th) before the resume indescretion issue arose and didn't think to check back. So, good work Anonymous! Give us your name next time - or not.

The Tribune wrote:
"St. Charles Community Unit District 303 announced Monday that Barbara Erwin of Scottsdale, Ariz., would be its next superintendent...Erwin has been chief administrator of the Scottsdale Unified School District...."Dr. Erwin has `been there, done that,' and more," said Mary Jo Knipp, president of the District 303 Board of Education. "She has been in the trenches and has really made a difference. "Erwin is a 33-year educator who was twice named superintendent of the year while working in Texas from 1994 to 2000, where she headed the Allen Independent School District in Allen."


The Sun, (St. Charles IL) January 14, 2004 also wrote on the topic and sure made it sound like there were 3 distinct claims on the resume. The Sun reported, "Throughout her career, Erwin has received many honors, Knipp said. Twice, she was named Superintendent of the Year in Texas, and she was nominated for National Superintendent of the Year in 1999."

Resume Indiscretions Remain Widespread

It seemed somehow sadly ironic that Marilee Jones' title at MIT was dean of admissions.Her owning up this week to misrepresenting the qualifications on her résumé more than a quarter-century ago will have struck a chord among more people than you might think. And at a higher level than you might imagine.

Human resources surveys regularly show that anything upward of a third of résumés may be knowingly incorrect, from "padding"--or overplaying qualifications or previous work experience--to outright falsehoods, while companies generally are spending more time conducting background checks and verifying claims.

In a survey by CareerBuilder.com last October, over half of HR managers said they had flagged a lie on an applicant's résumé - 93% of them did not hire the candidate.

A 2004 report by the Government Accountability Office found that 463 government employees in eight federal agencies had listed bogus academic credentials on their résumés.

In February 2006, the CEO of Radio Shack resigned after 11 years at the helm when an investigation by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram had turned up overstated qualifications on his academic record.

Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA, much-criticized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, found himself at the sharp end of an investigation by Time magazine, which indicated that he had padded his experience in emergency management prior to his appointment.

Notre Dame football coach George O'Leary resigned just five days after his appointment in 2001, over academic discrepancies.

This from Forbes.com.