5 ways to deflect public anger and demonstrate accountability

For any BCPS board member, admininstrator or task force member who is feeling under siege lately, here are some tips from a very perceptive guy*:

How to deflect anger and demonstrate accountability

1. [Create] a video record
2. Let the voters speak first.
3. Vote NO on additional compensation.
4. Zero tolerance for ethical lapses.
5. "Say what you mean and mean what you say."

The list is excellent. And it's remarkable that BCPS leaders and the politicians who oversee them have failed to do any of these things adequately in recent years.

*Frank Luntz. The list comes from page 125 of his recent book What Americans Really Want . . . Really: The Truth About Our Hopes Dreams and Fears.

Dezmon & Hairston play race card on AG, state legislators and 2,000 BCPS parents and teachers

In an effort to avoid cooperating with an ethics probe about AIM, former BCPS staffer Dr. Barbara Dezmon didn't play just any race card, she played the nuclear bomb of race cards, the "it's-like-a-lynching" race card. She made this allegation with no explanation.

A few days later, Superintendent Dr. Joe Hairston backed her up. He didn't use the nuclear/lynching option. But he played the race card too, and was just as vague about the details.


Related: Video with Larry Willmore & Jon Stewart: The Race Card is Maxed Out. A similar take from IowaHawk: Beltway Adventure.

Is Joe Hairston going to fritter away $17M in "Race to the Top" funds for BCPS?

Veteran BCPS-watcher and parent Laurie Taylor-Mitchell seems to think so:

Commentary: Isn’t there a better way to spend $17.4 million in Baltimore County Schools?

by Laurie Taylor-Mitchell

... BCPS has presented how they wish to spend the "Race to the Top" funds in the school system. ...

Within one category of $5 million dollars, the BCPS proposals include another major expenditure on virtual learning at Chesapeake High School. Didn't this school receive a multi-million dollar virtual learning center last year? ...

Why are thousands of other dollars being spent on developing a virtual high school and games? ...

Part of the $5 million would be spent to develop a data tracking system. Data tracking systems exist all over the country - why are they spending millions on this at the local level? Who is going to get this huge amount of money -- what BCPS department or office? ...

What stakeholders were included in the process by BCPS? On page 11, Exhibit N from the Board meeting states that the projects were devised with "input from the community." Who exactly within the "community" gave input? Were they parents, students, or teachers? What did they say?

Finally, given the wording for the two positions described on page 19 of Exhibit N, it appears that BCPS is proposing to spend $460,000 to pay a Director and Fiscal Assistant to manage spending these funds.

According to Ms. Bowie, not a single Board member asked a question about how these funds were to be spent at the meeting.

Parents of children in County public schools ... should consider calling BCPS and ask if any funds are slated for their school ... These proposals will be submitted to the State Department of Education on November 3. Please consider contacting Mr. Earnest E. Hines, President of the Baltimore County Board of Education, if you are concerned about the proposals for Race to the Top funds in Baltimore County, at 410-887-4126. The Project Manager for the Race to the Top funds is Dr. James Foran, Maryland State Department of Education, 200 West Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD 21201, Phone: 410-767-0589.

Emphasis added.

It sure looks like AIM all over again.

A good article on AIM and Dr. Hairston's grilling in Annapolis last week

Here it is, from Bryan Sears:

Delegates and senators from Baltimore County said they didn't get a lot of answers out of Baltimore County Public Schools Superintendent Joe Hairston last week . . .

Not many people believe this:

Hairston told legislators Feb. 18 that the directive had been sent out without his knowledge, while he was on medical leave for a double knee replacement.

"While all of this was going on, I was not on duty," Hairston said. "I came back on duty and corrected all this."

This is accurate:

Much of the two-hour meeting with Hairston was fraught with tension. More than once, legislators indicated frustration or irritation as Hairston, who attended with Joanne Murphy and Ed Parker, president and a member of the Board of Education, respectively, declined to answer questions, citing confidentiality or personnel issues.

The hearing was filled with momemts like this:

That prompted Sen. Jim Brochin, a Democrat who represents the Towson area, to ask if Hairston could offer any specifics on the communications issue.

Hairston, Murphy and Parker sat mute. Brochin asked a second time, then moved on.

Del. Wade Kach, a former teacher, is doing some good things:

Kach said a majority in the House of Delegates is willing to ask Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler to investigate AIM on two fronts. . . whether AIM's implementation represents a conflict of interest [and] whether a school system committee studying AIM violated the state's open meetings act . . .

"This is a big deal," said Kach, who taught for 30 years in the school system. "People are very upset."

How not to respond to angry parents and concerned legislators (the AIM saga continues)

[UPDATE: After getting some feedback this morning, I've changed a few words in the sixth paragraph. It's more accurate now. When someone points out a mistake in this blog, I try to fix it quickly. In this case, within three hours. If only Dr. Hairston and BCPS were so responsive and so concerned about truth and transparency. I submitted a long list of AIM questions to BCPS/Greenwood two or three weeks ago. I still haven't gotten a response.]

In the wake of Superintendent Joe Hairston's recent visit with the PTA, BCPS communications staffer Charles Herndon tried to smooth things over with a letter to the Forge Flyer. It starts:

Dr. Hairston was gracious enough to meet with the [Baltimore County PTA] Council

Gracious? It was not gracious of Dr. Hairston to meet with the PTA. It's his job to meet with important constituencies of the school system. Maybe Mr. Herndon meant the least common meaning of gracious:

Condescendingly courteous; indulgent

Yes, that captures it. Dr. Hairston often treats key stakeholders, such as the county's top-level PTA, like ignorant kids. As Jean Suda put it after the PTA Council meeting with Dr. Hairston:

I left . . . with the impression of having watched an old episode of "Father Knows Best." [Dr. Hairston] was there to hear us, but not to listen in a way that might lead to any modification of his thinking. . . . If we don't agree with him, there must be something wrong with us.

Dr. Hairston, we don't like being treated this way.

Mr. Herndon continues:

Above all, Dr. Hairston tried during the meeting to bring two things to the discussion that have been sorely missing – context and accurate information.

Accurate information has indeed been sorely missing. Because, except for some Orwellian "straight talk" like this, Greenwood doesn't give us much information.

Parents [Many people, including parents and politicians,] were so upset by [after reading Jean's account of] the PTA council meeting that [according to a well-connected observer] state legislators [stepped up the] pressured [on] Dr. Hairston and two Board of Ed members (JoAnn Murphy and Ed Parker) to answer questions at a hearing in Annapolis last Thursday. After receiving a few hours of Dr. Hairston's "accurate information, " state delegates and senators responded with comments such as these:

• "Was that a yes or a no, Dr. Hairston?"
  
• "You sound like President Clinton parsing the definition of 'is'."
  
• "I'm very disappointed that you've been pleading the Fifth all over the place."
• "None of you [Hairston, Murphy and Parker] seem to want to answer our questions."
  

Something is wrong here--really, really wrong. I'm still not sure exactly what it is, but I hope to find out.

An assessment of AIM from an IT perspective

I emailed this letter six days ago (early on 2/15/10) to twenty or more people at BCPS. I got no responses.

Dear BCPS Board Members,

A parent's notes of the February 4th PTA council meeting with Dr. Hairston include this line: "most importantly, at the end of the discussion, the Superintendent revealed that he intends to implement AIM this spring." I'm not sure whether this statement is accurate or inaccurate. Either way, it's an indication of a serious problem with the Baltimore County Public Schools.

I have been a BCPS parent for over eight years. I also have a decade and a half of experience in the information technology industry. In those 15 years I have not observed any IT project that was so consistently and seriously flawed as AIM. Here are some examples of what I mean:

1. CONCEPTION. Neither the superintendent nor his staff have ever, to my knowledge, communicated why we need AIM.

2. PLANNING. There is no evidence of planning, whether it be cost estimates or implementation plans.

3. DESIGN. The designers have fallen into one of the worst mistakes in the IT business: building a system to meet the vague wishes of management without taking time to understand the specific needs of the folks who enter the data. This is a guaranteed recipe for GIGO: garbage in, garbage out.

4. USABILITY: The AIM application is clumsy and unnecessarily time-consuming. The user interface is very poorly constructed, even if one judges it based on 15-year-old pre-internet standards.

5. TESTING. BCPS claims that AIM has been "rigorously tested," but they refuse to divulge any details of test plans, benchmarks or test results.

6. IMPLEMENTATION. The superintendent sprang the implementation on unsuspecting teachers and parents in a December surprise. One teacher described it as "like Pearl Harbor."

In each of these phases, BCPS leadership has communicated poorly, failed to listen and demonstrated a disturbing lack of transparency.

AIM is the epitome of a poorly thought out, poorly designed and poorly implemented program. But it keeps rising from the dead like a zombie. Will you please help us kill it for good?

Sincerely,

Dave Greene
BCPS parent
Member, "End AIM Now!" Facebook group
BaltoNorth.blogspot.com

BCPS Board of Education:

Ms. JoAnn Murphy
Mr. H. Edward Parker
Dr. Joe Hairston
Ms. Jacqueline Camp
Mr. James Coleman
Mr. Earnest Hines
Mr. Rodger Janssen
Ms. Ramona Johnson
Ms. Margaret O'Hare
Mr. Joseph Pallozzi
Ms. Valerie Roddy
Mr. Lawrence Schmidt
Mr. David Uhlfelder

Del. Wade Kach asks Maryland A.G. Gansler to investigate BCPS conflict of interest on AIM project

Here's the latest on AIM ethics and conflict-of-interest from the East County Times:

Retired county public school teacher Delegate Wade Kach (R-5B) is in the process of asking Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler to look into possible conflicts of interest involving the Articulated Instruction Module (AIM) which was prepared for grades K-12. . . . One of Kach's concerns is that Dr. Barbara Dezmon, an assistant school superintendent and creator of the program, may be a recipient of royalties if AIM is purchased by other school systems in the future. "The person who developed this program is an employee of the Board of Education. The program should be the property of the Board, not an individual," Kach opined.

Thank you, Del. Kach.

Dr. Dezmon, Assistant to the Superintendent for Equity and Assurance, has been feeling the heat for months now. If she really believes in the AIM program for its own sake, she should do the right thing and sign over any AIM-related IP rights to Baltimore County.

Another issue: BCPS seems to be violating the open meetings law.

A third question came to mind when he learned that the meeting of the committee to review AIM, handpicked by Superintendent Hairston, was closed to the public. In addition, he was told by Cheryl Bost, TABCO president, who is not a member of the AIM committee, that she was escorted out of the room when she tried to listen in. "It appears that the open meetings law is not being followed," he noted.

Dr. Hairston's long-standing practice of secretive mushroom management* is fast becoming a major issue among BCPS parents. The inner workings of the Greenwood bureaucracy need a triple dose of sunlight. The Rx for BCPS: Transparency. Transparency. Transparency.

*Mushroom Management: When a company's staff [and other stakeholders] are treated like mushrooms: kept in the dark, covered with dung, and – when grown big enough – canned**.

**See, for example, AIM scapegoat and former BCPS Northwest Area Assistant Superintendent Bill Lawrence. Many BCPS teachers believe that Lawrence's transfer/demotion is Hairston's way of diverting AIM-related heat away from himself.

BCPS AIM controversy continues to grow - here's a summary

If you are a Baltimore County Public School parent, please go to Facebook and join the End AIM Now group. The group has grown like a rocket, acquiring almost 1,700 members in two weeks.

AIM stands for "Articulated Instruction Module". It's a pseudo-curriculum and tool for tracking student progress. A strange animal.

Here is my summary of the discussion that's happening on the End AIM Now page. But don't take my word for it. Check it out yourself.

PROBLEMS W/AIM
- Untested
- Confusing - it's another grading system in which "A" is the worst grade
- Confusing - Too much jargon in the items
- Confusing - Items are not sequenced according to how they are taught
- Redundant with existing system
- Time consuming for teachers (high opportunity cost)
- Uneven quality of the content
- Infected w/some politically correct language
- Terrible computer/user interface
- Unintended consequence: many teachers are already planning to quit BCPS to teach in other counties if AIM passes.

PROBLEMS W/THE PLANNING, DESIGN & IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS
- Secret
- No input from teachers & parents
- Dropped in our laps as a surprise in December

PROBLEMS W/BCPS LEADERSHIP
- Arrogance
- Not listening
- Mischaracterizing opposition to AIM
- Atmosphere of fear
- Conflict of interest (one BCPS employee who has a company on the side apparently owns copyrights to the material and stands to make money if BCPS implements AIM.)
- Creepy Kabuki theatre atmosphere of BCPS school board meetings (criticism disappears into the ether ... it's very rare for a citizen commenter to get any reaction or response to complaints made in the comment period. The board tends to sit expressionless. Then the open meeting ends, and they go back to their secret meetings.)

BETTER SOLUTIONS
- Make easy fixes to the existing system first.

POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES IF BCPS AIM "STREAMLINING" COMMITTEE DOES NOT KILL THE PROGRAM BY 1/26
- A dump-the-superintendent campaign or a dump-the-AIM creator campaign.
- Lobbying the governor to appoint anti-AIM board members
- A moral suasion campaign to get interested officials to pressure BCPS leadership (Jim Smith, county council, state legislators)
- Ridicule.

QUESTIONS FOR BCPS LEADERSHIP
- How much teacher time has gone into the program?
- Where has this program been tested? Or are we the guinea pigs?

THINGS TO PREPARE FOR UPCOMING MEETINGS
[See the Facebook group for dates, times and locations.]
- Estimates of budget impact
- Specific instances of shoddy quality (One instance: the Algebra part!! Not a single equation in the whole AIM module. Nary an x or a y or a z. It's not sequenced according to how it is taught. This module is abstract, full of jargon, and very hard for parents to understand.)
- Focused messages.

THE CONTEXT
- Poor economy. Citizens, more than ever, are scrutinizing public servants and trying to figure out which ones to keep and which ones need to go.

A FINAL THOUGHT
At every opportunity, BCPS administrators seem to talk about the latest "Blue Ribbon" school, the number of BCPS schools on the Newsweek list of best high schools, Maryland's #1 ranking among public school systems.

But I've never heard any of them worry about this Forbes article: Best and Worst School Districts for the Buck. Baltimore county is in the bottom ten percent. I suspect that programs like AIM are the reason why.

In light of this, it rankles to hear the superintendent's frequent references to BCPS's "award-winning" budgeting and financial management program. When public servants talk too much about awards, it usually means they don't have much in the way of results to brag about.

BCPS AIM controversy: Baltimore Sun drops ball, downplays number & passion of AIM opponents

Criticism at Baltimore County school board meetings tends to be muted and depersonalized. When teachers let their passion show in the comment period, the norm is to attack policies but not the integrity of the people behind them.

The striking thing about last night's meeting was the breech of this norm by the last speaker, BCPS math teacher James Beam.

Beam is the organizer of End AIM Now, a Facebook page that has attracted 1,600 members in 11 days. While criticizing AIM, here's what Beam said about Superintedent Joe Hairston:

With the dawn of the Articulated Instruction Module (AIM) we have seen Dr. Hairston ascend to his throne. He no longer works collaboratively with us. Cronies are allowed to make decisions in his absence and we are forced to accept that there is no check against this new found unbridled authority. New policy immediately displaces everything that we have come to believe and trust as best practices.

Meetings are now held in secret, to the point that we cannot find out who is attending them, let alone see a copy of their minutes. Our teachers and administrators are afraid to speak out against this because they fear losing the livelihood that feeds their family.

The outsider has become king. He rules with an iron fist, and we suffer.

The applause following Beam's comments was among the most enthusiastic and prolonged that I've heard at a board meeting.

One thing that mystifies me is the blandness of the Sun's coverage. Here's the bowdlerized soundbite from Beam that Liz Bowie and her editors chose to include:

James Beam, a math teacher from Parkville High School, praised Hairston for some of his previous initiatives. But he said with AIM, "He no longer works collaboratively with us." Beam said the AIM progress reports "should be taken off the table."

Don't they want to sell newspapers?

Ann Miller did a much better job in the Examiner.

It seems to me that Dr. Hairston continues to underestimate the breadth and depth of opposition to AIM.

Hairston blamed the outcry on some ill-informed teachers who he said were blowing the issue out of proportion and wanting to create a controversy where there was none.

"These people are creating the crisis out there," he said.

It's time for him to wake up and smell the coffee.

This BCPS parent thinks James Beam's aim is right on target.