A gathering spot for warriors fighting for their special-needs children

If you're one of the many who have come to the realization that your public school system is out to get away with doing the absolute minimum for your special-needs child and is not actually interested in helping or educating your child, join the crowd. Bring some passion and some factual evidence and step into the fray.

Monday, December 27, 2010

Career Suicide: Data Driven!

One of the walls you bang your head into whenever you try to challenge someone inside the APS reality distortion field is the "Yes, but we're data-driven!" mantra the Bevvy Hall acolytes repeat like--well, a mantra--whenever they're challenged on any little thing.

Back when I was still covering technology for CNN my producers and I had a list of phrases we would ban from any report, because they were so hackneyed, cliched and (almost always) inaccurate. They were usually phrases that the PR folks or product reps would try to work into any soundbite they gave us about their products. My favorite one of these is this one:

"Our customers told us they wanted this feature."

When you heard that, you always knew there was a major bug with the product and they just couldn't figure out how to fix it.

I'll give you two examples: when the very first .mp3 players appeared on the market (long before the iPod came along and made everyone else irrelevant), one of the very first was a particularly difficult-to-use product that required the user to reboot their computer OUT of Windows and into the computer's BIOS (basic in-out system) in order to hack in some software that would allow the player to load music.

It was a catastrophically bad and user-unfriendly product, and yet when I challenged its marketing rep on the phone about this BIOS nonsense, he gave me exactly the sentence I was expecting:

"Our customers told us they wanted it this way."

A couple of years later, when I had to sign up for AOL service using my own credit card so we could report on some AOL story or other (this was long before AOL devoured Time Warner like a snake devouring a rat--exactly like a snake devouring a rat, actually)--I found myself having to call AOL a couple of weeks later to cancel the account, because our reporting was finished. Only they didn't let me leave. Oh, they told me my account was cancelled, but I kept getting billed. For months. And every time I spoke to a new rep, I was again reassured that my account was cancelled and my credit card charges were being refunded. Of course, as we all know now, AOL was engaged in a systematic campaign of retaining and charging customers who had tried to cancel their service, and I was among the many victims. When I finally lost patience and called AOL Corporate --this time as a CNN correspondent--and got into a yelling match with an absolute nightmare of a VP, she again used the magic words: "Our customers have told us they like to be sure about their decision to cancel before all of their accumulated information is deleted, so we like to give them some extra time, but we always honor their wishes."

(No, you didn't, and by the way, fuck you for destroying Time Warner and my 401 (k), you overrated, arrogant assholes).

But I digress.

The point I was making was how whenever you try to tell somebody in APS how utterly inadequate a job they're doing at something, the first words out of their mouth are likely to be:

"but we are using data-driven best practices."

Of all the frauds committed on the public while Bevvy Hall has been in office, she must be most proud of her ability to con so many smart people into believing that if you call something data-driven it's unassailable. Shame on all of you for buying into that crap as long as you did. Me? I snorted in derision the first time I heard it.

It's almost always uncool to point out instances where you were right about something and a whole lot of other people were wrong. That's bullshit. This wasn't hard to figure out. It was right there in front of you all along. I didn't have any trouble spotting it--I attended a few meetings with these laptop-toting "data specialists" and could tell right away they contributed nothing of value to the process. My wish for the new year is that these parasites will all be forcibly relocated to careers where they don't directly suck needed resources away from children.

Meltdown


It's like watching an old newsreel of the Hindenberg disaster frame by frame. You see it in front of you in super-slow-motion and yet you can't quite believe it's really happening; you can't get your head around the enormity of it all. Such is the experience of watching the Atlanta Public School System go down in flames. I'll have a lot more to say about that coming up in the next weeks.

It's been a good long while since I last posted. In that interval, two important things happened. We had a baby daughter, and we sued the Atlanta Public Schools for failing to provide a free and appropriate public education for our son Vance (about whom you can read elsewhere on this blog). I haven't had the stomach to write much about the lawsuit, frankly, because even though we obtained a settlement that was exactly what we wanted, I'm disgusted that we had to file it at all.

You can download the lawsuit PDF here, if you're interested. If you don't feel like wading through 58 pages of legalese, I'll break it down for you this way:

There were a bunch of things, none terribly difficult to figure out or to do, that APS was required by law to do for our autistic son. If they had the will or ability to do these things, it would not have been terribly difficult or expensive. But most of the people we encountered in the special ed program known as the APS PEC (Program for Exceptional Children) were either unwilling or unable to do what they were hired, trained and compensated to do, and as a result, the Atlanta Public School system is now paying for our child to attend a private school that costs a small fortune.

Now, you might think that as the parent of this child I would be happy that he is now enrolled in a very expensive private school requiring his own private carpool (for a 90-minute daily round trip), but you would be wrong. I couldn't possibly be more pissed off about it than I am. It didn't have to be this way. Vance could still be--and should be-- at his lovely brand-new neighborhood school (SPARK). As a taxpayer, as a libertarian, as a parent--I am outraged that the school system failed Vance so utterly that it must now squander a huge amount of money (I'm bound by the terms of the settlement not to discuss precise sums) correcting its own mistakes. And you should be too.