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.

We interrupt this regularly scheduled ranting....

To announce the birth of Siena Vee Lockridge, born Sept. 7th, 2010, at about 1:40 in the afternoon at Northside Hospital in Atlanta. Debuting at 8 lbs, 4 oz and 22 inches long, and as of this writing (9-9) the baby is following her mom's example and exceeding all expectations in every way.

APS's Wall of Shame

Uh, maybe it's time to take this down...?

As recently as Aug. 20, 2010, this giant posterboard trumpeting APS's CRCT scores in the cheating-plagued 2008-2009 school year was still greeting visitors to APS headquarters downtown.

Do you think they still want visitors to believe that these scores were legit?

I think they still refuse to let go of the notion the scores were utterly fraudulent. They're determined to believe no cheating occurred. Or maybe they have no sense of irony. See more photos here.

Auditing the Program for Exceptional Children

I have obtained a draft of the "Self-Improvement Audit" of the Program for Exceptional Children. The audit is being done by a team of education professionals led by the Boston-based EDC, Inc. You can download the audit (minus the CVs of the auditors) here.

I'll be blogging about it in the days ahead.

My letter to Arne Duncan

Okay, so former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin decides to take it upon herself as a private citizen to appeal to US Education Sec'y Arne Duncan (AKA "White Shaq") to help us with our APS problems.

I say that's a great idea, and here is mine to go with hers.

Dear Arne:

First of all, you are SO freaking tall. What is up with that? Could you bend over a little so I am not just looking up your gigantic tunnel-sized nostrils?

We have a problem. All the statistical gains our city school district claims to have made over the past few years are now turning up to be either fraudulent or doctored in some way. We stacked the chips to get a good NAEP score and then we got blindsided by a few educators who decided to cheat on the CRCTs.

OK, maybe not a few. OK, it was more like a hundred and nine.

But we can't get rid of our superintendent, because she's, like, really popular and won a bunch of awards and it would be embarrassing now to admit that none of the test-score gains or dropout-rate reductions she's claiming are actually valid. (Could we please just not talk any more about scores and data right now? It's kind of a sore spot).

All of us parents who are professionals in other fields know our school district is really screwed. We can't fix it unless we fire everybody who isn't a teacher or principal then fire the bottom ten percent of those, then ask everyone to reapply for their old jobs then turn away most of those who do. Then we have to go back and re-fire everyone who snuck back in via nepotism and "connections," then we have to re-re-fire anyone who got back in to a job where they only collect and sort PowerPoint data.

Because the thing about data collection is this: we were never really good at it. We fudged a lot of numbers and missed some big ones, like the ones that would have told us 58 of our schools had test-cheating issues. And we thought our dropout rate was dropping, but it was, like, exponentially rising.

Oops.

But because our school leaders made such a big whoop about data, it's kind of hard for them to now admit all those data-manipulation jobs were just siphoning away money from people who actually educate children.

Could you please fix all of this for us? After all, it's not fair to have to blame the boss when things go wrong. I mean, I know everyone blamed Obama for not handling the BP spill better, but that's different. Why? Because....well, it just is.

God, you are so unbelievably tall. Where do you buy your suits?

And I know they blamed Obama for all the other stuff that has gone wrong and that it's sort of the American Way to fire the manager when the ballplayers are on a big losing streak, but....well, I just think that is so unfair, because our super is such a nice lady and if you put her out of a job, what in the world is her $100k/year driver going to do to put food on the table? Have a HEART to match the size of your pituitary gland, would ya?

We want you to come down here and tell the local newspaper to stop being so mean. And stop publishing so many facts.

Oh, I forgot one other thing we'd like you to fix. Most of the kids in our system--well, their parents really suck. They're uninterested in helping educate their kids and think our schools are just daycare paid for by taxes paid by people who work and pay taxes (people not like them, in other words). Could you please fix all those parents?

We're counting on you!

Your pals,

The top 10% of APS parents (don't ask me how we got that percentage. Please).

"Tight" security for APS CRCT cheating--er, testing.

In the latest (summer 2010) issue of that must-read periodical "The Atlanta Educator" (you might not have received a copy, or used yours to line a bird cage, so I'll clue you in here), Bev Hall writes one slender paragraph addressing the massive, catastrophic CRCT cheating at APS (which, of course, she's in complete denial about):

"Let me also take time to note that the district anxiously awaits results of an investigation concerning excessive erasures on 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test (CRCT) answer sheets. Headed up by a blue-ribbon panel of business and community leaders, the investigation is expected to be complete by mid- June. Initial reports have found that the district has “tight” testing security and is using many exemplary practices. To strengthen our processes, the panel made a number of recommendations that we implemented for the 2010 CRCT, which our students took in April."

Yup, that's it. That's all she has to say about it.

What "initial reports" is she talking about?

The only official investigation of the Atlanta Public Schools CRCT scandal is being conducted by the "Blue Ribbon Panel" (wow, what PR genius came up with THAT name?) and will be released Monday, Aug. 2, five months after it began and more than two and a half months later than it was due.

Cite your sources, Bev, then explain how your idea of "tight security" squares with the Panel's findings on Monday, when it becomes clear that the Atlanta Public Schools, under your direct supervision, have indeed set a new standard for cheating on standardized tests; a disgrace unequaled by any school district in U.S. history.

You can read the whole issue of "The Atlanta Educator" online, but I won't link to it here, on principle. Any publication that would print such garbage doesn't deserve a link.

Can I use this school-issued credit card to buy me some common sense?

Here's the text of an email I received today from "The Friends of Courtney English," who is our Seat 7 representative on the Atlanta Public Schools Board.

Dear Atlanta Community Member,

As an elected member of the Atlanta Board of Education, I've made a mistake and I hope you will accept my apology.

I did not fully understand the terms of use of a credit card issued to me by the Atlanta Public Schools. I misinterpreted a document that accompanied the credit card when it was issued to me. I mistakenly thought I could use the credit card for personal use as long as I immediately reimbursed the district for any charges incurred.

This is not the policy. I never should have made any personal purchases, period.

I am responsible for $855.83 of disallowed charges made to the credit card between May 29 and June 30, 2010. These charges included an airline ticket, food, gratuities, hotel charges, and other sundries. On July 14, 2010, I reimbursed the district in full for all disallowed charges.

I apologize for this mistake. I take seriously my responsibilities as an elected school board member. I will never make this mistake again.

Sincerely,

Courtney English

Board of Education Seat 7

friendsofCourtneyEnglish@gmail.com
.

And here's what I wrote back to him (corrected from earlier version, where I assumed Courtney was a "her"--rl):

Dear Courtney:

It takes character to admit you made a mistake. Now I hope you will insist on the people you supervise showing the same character.

It is a mistake to try to claim that the worst cheating scandal in the history of standardized testing was the result of some "poor disadvantaged children" trying hard to "correct their own mistakes," as YOUR Atlanta Public Schools spokesman Keith Browery put it when the cheating scandal broke.

To try to actually put this scandal on the backs on the children who were victimized--to, in essence, try to use those children as a shield to deflect criticism from the adults who perpetrated this fraud---now THAT is a mistake that makes yours seem trivial by comparison.

To take credit for being one of the top reformers in the country while in fact your success is largely based on fraudulent test scores (as Bev Hall has done, and is doing)--now THAT is a mistake. Yours is small potatoes compared to that.

When the cheating results are announced on Monday (with a healthy dollop of sugar-coating from the "Blue Ribbon" whatever-it-is, I'm sure), many of us will expect you, our elected leader, to correct some OTHER major mistakes that have been going on lately--like your unwillingness to insist on a permanent director for the Program for Exceptional Children for nearly THREE YEARS now.

Admitting you made a mistake because you're afraid some AJC reporter will find out about it using the Open Records Act is a small first step. (Someone gives you an Atlanta Public Schools credit card and you actually think it would be appropriate to use it for any personal purchases? Give me a break).

If you want forgiveness, show some real courage on Monday.

Let me just add this: does Courtney English not have a credit card of his own? How did it even enter his sphere of consciousness to use a taxpayer-funded credit card --provided for use to him as an elected official -- for personal use?

I think what really happened here is that Courtney English found out that someone from the AJC was sniffing around using the Open Records Act, and he (English) decided to cop a plea before the hammer fell.

How many other APS employees (including Board members) are wondering right now if their own credit card charges are going to be scrutinized now? (Hopefully, the answer is: all of them).

It's only a matter of time until....

Bev Hall and her cronies hear this.

Over/Under: Sept. 1, 2010. I'm feeling optimistic, so I'm going with before (under).

Leveraging the Chaos

In the next few weeks, there will be a tremendous amount of pressure on Bev Hall to step down. The CRCT cheating investigation report is just one reason. There's also the e-Rate scandal, and the news today that Atlanta leads the Metro (by a wide margin) in the percentage of elementary students who fail basic math. The PEC audit, which will also be released in the next couple of weeks, will be very damaging to Hall if it is an honest accounting of that disastrously dysfunctional program.

If you've been reading the AJC (particularly the Get Schooled blog) you see that anger over Hall's performance is rising, and it is now almost impossible to find anyone standing in support of her. This is not the sole gauge one would use to determine if she can survive these scandals, of course, but it is a gauge.

During the hunt for a new superintendent, I feel SPARK parents will have an opportunity to lobby--and obtain--some promises worth obtaining.

1. The Assistant Principal position at SPARK must be guaranteed and fully funded and parents must have the opportunity to participate in--and APPROVE THE HIRING OF--the permanent assistant principal.

This must not be like the principal-hiring process under Bev Hall, in which parents were invited to (under cloak of secrecy) give their opinions, but did not have any sway over the decision itself, which was entirely Bev Hall's to make.

SPARK parents must be allowed to veto any candidate they do not find suitable. The reason we need to ask for this, and the reason we should get it, are as follows:

We didn't get a say in the hiring of Yolonda Brown, who is an energetic principal, and who seems to be generally well-liked, but who was hired on the basis of test score improvements at her prior posting which are now going to be shown to have been fraudulent.

This does not mean Ms. Brown is a fraud. But it does mean that we hired someone who, by no fault of her own (I'm assuming), delivered a resume that was inaccurate.

So we really don't know what we have with Ms. Brown. Is she really a gifted principal, or just a Bev Hall loyalist who benefitted from the CRCT cheating that went on under her watch (if not with her participation)?

We deserve to be able to give her the support of a very capable fully vetted assistant principal and we should demand this. Not suggest it, not push for it, but absolutely demand it. Our leverage here would be to call for the ouster of Ms. Brown, and that's something the Hall administration (or its successor) would very much want to avoid.

2. The administration of SPARK and the key liaisons between SPARK personnel and the APS central office should be summoned to a meeting at which we, the parents, lay down some new rules of the road. SPARK parents should use this opportunity to make it clear that they (the parents) are going to be heavily involved in the day-to-day management of our community public school and that all APS employees had better get used to that way of doing business. The PTO should talk to parent members about what forms this new involvement would take, but it seems clear to me that parent oversight of school processes must be greatly ramped up. School employees resist this with all their might, but we must not be pushed back.

3. The current spokesman for the Atlanta Public Schools, Keith Bromery, must resign or be fired. He has been outrageously disingenuous with the parent/stakeholders of the Atlanta Public Schools. This cannot be tolerated. We must insist to the Board that it hire a spokesperson for the district who will accurately convey the truth, as unpleasant as it may sometimes be, to parents with children in the district. That is the spokesperson's responsibility--to tell the truth. Not to insist that the biggest cheating scandal in the history of standardized testing was due to a few disadvantaged kids who were just trying to correct their own answers "as they'd been instructed to do."

I had a conversation with Keith in late 2009 in which I called him out for his shameless playing of the race card, and I will be happy to talk to the parents about what I see as his dereliction of duty. As a journalist, I am offended by his lack of honesty in dealing with the press, but as a parent, I'm outraged at his willingness to lie to parents.

4. We need to tell our Board that we want the Superintendent selection process to be much more transparent and open to parental input than it has ever been before, and actually follow through by attending Board meetings and confronting our elected Board reps when necessary.

Go with your gut

I have been mulling over what to say about our recent 12-hour IEP marathon with the Atlanta Public Schools' Program for Exceptional Children team assigned to our little boy Vance. Since my mother taught me to always try to say something nice about someone, I'll say this: the 13 people assembled to try to figure out an appropriate way to educate our autistic son never once complained about the length of the meetings or the unconscionably hot temperature in the SPARK conference room. (Really? It's not enough to subject us to the Meetings That Never End; we also must have them in a sweatbox?)...

There is no question some (not all, but some) of the PEC people in that room are dedicated to jobs that provide many opportunities to receive criticism and few to receive praise. But as I often say, none of us is being graded on intentions. It's a given that we all really want to help special-needs children. Nobody gets extra credit for having a super-empathetic attitude.

We're being measured on performance and execution, and on that score, the PEC employees assigned to our child have performed poorly and in some cases disastrously so. I now count thirteen separate serious incidents (in three years) in which PEC employees have willfully failed to comply with the IDIEA law specifying what they're supposed to do for our child. I'm not talking about little missteps here--I'm talking about major screw-ups.

But this posting isn't going to be a rant about that. What I want to do now is talk directly to all of you parents whose children are in the PEC and who have a feeling in your gut that despite the pleasantries you've exchanged with your child's IEP team members and their many little speeches about how hard they're trying and how well they think they're doing by your child, you are still deeply anxious. Something doesn't feel right.

The answer, more than likely, is that your gut is telling you the truth. So trust your gut. Get an advocate. (Ours is the excellent Rachael Barron with the Zimring Law Firm). Rachael has quite literally plucked our child out of the Maelstrom and helped us put him in a private program, the Summit Learning Center, where he is now doing much better and un-learning some of the horrible behaviors he had adopted in the chaotic special-ed classroom at SPARK, under the supervision of an untrained, inexperienced young male paraprofessional who had no qualifications, skill or enthusiasm for the task at hand.

Either PEC employees will willfully try to steer you away from the resources your child needs because of their own budgetary targets, or they'll deny your reasonable, appropriate requests because they don't have adequate personnel (not enough speech therapists, for example) or they'll say no because they don't understand the IDIEA law requires them to say yes. It doesn't matter if their motives are pure or dirty. What matters is that you are not gonna get what you need for your child unless you bring muscle to the meeting. Trust me, going in there with a forceful attitude and with a binder full of research on IDIEA is not enough. I tried it.

Take my advice. Get an advocate for your child. You're going to be up against some really difficult obstacles (and again, I can only speak about the Atlanta Public Schools' special-ed folks; the people in your district may be more trustworthy).

Good luck, and stick with it.

When Educators Are Functionally Illiterate, Part 2

Click on the bingo card to expand it; it's worth it!

Below is an actual unedited email from our son's IEP coordinator at Morningside Elementary School last year. I won't further embarrass the poor guy (who now has reportedly completed his Ph.D) by mentioning his name here, but let's just say that his possession of a Ph.D. proves that some colleges will give sheepskins to any fool who will write them enough checks.

To set the scene: I had been writing and calling this guy for more than a month to pin him down on a summer education program for our son.

When he finally got back to me, weeks too late, this, in its entirety, is what he wrote.

Thank you for your patience regarding an answer for Vance to have Extended
School Year beyond the dates that have been established by the system.

recieved an answer on Friday, April 3rd, 2009.

Being that the program has been in place for the student and that there are no attendance issues, Vance will be offered the opportunity to participate in the ESY according to the dates that were provided to you in the previous e-mail.

due to the severity of his disability, the rate of progress on his goals and the skills that are emerging at this time.

I look forward in meeting with the team to create the Extended Year Plan for Vance.
Thank you,
(name withheld)

Now you tell me whether somebody who can't do better than that should be able to get a high school diploma, never mind a Ph.D.
Here's my point: Do you, my fellow parents, really and truly understand who is setting the standards for your child's education, or are you letting white liberal guilt interfere with your responsibility to demand the very best from our taxpayer-funded system?

When Educators Are Functionally Illiterate, Part 1

OMFG.

Black-on-black crime: the paradox of black-led school districts

The courageous columnist Walter Williams, cousin to the great Dr. J., seen here dunking on black-led school systems






If you believe all that crap about this being "post-racial" America, just imagine the uproar if a white person like me wrote what you're about to read.

But here comes Walter Williams, scholar, straight-shooter and (most importantly) a cousin of the great Dr. J, Julius Erving, to tell it like it is when it comes to black-dominated inner-city school systems. He finds plenty of targets, but, in my opinion, goes too easy on the biggest problem of all: parents who don't understand or emphasize the importance of a good education.

Williams comes to a very pessimistic conclusion; one that (fortunately) may not play out here in Atlanta because of the shifting demographics of the electorate here.

Check it out. See my emphases in bold, and my additional comments at the bottom.


BLACK STUDENTS HELD BACK BY POLITICS, UNION TEACHERS

By WALTER E. WILLIAMS

Detroit’s (predominantly black) public schools are the worst in the nation and it takes some doing to be worse than Washington, D.C.

Only 3 percent of Detroit’s fourth-graders scored proficient on the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) test, sometimes called “The Nation’s Report Card.” Twenty-eight percent scored basic and 69 percent below basic. “Below basic” is the NAEP category when students are unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at their grade level. It’s the same story for Detroit’s eighth-graders. Four percent scored proficient, 18 percent basic and 77 percent below basic.

The academic performance of black students in other large cities such as Philadelphia, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles is not much better than Detroit and Washington.

The education establishment and politicians tell us that we need to spend more for higher teacher pay and smaller class size. The fact of business is higher teacher salaries and smaller class sizes mean little or nothing in terms of academic achievement. Washington, D.C., for example spends over $15,000 per student, has class sizes smaller than the nation’s average, and with an average annual salary of $61,195, its teachers are the most highly paid in the nation.

What about role models? Standard psychobabble asserts a positive relationship between the race of teachers and administrators and student performance. That’s nonsense. Black academic performance is the worst in the very cities where large percentages of teachers and administrators are black, and often the school superintendent is black, the mayor is black, most of the city council is black and very often the chief of police is black.

Black people have accepted hare-brained ideas that have made large percentages of black youngsters virtually useless in an increasingly technological economy. This destruction will continue until the day comes when black people are willing to turn their backs on liberals and the education establishment’s agenda and confront issues that are both embarrassing and uncomfortable.

Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process. They have parents with little interest in their education. These students not only sabotage the education process, but make schools unsafe as well. These students should not be permitted to destroy the education chances of others. They should be removed or those students who want to learn should be provided with a mechanism to go to another school.

Another issue deemed too delicate to discuss is the overall quality of people teaching our children. Students who have chosen education as their major have the lowest SAT scores of any other major. Students who have an education degree earn lower scores than any other major on graduate school admission tests such as the GRE, MCAT or LSAT. Schools of education, either graduate or undergraduate, represent the academic slums of most any university. They are home to the least able students and professors. Schools of education should be shut down.

Yet another issue is the academic fraud committed by teachers and administrators. After all, what is it when a student is granted a diploma certifying a 12th grade level of achievement when, in fact, he can’t perform at the sixth- or seventh-grade level?

Prospects for improvement in black education are not likely given the cozy relationship between black politicians, civil rights organizations and teacher unions.


Rick Lockridge comments:

Numbers don't lie. The numbers tell you that Jewish and Asian families tend to put a strong emphasis on education while Hispanic and African-American families do not. Every time I think about criticizing "black culture" (as if I would have insight into the boundaries of such a thing, if it even is homogeneous enough to have boundaries), I stop short: it's hard to put my shoulder and back into pushing against thugs like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson while my own ethnic group (melanin-deficient Americans) claims 10x the number of Idiots Who Inexplicably Rose To A Position Of Power.

However, Atlanta is gentrifying. There are pockets of affluence and a strong black middle-class, and those communities do in fact emphasize academic excellence. The Atlanta Public Schools will one day soon have an administration that more closely reflects these changing demographics and the district's standards and performance will rise accordingly. Many current APS administrators will be displaced by this rising tide; the shame of it is that like all evolutionary processes, this one just takes too damn long.

I'll mildly disagree with one other of Williams' points. Not all education majors are as unimpressive as Williams contends. Most of the APS teachers and principals I've met are really sharp and really, really dedicated. You could argue that inner-city teachers in black-led school districts have to be much more dedicated than the average teacher because (a) they, too have to fight against a shitty system overpopulated by dead-weight bureaucrats and (b) they often have to fight the bullies, thugs and delinquents for control of their classrooms before they can even think about getting any teaching done. My contempt is reserved for the bureaucrats in the system who do not teach. I have seen so many of these folks in meetings and downtown at 130 Trinity, and they appear to do nothing more than go to meetings and lose track of thousands of pieces of expensive, taxpayer-funded equipment.

Lively banter with Aaron Fernander

Former Bunche Middle School Principal (now Executive Director of the APS Office of Student Programs & Services) Aaron Fernander, seen here standing to the right, wearing the khaki blazer....

I have been complimentary toward Aaron Fernander, the man who's now in charge of, among other things, the APS Program for Exceptional Children) elsewhere in this blog. Last week, I had a little bit more than 2 hours of one-on-one face-time with the man himself; the result of an invitation he extended to me after specific complaints I'd made about some of his employees. (PEC Director Constance Goodson was supposed to be there, too, but begged off because of illness).

Fernander is a big, soft-spoken guy with a cracked Louie-Armstrong voice; perhaps the result of having to shout down a few thousand noisy adolescents at Bunche Middle School, where he was a principal. Before that, he says he spent 17 years as a special-ed teacher, a fact that earns some points with me, for sure.

I went to tell him about specific problems I've faced with PEC staff, improvements I feel must be made, and the way the media can (and, I promised him, will) be used to expose the deep-seated problems at PEC if Fernander doesn't act quickly enough.

Here are the points I made, and his responses to them.

1. PEC employees overwhelmingly have subpar communications skills and a poor "communications work ethic." In my 3-year history comprising hundreds of emails and phone calls directed at nine specific PEC employees, my email records (and APS Open Records Act requests) show that only one individual (a teacher) routinely answered important inquiries in a timely manner. Most failed to reply to a large majority of messages, even important messages, and one individual (Compliance Coordinator Gwen Stokes) has never replied to a single email nor returned a phone call from me. Two of our PEC liaisons could not compose a single sentence in clear English. Their poor grammar and punctuation would have prevented them from passing any college-level language arts course, and yet both had degrees--and one is a Ph.D!

(That just proves some colleges out there will give a Ph.D. to any fool willing to write enough tuition checks).

My biggest beef is with Gwen "Felonious G" Stokes, who negotiated a key provision of my child's IEP with me back in Oct. '09 only to subsequently refuse to acknowledge our deal; implement it, ask anybody else to implement it, or return phone calls or emails seeking comment about it.

Ms. Stokes was invited by Mr. Fernander to sit in on our meeting for a few minutes where she had a chance to see the stack of some 300 emails that had flown 'round the PEC about my child's IEP, none of which came from her, and, looking very indignant about having to answer to an actual parent, gave me this excuse for her non-responsiveness to my inquiries:

"I've been out sick some of the time."

How long? I asked.

"Two weeks."

"What about the other four and a half months I've been trying to get you to answer my questions via email or phone? After all, you are the only person who knew the answers I was seeking, as you were the PEC official who negotiated our IEP modification with me. And not only would you not talk to me," I said, "the email trail also indicates you did not respond to inquiries from your own colleagues our agreement. How do you explain that?"

"Mr. Lockridge," she said with a deep, patronizing sigh, "I do not know. I do not have an answer for you."

Well, okay. That's at least truthful. But after she left, and when I continued to press home the point with Mr. Fernander, his response was this:

"We DO answer our emails and phone calls from parents in a timely way."

"But," I protested, "I've just shown you how your folks don't do that at all. And I have a huge stack of your own emails from your own legal department proving they don't. All of these people: Constance Goodson, Yolonda Brown, Vernita Burford, Gwen Stokes, Brenda Hallman, Jennifer Holloway, Cecil Dalton; virtually everyone we've ever had important dealings with in the PEC fails to meet any ordinary standard of professionalism when it comes to communicating with parents, who are, after all, their childrens' proxies.

"So when are you going to implement a policy--send a memo--that says, 'effective immediately, all PEC employees will reply to all parent inquiries within one business day?'"

"I'm not going to put out a memo," he said,

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because we already do answer parents' questions," he said.

So Fernander is drinking his own Kool-Aid there. Mostly, I think he's smarter than that, but in this case, he's not getting it. So the best thing you could do for the PEC right now, as a parent, is to drop him a line at afernander@atlanta.k12.ga.us and tell him to send out that memo. PEC employees are directly accountable to parents. Yet they avoid us as though we were bill collectors.

We went over some other problems at the PEC (the horrible delays in getting any piece of paperwork done; sloppy record-keeping, the high failure rate of APS therapists in fulfilling scheduled appointments) and in each case Fernander said "changes are in the works" which will make the program better by Fall 2010. But pressed for details, he would offer only one: "Our people are undergoing IEP training right now," he said.

What does that mean? Are they being trained to produce IEPs that are more appropriate for the individual child? Or are they being retrained to push parents toward solutions that are more budget-conscious? He wouldn't say.

Fernander wants us to take a lot of things on faith. He wants us to be patient, even though he acknowledges that parents of special-needs kids don't have time to be patient--their kids need what they need and they need it today, not four months from now.

I still don't believe Fernander can succeed in reforming this desperately-in-need-of-comprehensive-reform department without several key firings (or "redeployments of resources"). If you talk to high-level APS managers in other areas, which I've occasionally had the opportunity to do, and you even mention the PEC, they react like someone who's just been forced to eat bug larvae.

Take a moribund, underfunded department like the PEC. Leave it without a leader for a year and a half, then, instead of appointing an energetic outsider, install your own safe choice as interim manager (Constance Goodson); then, after a little time has passed, give her the full title of Director. Then cut its budget even further. Do all of this while a huge new bubble of autistic children is closing in on you. Then meet with parents, tell them you're going to make a bunch of good changes, then miss your own deadline (Jan. 31) for announcing the conclusions you've reached.

I like Aaron Fernander, I really do. But nothing he has done so far has earned him more of our childrens' time and more of our patience.

Mr. Fernander, this forum is open to you anytime. If you've got something encouraging to tell us, then by all means, keep it to yourself no longer.

Pour me a double...

This is heartburn-inducing for me because as I say several places on this blog, I really like Yolonda Brown. I like her passion and her upbeat attitude.

But the question has to be asked:

Since by all accounts Yolonda Brown was hired to be SPARK's first principal on the strength of the incredible CRCT scores at CW Hill Elementary (where she was also the principal), if it turns out (as is almost certainly the case) that those scores were illusory, the product of wholesale cheating on the part of somebody (not Ms. Brown, but somebody under her supervision), have we, the parents of Springdale Park, not been defrauded?

Put it another way: if Yolonda Brown had applied for the SPARK job and not had those scores and that Governor's Platinum Award on her CV, would she even have been a finalist?

With this beautiful new school and a community of active, involved parents, could we not have obtained a more experienced principal from the top 10% of candidates anywhere in the country?

If Yolonda Brown had to reapply for her job today, would you vote to hire her?