More information about the 14-minute telephone conversation between Louisiana Superintendent of Education John White and State Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) is emerging that reveals a concerted but complicated effort by White to placate Seabaugh’s demand that evaluation scores be adjusted upward for three teachers at South Highlands Elementary School.
Even as he was attempting to surreptitiously help three teachers in his House district, Seabaugh was trying unsuccessfully to push a bill through this year’s legislature that would have prohibited the payroll deduction of union dues for public employees.
HB-552 was aimed at teachers unions like the Louisiana Federation of Teachers for successfully challenging Gov. Bobby Jindal’s education reform bills of 2012. It was defeated by a single vote with Rep. Jerome “Dee” Richard (I-Thibodaux) casting the deciding vote.
The information, provided by a source with intimate knowledge of the details of the events, shows that Seabaugh took an active part in trying to implement changes on behalf of the three teachers through repeated contacts with White.
White, in order to appease the lawmaker, soon began talking and messaging within DOE about a “Seabaugh Solution” so openly that Seabaugh apparently felt compelled to tell White that he did not want his named associated with the solution.
The chronology of events was detailed in a two-page document provided LouisianaVoice by the confidential source.
Last Wednesday, LouisianaVoice reported on the 14-minute conversation between Seabaugh and White that was recorded by an employee who White had apparently asked to participate on a speaker phone to answer any questions that Seabaugh might have that White could not address.
Seabaugh is said to have initiated the conversation with White after he was contacted by three of his constituents—teachers at South Highlands Elementary in his Shreveport district. The teachers were unhappy with poor evaluations and Seabaugh attempted to persuade White to try to help those specific individuals. White apparently attempted to accommodate the lawmaker even as he complained to him in that telephone conversation that he felt like a “ping pong ball” being bounced between the governor’s office, Seabaugh and Chas Roemer, President of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Because LouisianaVoice obtained several emails about the Value Added Model (VAM, also known within DOE as Compass) that were written around October of 2012, it was estimated that the telephone conversation between Seabaugh and White occurred around that time. The sequence of events outlined in the latest document reinforces the accuracy of that estimation.
In October of 2012, the source said, a teacher at South Highlands made a data request of DOE in which she wanted to know why she had received an ineffective rating. “A report was produced that showed that her 2011-2012 students’ average scaled score for the content that she teaches declined when compared to those same students’ average scaled score for the previous year.” The document added that “Her students performed worse than other students in the same grade and content in Caddo Parish or the state (as a whole).”
The document said White “began talking (and) messaging about a ‘Seabaugh Solution’ when he was asked about the fix for these teachers.” When people found out about the fix that would accommodate those three teachers, they became angry at Seabaugh and contacted his office (to) make sure he was aware of their ire. “Seabaugh told John White that he did not want his name associated with the solution,” the source said. “White made it clear to his staff that they should not use the term ‘Seabaugh Solution’ anymore.”
The document said many fixes were tried, “but none of them captured all the three South Highlands teachers. “For one teacher, one of her students who was in Mastery in third grade was now in Approaching Basic in her fourth grade class.”
Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Will Sentell apparently heard rumors of the attempt and requested an interview with White, according to the letter to LouisianaVoice. This created the problem for White of how to provide the report to Sentell without it being seen as coming directly from DOE.
“A meeting was held in which (DOE general counsel) Joan Hunt was present,” the document said. “Others at the meeting had copies of the report…and it was obvious to those who read (it) that these three teachers are ineffective teachers.” Those in the meeting “agreed unanimously that these teachers were ineffective but (they) could not come out and say it openly (because of Seabaugh’s involvement in the attempts to adjust their evaluations). Hunt said that her child is gifted and she would not want her child to be in that school with those teachers,” the source said.
As a solution, it was decided to use an intermediary to provide Sentell with the requested report. The intermediary was instructed to say she had obtained the information through a data request from DOE—apparently so that it could not be traced directly back to White. During the interview, White even asked Sentell where he got the report, the document said.
During the course of his interview with Sentell, White confided “in an off-the-record remark” that the three teachers were ineffective and that Seabaugh was “pushing hard” to fix it.
“At the start of the new year (supposedly January 2013), the focus was on finding a fix for these teachers because White had gone around saying that there would be a fix for teachers instructing high achieving students,” the source said. “Several of the fixes (attempted) could not be used because (they) would not cover all three teachers. This indicates how bad those teachers really are.”
“Other fixes were discarded because Hannah Dietsch (Assistant Superintendent overseeing teacher evaluations at $130,000 per year) was afraid they would have ‘messaging’ problems,” the document said, adding that the criteria for the fixes were:
• It had to capture all three teachers;
• It had to be done at the ‘back end’ of the model (in the calculations);
• It had to be simple to message.
The original model has a ceiling built into it that prevents students from being predicted to achieve a score that is higher than the test itself. The highest a student can score in the LEAP/iLEAP is 500. The ceiling is different for each content area. It may be around 485 for English Language Arts (ELA). That would give a teacher a plus-15 for every student who scores a perfect score of 500 on the test.
When coming up with the numerous fixes, the letter said it was suggested to White that if a student scored 485, that teacher would automatically get a plus-15 instead of a zero. If a student scored 490, that teacher would automatically get a plus-15 for that student instead of a plus-10.
“White did not like that suggestion and ‘chewed off the ass’ of the person who suggested it,” the source said. That was the part in the (recording) where one employee whispered to another about a suggested fix that White did not like—but later agreed to in his telephone conversation with Seabaugh.
When is the general public going to hear about this????
There is so much in here that I don’t know where to start. First of all, achievement level scaled scores differ from grade to grade and subject to subject. For example, the minimum scaled score for Mastery in Math for 3rd Grade is 343 while a 354 would be required for 4th Grade. (This information is available on the state Website under Bulletin 118.) These differences are true for every grade and subject. You have to look well beyond scaled scores to get an accurate picture of achievement from one grade to the next. Please tell me that scaled scores are not being used to compare a student from one year to the next to calculate a VAM score for a teacher or to add or subtract points from a teacher based on scaled scores from one year to the next. Surely not.
Secondly, every scale lists 500 as the top score. If 485 is really a top score, this should show in the scales.
Lastly, the subject content being tested is different from grade to grade. Comparing kids from one year to the next is like saying if you can jump rope, then you should also be able to fly an airplane.
When will this madness end?
currently scheduled for January 2016, but maybe sooner…
Thumbs up!
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
More on the VAM scam White and Seabaugh were running. The Seabaugh Solution. It has a nice ring to it. Kudos to John White for coming up with that one. I like how VAM is now entirely based on three crappy teachers getting high marks regardless of what happens to any other teacher or student in Louisiana. Of course, John.White works for Seabaugh, not us, right?
And who does Seabaugh work for? Certainly not us!
For only three teachers in his parish apparently. I recommend all teacher’s contact their legislators when they get VAM scores that displease them and ask for “The Seabaugh Solution. ” You might want call now though – to get your score manipulation request in early.
I wonder if we can get “Seabaugh Solution” into the urban dictionary? Anyone have some more wide ranging definitions they’d like to suggest?
“Teacher, I just noticed you gave me an F on my test just because I got all the answers wrong. How ’bout hooking me up with some Seabaugh Solution?”
OK, now you go!
You nailed it. Seabaugh is as dirty – if not dirtier – than John Boy.
What’s interesting to me is how these DOE people are calling these three teachers ineffective. Joan Hunt says she wouldn’t let her child be in “that school,” the number one elementary school in the state, “with those teachers.” No one at the DOE has come to realize that these three fabulous teachers’ scores were ineffective because the formula calculating their scores is monumentally flawed.
Whether these teachers are “fabulous” as you describe them or terrible, the bottom line is the VAM is terribly flawed and, as we now see, heavily influenced by political intimidation.
I just love the stuff you dig up. Well, I don’t love the stuff, just the fact that you dig it up! If you need more shovels, I’ll have some time off coming May 27th. I love to research court records, so I could help you out!
Are we talking about teachers at the highest scoring elementary school in the state? Did the scores drop from “way way way above” any other school in the state to just “way above” any other school in the state? Where do we find the actual scores for these teachers? How did the scores of their students compare to every other school in their parish or the state? How did they do compared to your kid’s school or my kid’s school? Even if you have the best teachers, you can only increase your numbers for so long until you can’t go any higher and are labeled as “not improving”. If the school has the highest testing students in the state, they must be doing something right.
The quotes about “poor teachers” was just that: a quote from a document we received. We take no position on their evaluations because we believe the VAM to be flawed. Our focus is not on the school or the teachers but the following points:
1. the VAM itself is flawed and far from an adequate—or fair—instrument for teacher evaluation;
2. A legislator would take it upon himself to try and change the system by intimidation instead of the way it should be done—through public hearings by BESE and if necessary, legislation;
3. That a state superintendent of education would bend under pressure so easily.
We don’t pretend to know anything about the three teachers but we do take exception to the manner in which this administration (Jindal, White and Roemer) have denigrated the teaching profession in the name of “reforms” that benefit only the Waltons, Eli Broad, Bill Gates, et al, at the expense of teachers, students and parents.
Thank you Eric! You seem to understand the real issue here. Students already performing at the highest levels have little room for growth. The same “crappy” teachers mentioned above have consistently scored higher than any other school /students in the state for MANY years and have been rated “highley effective” under several other evaluation systems including the TAP model. Some of these teachers’ students make perfect scores on their tests. Where do you go from there? As far as the “Seabaugh Solution,” Alan Seabaugh was not just trying to help only three teachers. There were many, many other teachers of high performing students in the state who were also rated ineffective under VAM who wanted help. This is much bigger than just three teachers in Shreveport “who just didn’t like their score.” This is all just a lame attempt to take attention away from the real issue – the VAM model is flawed – period!!!!
I hope if nothing else that my story has shone the spotlight on a deeply flawed teacher evaluation model that should never have come into existence. I still contend that Seabaugh should not have tried to get the changes made furtively but rather openly and up front so as to bring more attention to the problem. The method he employed had all the earmarks of a politician’s using his influence and power to browbeat the superintendent of education into tweaking the evaluation to benefit his constituents. A public airing of the problems before BESE and possibly even the legislature would have made Seabaugh a hero instead of just another politician trying to wield his power to personal ends.
VAM is flawed – but Seabaugh’s ultimate goal is NOT to help teachers. He wants to re-segregate schools and supplement his flailing law practice with ALEC dollars!
Seabaugh won’t speak out publicly against BJ’s ed reform because he is beholden to Alliance for Education and other groups that are in Jindal’s back pocket.
My wife is a board certified teacher who has been teaching in the Baton Rouge public school system for 30 years. We have had quite a few discussions about the VAM. She is not a fan. She says that there is so much cheating by some teachers. There are very bad teachers who give a convincing dog and pony show during their informal and formal evaluations and as the post-test is not monitored, cheating goes on. The pre-test scores of so many the kids that come to her at the beginning of the year do not reflect their post test scores from the previous year. She could only tell me of one good teacher whose VAM score did not reflect the quality of her teaching.
Her question, though, is “what does Mr. Seabaugh have on Superintendent White that he felt compelled to act in any way”? Couldn’t he just have said TFB, dude or let me get back to you on that (and then just not).
[…] I first heard about the “Seabaugh Solution,” a term John White invented to describe a request by legislator Alan Seabaugh to rig the […]
The 800 pound gorilla in the corner of the room which no one has yet mentioned is that if this scenario is true as reported it constitutes a violation of the Federal RICO Act by both White and Seabaugh. What is described here is a conspiracy to commit fraud, since the VAM was the basis for bonus pay. In addition, if the recording was provided by a DOE employee who was asked to participate by speakerphone then the recording is admissible as evidence in court, since under Louisiana law only one party to a telephone conversation must give consent for the recording of that conversation to be legal. Depending on how aggressive Federal authorities decide to be with this information, this incident in and of itself could be game, set and match for Superintendent John White.
Alan, do federal authorities have the information? Are you suggesting they would exercise discretion and choose not prosecuting? Wouldn’t the facts suggest others beside White and Seabaugh would be conspirators as well? Finally, how would the treble damages penalty for RICO be applied here?
tlso–first, I want to make certain that I have understood that the intent of Seabaugh and White was to concoct a method of improving the VAM evaluations of some teachers without applying the same method to all teachers. BESE has the authority to set standards for teacher evaluations, but they must be uniformly applied. If instead the intent was to show favoritism to a politically connected few without giving others the same break then that is where the conspiracy to commit fraud comes in, since VAM is the basis for both job retention and performance bonuses. It is essentially the same thing as rigging a bid for a contract. Everyone must play by the same rules, and when easier standards are secretly set for some than for others it constitutes fraud (as well as public corruption and probably falsification of a legal document as well) since public dollars are at stake and there are limits to the ways in which public officials can legally use their positions to financially benefit their cronies. Secretly setting different standards for insiders falls outside the boundaries of those legally permissible practices.
That said–there is already a Federal investigation underway of Walter Lee, BESE’s representative from the Shreveport area. The link to the TP’s story about that investigation is here;
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/04/fbi_is_investigating_longest-s.html
As I suspect you are aware, when Federal investigators develop an interest in possible corruption within any organization it is standard practice for them to seek as a beginning point one individual involved with that organization who represents the surest target,. They then investigate and apply pressure to that individual to provide additional information and work their way up the hierarchy to bigger targets, using plea deals from the smaller fish to provide insider testimony against the bigger fish.
I cannot say with any certainty at all that that process is what is underway with Walter Lee and the BESE Board, but I also cannot imagine the expenditure of Federal investigative dollars on the relatively puny matter of misuse of a school board credit card, especially when that matter is already under local investigation. It should be noted that, as a BESE member, Walter Lee is in a position to provide investigators with all sorts of privileged insider information as well as access to BESE emails and information on any illegal back-channel communications which may have taken place.
As to whether or not the Feds are aware of the Seabaugh/White communications, if they read the Louisiana Voice (and the FBI employs researchers whose job it is to sift through all available information sources on any suspect matter) then, in fact, they almost certainly are.
As to whether or not the Feds would prosecute fraudulent use of taxpayer dollars by BESE and/or the DOE I again cannot answer with any certainty, since the FBI has a lot on its plate in Louisiana and even the Feds have limits to their resources. But when it comes to corruption within the State Department of Education we are potentially talking hundreds of millions of dollars and so they probably would, even though misuse of a credit card to the tune of $23,000 by itself wouldn’t be worth their time.
We shall see what we shall see!
Thanks, Alan, for your thoughtful and instructive answers.
The story certainly suggests that the intent was to modify the VAM so that a few teachers would be protected. However, though that may have been the intent, the method employed to do it might have been applied to all. If I understood the story correctly, it would have been a little bit like a teacher who intended to help four students with 88% averages make the 90% cutoff for an A. The solution of a 2% curve, applied across the board, satisifes the students and their parents. Collateral benefits to others, though unintended, will not cause complaints. Maybe I did not understand it correctly–maybe the “2%” curve was not applied to all similarly situated teachers.
I did not know about the Walter Lee investigation. Thanks for the link.
I agree with your outline of federal investigative process. I was not aware of the extent of their research capability. There never seems to be enough resources for white collar crime. I was intrigued by your mention of RICO. It has been used before in political corruption cases in Louisiana (Edwards, Jefferson) and offers prosecutors additional powers.
Thanks again for your comment and reply.
[…] Additionally, it appears that this decision was in response to political pressure. […]
[…] Additionally, it appears that this decision was in response to political pressure. […]
[…] Nevertheless, at great personal risk to themselves, they notified me and fellow blogger Tom Aswell, at Louisiana Voice, so we could alert the public to this travesty being perpetrated against our teachers. Please […]