EDITOR’S NOTE: Mercedes Schneider is a teacher in St. Tammany Parish with a background as a statistician and researcher. She has tried on numerous occasions to ellicit a response from John White and the Louisiana Department of Education about what she says are misleading data relative to Louisiana’s high school graduation rates.
By MERCEDES SCHNEIDER
Recently, I had an email from Barbara Leader, reporter for the Monroe News-Star, requesting that I call her. She wrote that she had lost my number and wanted to talk to me. I had conversed and exchanged a series of emails with Ms. Leader twice before, both times about inflation in the 2012 Louisiana school performance scores. Both times the “promised” story loomed on a nonexistent horizon. Here was Horizon Number Three.
This time was different; my colleague Herb Bassett’s and my writings on score inflation had “gone national”, and I sent the link to Ms. Leader. On Dr. Ravitch’s blog, I responded as follows to a comment asking why this information had not been in the local news: “… the papers are skittish about carrying the story. I have sent to the Advocate, Times-Picayune, and Monroe News-Star. Sometimes I get a message initially of interest, then silence.” So, when Ms. Leader contacted me, I thought perhaps this might be the time for a local article. Sometimes it takes “going national” to “go local.”
She phoned during my break (I teach public school), and as I took that call, I was surprised to hear her ask me more than once (and I paraphrase), “Would you be willing to go to a BESE meeting?” This question baffled me; I expected she might first ask if I had been to a BESE meeting with my concerns. In fact I had, in October, and it cost me one of only three personal days I have per year. I was able to speak for about 20 seconds on Value Added Modeling (VAM) issues (“I’m sorry, but that item is not on our agenda today.”) and for three minutes about the misuse of the ACT as a gauge of teacher performance (“Thank you for your comments, and let me tell you why we’re going to go through with this anyway.”) I briefly mentioned my efforts to formally contact John White and BESE via email with my detailed concerns over school performance score measurement issues, VAM instability, and faulty investment of one million dollars into Teach for America (TFA). I told Ms. Leader that there was no real conversation about any of these issues; if I heard anything from White, it was a justifying of his position, nothing more.
(As an aside, let me add that when I write of BESE, I am referring to the established, nine-to-two voting that is characteristic of BESE as a body, one that is pro-corporate-takeover-of-education and anti-traditional-teacher-and school. I am not referring to Ms. Lottie Beebe and Ms. Carolyn Hill. Ms.Beebe has been extremely helpful in aiding my quest to dispense information, including arranging public speaking venues for me, such as the Louisiana Association of Parish Textbook Administrators [LAPTA] annual conference in November.)
A second reason for my surprise at Ms. Leader’s push to have me attend BESE was that I had long before sent my work to Ms. Leader, including my letters to BESE, and she did not ask if I had heard from White/BESE. I told her that since I had used one of my personal days to attend a BESE meeting, I would not use another. She said she might have follow-up questions and would contact me by phone that evening if she did. She said she would talk to her boss about having the article appear in tomorrow’s paper.
No follow-up call. No article. No surprise.
I think it is time for me to write my own account of my interactions with John White and BESE as such are connected to my work on exposing measurement and analysis flaws in “reform” research. Given that White and LDOE try so hard to operate in unanswerable secrecy, and given that the BESE majority is no more that a White/LDOE rubber stamp, I thought it valuable to publicize my interactions with these agencies.
The Louisiana school performance scores have serious problems. This is not my opinion; it is an easily-documented fact. In particular, the 2012 high school/combination school scores are inflated. I discussed such info on the phone with Barbara Leader in late October. At that time, the evidence I had was based upon my informal examination of a column of data called the “transitional baseline.” Ms. Leader said she needed time to investigate this and would be in touch. I sat on this information for weeks in an effort to give Ms. Leader time. I finally called and emailed to see if she had decided not to pursue the story. I received no response; so, I counted myself as released from any obligation, and I moved forward.
I emailed John White and asked only one question: Who calculated the scores? He sent as an answer, “DOE’s Division of Assessment and Accountability.” I sent another email clarifying that I wanted to know exactly who calculated the scores, their names, please. No response.
I decided to write a letter to John White and BESE in which I demonstrated via three different calculations the bias in the high/combination school scores. I received one response, an email from Lottie Beebe, in which she copied me as part of her forwarding my work to a number of people: “FYI…. Please feel free to share with your legislative colleagues. … Don’t you think some should seriously question what is happening in La? … Does one embrace the information provided by one who is a statistician or a politician?”
I appreciate Lottie Beebe.
Thanks to Ms. Beebe’s forwarded email, Mike Deshotels of the Louisiana Educator blog asked me to write a guest spot based upon this first letter to White BESE. A colleague of mine sent John White an email asking him to respond to this blog. In the blog, I mention that White did not respond to my request for the name(s) of those who calculated the school performance scores and that I suspected by now he knew of me and of my professional credentials. So, he directed Dr. Jennifer Baird, an employee of DOE, to send a response. However, Dr. Baird’s so-called response addressed none of the concerns I had regarding the presence of scoring bias or the potentially damaging outcomes of such bias. Instead, Dr. Baird proceeded only justify DOE’s position. There was no hint of concern that DOE error could harm schools and lead to fiscal misappropriation and certainly no expressed desire to right any psychometric wrongs.
Before I continue writing about Jennifer Baird, I need to mention here what I observed about John White from the Molly Horstman incident. Molly Horstman, a TFAer with two years of teaching experience and an expired teaching certificate, was listed on the DOE website as the Director of COMPASS, the teacher evaluation system, for the state of Louisiana. Her identification as Director of COMPASS is documented in this professional meeting bio. Once Horstman’s position and lack of credentials were publicized, John White lied in an email to one of my colleagues as he wrote, “So you know, Molly is not the head of the teacher evaluation process.” It turns out Horstman’s “replacement,” (?) the “real” director, is Hannah Dietsch. However, like Molly Horstman, Ms. Dietsch has only a few years in the classroom: Three years in Baltimore. Dietsch did earn a master’s in education from Harvard, which sounds impressive, but I question any graduate program that will accept a student into a master’s program in school leadership when such a person is currently experiencing only her third year of teaching. The credential becomes a veneer for lack of a solid teaching career, much less the extensive evaluation experience required to lead a state evaluation program.
Regardless of her title, Horstman continues to pull 77k as a DOE “fellow.”
Now back to White’s having Dr. Jennifer Baird respond to my scoring bias letter. In her email to me, she signed her name “Ph.D.” but indicated no title or field. I found this suspect; so, I looked up her dissertation to see if her field is statistics or measurement. Based on her dissertation title, I determined that Baird’s Ph.D. is perhaps educational leadership and/or policy. Thus, like Hannah Dietsch, Jennifer Baird holds a credential but cannot function as an expert given the situation at hand: psychometric inconsistency.
I noticed also that Baird copied her email to a four people: White, Jessica (Tucker) Baghian (and here) Kunjan Narechania, and Erin Bendily. Between the four of them, I was able to determine that, at most, they have nine years of classroom teaching experience. None has training in statistics or measurement. Including White’s 275K salary, this group earns $650k.
Along with a forward of Baird’s email, I sent a second letter to White/BESE. In this letter, I confront White for having someone not qualified to respond to my concerns send an email. I also point out additional information regarding manipulation of the grad index and mislabeling of a column of 2012 data. No response.
Next, I wrote a review of the limitations of Noell’s TFA study and sent it on December 8 in an email to White/BESE. The Noell TFA study has been used as support for the “superiority” of minimally-trained, temporary TFAers. In fact, in October, White/BESE approved spending a million dollars on TFA. However, the Noell TFA study shows no significant results for TFAers outperforming teachers in general. The data quality is suspect, and discussion of the results is slanted.
The same day, December 8, I had an email from Lottie Beebe: “Awesome job! Thank you for providing the ‘rest of the story’!” The next day, December 9, I received email responses within 15 minutes of each other from two other BESE members. The second was a canned acknowledgment from Jindal- appointee Connie Bradford: “Thank you for your email. Your concerns are noted.”
The first response that day came from Jindal-appointee and Board President Penny Dastugue: “I would appreciate it if you would remove penny.dastugue@la.gov from your email list and instead send to sbese@la.gov.” In no uncertain terms, Penny Dastugue, a public servant, was telling me, her constituent, that she no longer wished to receive business pertinent to BESE at her publicized BESE email address and instead desired that I send my concerns, concerns that apparently she had no intent of reading, to an old, generic, BESE email address. On the morning of December 12, I sent this email regarding Dastugue’s response to Will Sentell of the Baton Rouge Advocate.
(Not long after, Sentell printed a slanted article lauding most of BESE for following Jindal’s plan; in the article, he writes, “Now White is expected to get a positive evaluation in January when he goes through his first formal evaluation from the panel.” The evaluation hasn’t happened, yet the outcome is “expected.” Sentell also blocked comments to this article. No opposition allowed.)
Sentell printed no article based on the Dastugue email, but I found it quite the coincidence that that very evening, I had an email response from White via Beth Gleason, an employee of DOE and researcher who worked with Noell on the unstable 2011 VAM study. I also found it interesting that Noell did not respond regarding his own work. Gleason did not write this TFA study. Her comments are a weak defense. White refers to Gleason’s email as a “point by point response.” Not true. Gleason did not respond to all of my concerns. Especially telling was what she chose not to comment on, including the confounding presence of experienced, traditionally trained teachers in the room with some TFAers. And what of that small TFA data set? From a national group that has been around for decades? Glreason glosses over this inconsistency. As one TFAer notes, “TFA has a lot of people who leave because they get burned out.” It is a matter of research ethics to note how self-selection out of TFA affects available data.
That evening, I responded to Gleason’s comments and attached my comments to the original email from White. I noticed that White had chosen to copy this email to BESE members using email addresses other than their BESE addresses. Included on the list was Dastugue’s personal email. Why would White conduct BESE business on email accounts outside of the la.gov accounts assigned to BESE and publicized on BESE’s website? The Jindal administration’s use of personal email accounts to conduct state business had just been made public. Like my Dastugue forward, Sentell also chose to sit on this one.
I received no follow-up response to my comments on Gleason. However, one of my colleagues has continued to press White for a response to my documented evidence of scoring bias. He responded in an email to the effect that he is excused from the issue since BESE guidelines were set before his arrival—a lie, since part of the bias is due to his changing the rules and contributing to the inflated high school scores. White also uses the Advocate article as supposed evidence that the scores are really good—a continued lie pointed out in the comments section—and that he has “delivered what he has promised,” so to speak, by bringing in the ACT test. My colleague Herb Bassett points out White’s lying via White’s manipulation of the grad index in a follow-up post.
That pretty much brings me to the present day. I intent to keep writing, my next planned piece being a paper on the aforementioned TFA “success” study and Gleason’s comments (and noncomments). White likes to say what he does is “for the children.” What White does is more aptly described as “to the children—and teachers—and communities.”
All the more reason to write.
–Mercedes K. Schneider, Ph.D.
Public school teacher and trained, experienced statistician and researcher
St, Tammany Parish, Louisiana
Louisiana Voice 
Bravo!!!!!!!
Thanks, Tom, for such a speedy printing! Here is the article again, with all of the hyperlinks where I provide documentation for all of my assertions: http://pdf.investintech.com/y/x/918c6c8/Narrative.html
I learned from readers that the hyperlinks are inactive in the klink above. Therefore, in this url, I have included all urls for in-text links so that readers might copy and paste to read the evidence for my commentary: http://pdf.investintech.com/w/w/zzs5j5s/Narrative_with_urls_at_end.html
Let me add to the sequence of events unfolding since Dr. Schneider’s research expose has gone viral. I have sent all of Dr. Schneider’s and Herbert Bassett’s research to every state legislator and to several journalists, including Barbara Leader. Not one response.
Last week when the agenda and Jan. 8 meeting date for the Superintendents’ Advisory Council was published I wrote a letter to ALL district superintendents in the state with all the above mentioned research attached. I asked that SAC members study the information for their meeting during which White would present proposed “adjustments” to both COMPASS and the calculation of school performance scores for their approval. My own St. Tammany Superintendent was the only acknowledgment.
I attended the SAC meeting in Baton Rouge with full intent to testify regarding the invalidity of COMPASS. The room was filled to capacity. Chairman Faulk began the meeting by stating that some very controversial subjects would be discussed and he expected ORDER to prevail. ( Wow. I didn’t see a single juvenile in the room!). He stated that he intended to hear from the council on the full agenda before he “allowed” public comment. (Public meetings law provides for public comment before every vote)
This particular day Supt. White did not greet me or even look me in the eye although he sat two feet from me. As soon as the meeting was adjourned he scurried out. Just prior to the end of the meeting Mary Patricia Wray, Attorney for LFT, felt the necessity to speak out by asking the chairman, “Are you going to ask for public comment?” Supt. Faulk said loudly and without hesitation, “Absolutely NOT.” BAMMm! Meeting adjourned.
During the meeting White presented two PowerPts that accompanied paperwork he had previously sent to committee members. At the conclusion of the meeting, Dr. Michael Walker-Jones and I went upstairs to LDE offices to retrieve previously requested public information. We requested copies of the two documents presented by White. Staff was unable or unwilling to provide those documents so we requested they be transmitted electronically ASAP. I followed that up with a formal FOIA via email.
Neither of us received a response the following day so I contacted LDE as a follow up. In an exchange of emails with LDE staff I was finally told by a LDE attorney that the documents were drafts and therefore not for public distribution. I of course cited the public meetings law but to no avail.
Thursday I wrote Chairman Faulk and all district superintendents again expressing my position on the conduct of the meeting and the refusal of LDE to provide the requisite documents. I suggested that in lieu of a lawsuit for the infraction I would accept what was a prescribed penalty of law which is a withdrawal of the action taken by committee and a pledge not to refuse public input at a public meeting in the future. I have not received a single response.
The BESE meeting is scheduled for this Tuesday and the information contained in White’s documents will be voted on. There is no opportunity for the public to review that information in advance nor were the documents included in the published agenda documents as us usually done.
This is why John White is not trusted and has been accused if being underhanded and a liar. Even his legal staff is guilty of misrepresentation. I expect to be at the BESE meeting and to testify. I also expect Supt. Faulk to be there and I will ask why he chose not to respond to my emails. If my lawyer is unable to attend he can watch the live webcast of the meeting to help prepare for the lawsuit that I expect will have to be filed.
You might want to send your letter to a lot of principals as well as they influence superintendents just like priests influence bishops. Then some of them will share the letter with teachers and everyone will know and maybe change their votes or pressure their legislators. You are doing a good job.
The effects of teacher efficacy, school climate, and stages of concern on the implementation of a physical science program
by Baird, Jennifer B. Ph.D., Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College, 1995, 199 pages; AAT 9538722
Yup, she has one, but not in any accountabilty field, but she did function as Director of Accpountability in EBRPSS until retirement a few years ago…
educator4life and where are your credentials? By the way, the word is spelled ” Äccountability “. Attack the truth and you do know it will come back to you. I applaud Mercedes Schneider ! As an educator watching school systems collapsing, we need more people like Mercedes Schneider.
I defy anyone on White’s staff to write anything so cogent.
This sounds like a John Grisham novel.
I applaud Dr. Schneider and those that are speaking out against what is indicative of this administration. This administration and its appointees seem to operate the same. Let me qoute Little Troy Hebert when he was pursuing writing up an agent with ATC for something that was just plain harassment towards this agent, “it might not stick but he will have to get an attorney and that will cost him (agent) money. It won’t cost me a thing”. As far as the press, they have known for a long time what has been going on at ATC as well as other state agencies but it seems all they report on is what the administration tells them to report. All of the checks and balances have been removed and or checkmated when it comes to containing the lies and outright disregard for laws and the unethical behavior of this administration. Think about who is going to step in and “investigate” these people? The OIG’s office had their operating budget stripped last session and then at the last minute was spared. State civil service was told that other states have obolished their civil service agencies and have done just fine. You will have to go federal to expose what has been and continues to go on in this state. Again, I respect and applaud you and the others that are standing up. The Troy Heberts out there count on people to get tired of the abuse and constant harassment, to just go away as most have. They count on the few not being persistant. Eventually with persistance, light will shine under the rock that they are hiding under and the will be exposed. As with most “big” cases that have been solved or exposed in history, most were cracked by getting at the weak link or the most careless member of the targeted organization that is so arrogant that he fears nothing and thinks he has so much power that he gets careless then gets caught/exposed/arrested. At first he won’t talk because he will think his “people” will come to his rescue but when they don’t, he tells all he knows about the shady deals and the circumventing of laws and everything else he can think of to save his own hide. The weak link that will get this administration exposed will be none other than Little Troy Hebert!!!!
“INVICTUS”
Dr. Schneider, please continue. Don’t let them wear you down. Thank you for your tireless work to reveal how morally corrupt the Jindal/White plan is.
Charley
Seriously educator4life is that all you have after reading this article? Week or is it weajk? Damn I must have had you for a teacher!!!
educator4life, Jennnifer Baird is not able to speak to the problems with the calculations. Not just any PhD will do. That was my point.
If the DOE knowingly skewed data that directly affected how federal funding was allocated, then wouldnt that be a federal offense? I realize the ethics board, civil service board, inspector general, and state police are all controlled by the politicians in power so none of them would dare pursue them in their many cases of blatant corruption, but why does Don Cazayoux stay on the sidelines through all of these shenanigans?
Good question, Joe. Would you be willing to write to Cazayoux?
Try to get a letter to the editor in the Advocate. They are pretty good about allowing controversial comments. I upset folks fairly regularly on different subjects. Plus you have 450 rather than 200 words as in most papers. Also you will stimulate conversation in the online comments. A good many of the commenters seem to have education backgrounds and Noell Hammett, former EBR Board member, comments often.
The News-Star seems to be more with it than the Advocate on education issues .Seems like they were the ones who blew the whistle on that under facilitied (yeah, I made up that word) religious charter in Rushton
I have to wait to send another letter to the editor at the Advocate. Their policy is to print only one per month, and I did one a few weeks ago on RSD grades.
Hi Tom,
I often read the Voice as one thoughtful perspective on state government, but I was surprised to be the topic of one of your posts. I am Jennifer Baird, and for three more weeks I will work with the LDOE in accountability. I have clearly disappointed Dr. Schneider, and it isn’t the first time I have been humbled during my many years in accountability. However, I would like to clear up a few things. I taught school for ten years both in Livingston and East Baton Rouge. I spent additional years as a curriculum and assessment specialist in the classrooms of many outstanding teachers. I have a Level A program evaluator’s license. I am very proud of the degree that I earned at Louisiana State University in education administration. The fine faculty there forced me to take many hours of statistics and experimental design, and any shortcomings I have are in spite of the wonderful instruction of many experts in the field of educational research. I learned accountability, however, the hard way–in the trenches. I love public schools, and as I return to retirement, I hope that there are friends in local schools that will appreciate my voluntary service to them. I applaud Dr. Schneider and all other teachers who provide a tremendous service to us all. Thanks for all of your interesting commentary, but I will do my best to avoid being the topic of any additional posts. Jen
Jennifer Baird, bottom line: Your response skirted the issue: Inflated scores. Your response does not speak to that “learned accountability,” but to excusing incredible problems in the scores. Anyone with adequate staistical training should find such excuses difficult to peddle and should be quick to note, “We have a real problem here.”
Thank you Ms. Scneider for at least trying to start a conversation about possible discrepancies. Rest assured that Bese leaders and DOE admin. will be as unhelpful as they can be. They are masters of deflection and shady dealings. They dont want to have the Conversation because this might expose discrepancies in data and their machiavellian methods. Keep digging and keep Leader in the loop.she seems to be one of the only LA reporters who will take on the Education Czars on tough subjects. However, she has to have all loose ends tied up before they can print. As for Will Sentell, you can forget it. He prints what White tells him to print. He will never take on the establishment.
I’m not a statistician, so I wouldn’t be qualified to remark on the validity of the school scores’ structure. However that doesn’t seem to stop all of the so-called “education experts” they have working at DOE now, many of whom have very little practical knowledge or experience in the field of education. I can shed some light on some of those “experts” – Jessica Tucker was TFA and spent 2 yrs teaching in St.John or St. James parish before earning a law degree at Harvard. She did a brief stint in the Bese office as an intern in which she did very little but attend meetings to observe. She has learned quite well how to play the game of the current administration. Erin Bendily has an MPA from LSU. It’s unclear if she ever taught in a classroom. How she was ever picked to be the Gov’s Ed. Policy advisor is beyond comprehension except that she may be politically connected. She was big buddies with Pastorek (due to her ability to misrepresent info to the leges with a poker face) which is how she landed at the DOE after the Gov’s office decided to go a different direction.
The SAC mtg referenced above IS a public mtg. and there should have been an allowance for public comment. Check the agenda from the mtg. to see if they have gotten rid of the section for public comments. This can be challenged. The Bese office will have a tape of the mtg, which you can request a copy of for legal purposes.
As a teacher I’m so glad that someone is standing up and speaking out. I wonder if the Fox 8 Investigators or Six on Your Side would do a piece on it. So many great teachers are retiring and thinking about leaving and in St. Tammany that speaks volumes. None of this is valid.
[…] This is perhaps the most hypocritical statement that I’ve ever seen. Jindal’s only vision is his wet dream of sitting in the oval office. He has kept our state in perpetual recession. He has cut the budget of our universities by 1/3. He has assaulted even the basic notion of what health care should be by devastating the availability of basic services by cutting our public health budget. He has thrown out myriads of talented people in various government agencies and placed incompetent, unqualified, and reckless cronies in their place. He has undercut LSU so badly that the accrediting agency has sent a letter asking if there is any one in charge. You will not even believe who he placed in charge of our state primary and secondary schools. Jindal has spent the last year stacking BESE–our oversight agency–with other cronies. He has turned our state into an ALEC crockpot of “reform” where creationism can be openly taught in science classes, state funds can pour into religious indoctrination centers with desks, computers, and little else available to students through unregulated vouchers, and even put out false information on the supposed success of charter schools. […]
I teach with Dr. Schneider and call her my hero. She has worked thousands of hours to expose the duplicity of the White administration. She does this on top of preparing 100 plus students to pass the End of Course assessment where scores determine if she is “fit to teach,” just one part of a mind-bending statistical nightmare that Dr. Schnieder exposed. In addition to unraveling this mess, she has to wade through the time-consuming minutia that White has mandated of teachers, and which steals precious time and energy away from teaching . The irony here is that Dr. Schneider has inspired hundreds of young men and women to enter the career of teaching with her involvement in the STAR teacher prep program at our school. She isn’t taking on White’s enigmatic dogma for herself; she is fighting for her students and the future of public education. She has a gut-wrenching and intuitive belief that what White and his ilk are doing ultimately damages public education in Louisiana for years to come. This mess won’t be easy to clean up. The effects of White will last for years. We have a long fight in our future. Thank you Mercedes, you are still my hero.
I am honored by your response, Susan. Thank you.
[…] Jindal’s only vision is his wet dream of sitting in the oval office. He has kept our state inperpetual recession. He has cut the budget of our universities by 1/3. He has assaulted even the basic notion of what health care should be by devastating the availability of basic services by cutting our public health budget. He has thrown out myriads of talented people in various government agencies and placed incompetent, unqualified, and reckless cronies in their place. He has undercut LSU so badly that the accrediting agency has sent a letter asking if there is any one in charge. You will not even believe who he placed in charge of our state primary and secondary schools. Jindal has spent the last year stacking BESE–our oversight agency–with other cronies. He has turned our state into an ALEC crockpot of “reform” where creationism can be openly taught in science classes, state funds can pour into religious indoctrination centers with desks, computers, and little else available to students through unregulated vouchers, and even put out false information on the supposed success of charter schools. […]
[…] about high performing “charter” schools. I can offer you just a few links that show charter schools really aren’t performing as Jindal claims. Again, the biggest problem is that these schools do not effectively address […]
I have a daughter who graduated Dec. 2011 with a teaching master’s degree.
She has been frustrated and is borderline in deciding on staying in the profession. She has taken two sub positions and has been having panic attacks over the new system and expectations. Sadly, whe is a really good teacher and I am not sure she will stay with her profession.
[…] be sure to take John White’s word for it. After all, he’s a professional liar with the thinnest education resume ever but he’s Jindal’s point man on trolling for evangelical support with dubious […]