A 14-minute telephone conversation that was recorded by an employee of the Louisiana Department of Education (DOE) has revealed a plan hatched between State Superintendent John White and State Rep. Alan Seabaugh (R-Shreveport) to “tweak” DOE’s Value Added Model (VAM) teacher evaluation plan in a way to keep changes from being public or necessitating policy change with the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).
The date of the recorded conversation is unclear but a flurry of emails within DOE in mid-October of 2012 and again in mid-March of this year centered around changes to the VAM plan so the telephone conversation most probably took place a few days prior to the October interoffice communications.
After White agreed to make changes in the VAM—also known at the DOE as Compass—as suggested by Seabaugh, the employee who recorded the conversation over a speaker phone was heard to whisper to a co-worker that White “chewed my ass out” after she had earlier made similar suggestions to tweak VAM.
White is heard opening the dialog by telling Seabaugh, “I truly made a mistake in the way I communicated it. I owe you an apology.” It was unclear what White has communicated to Seabaugh that warranted an apology.
Seabaugh is heard telling White that Brigitte Nieland a vice president of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) sent Seabaugh a lengthy email “telling me how horrible I was because of this whole thing of exempting some teachers and not others.”
Nieland is vice president of Workforce Development and Research for LABI as well as director of the Education and Workforce Development Council.
He told White that LABI had been prepared to go to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) and campaign against the proposal. “I don’t love LABI,” he said. “They endorsed my opponent the first two times I ran so I will never change a position I have because LABI is on the other side. But in this particular case I don’t think it’s necessary to fight.”
Seabaugh’s complaint was apparently that if a student’s score dropped from, say a target score of 430 to 420, he should not be given a score of minus 10 but simply a zero so long as his newer score kept him in either Advanced or Mastery classification. That way, said Seabaugh, “It won’t count against the teacher if he went back a little.”
Seabaugh said he was not trying to exempt anyone from the VAM evaluation, “just tweaking the way you calculate the numbers. Why not, if you stay within the top two categories, you just get a zero. You’re not doing away with the system…and you’re not exempting anyone or creating some kind of other category.”
At one point White suggested creating a policy that keeps data but does not always use the data in the evaluation.
“I don’t believe you can get it past BESE, so why not write it in such a way as we can get it passed?” Seabaugh responded.
“I’m going to feel out the board on that,” White said. “I think we can get it past BESE. I may ask your help on that but I think we can get it past BESE.”
Further into the conversation, White expressed exasperation at being a go-between. “There’s a disconnect,” he said. “To be honest, I’m a messenger between you, Chas (BESE President Chas Roemer) and the board. All the while, the governor’s office is saying, ‘Trust me, trust me, trust me. You gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this.’ And I get it. But people have a helluva lot harder time believing me that there’s a real issue than they do out of the governor’s office of from you. I’m a little concerned about playing ping pong. The assumption on the board (BESE) is that I’m just doing the governor’s bidding on some favor that he’s cashing in on. I don’t want to be crass about it; I’ll stand up for it and I have. But I think it might take a little bit more than me to try and convince them it’s the right policy because they’re being hit on the other side pretty hard.”
Seabaugh brought the conversation back to tweaking the VAM so as not to penalize teachers for student’s shortcomings. “If you fall but stay within your category, call it a zero. But if you improve, count it as a plus—give teachers credit for success but not giving negative marks for failures.”
“If we did it within the formula, we could establish some type criteria within a reasonable number,” White replied.
“Tweaking the formula was my initial suggestion,” Seabaugh agreed, “not addressing it legislatively.”
“I didn’t want to open the formula up to such scrutiny (unintelligible),” White said.
“I don’t care how you fix it,” Seabaugh said, adding that teachers had been calling his office and sending him emails and that they were “absolutely livid.”
“I wish I had given the procedure more thought,” White said. “I can get it corrected. I want to make sure it’s possible without publicly (unintelligible). I’ll take the consequences. If there’s any cover I can get you with the teachers, I’m happy to do it. This strikes me as a way out of all these boxes without (unintelligible).”
“That sounds like a good solution,” Seabaugh said as the two ended their conversation.
The recorder was left on after the conversation ended and the staff member, a female employee who White had on a third line to answer questions whispered to a co-worker, “I suggested that we tweak this model and it doesn’t have to be policy and he (White) chewed my ass out. Are you freaking kidding me?”
The conversation between the two staffers was interrupted when White called. “I think he has created an out for us that I’d not totally focused on before,” he told the employee. “I hate to do it, but I need all hands on deck on this. I want minimal impact and an ability to bury it without…yeah, that’s the way to do it.”
Louisiana Voice 
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
I will post more on this later but for now it is important for legislators, teachers, and BESE members to see the Real White in action. He claims publicly not to understand complicated formula, that the numbers are fair and researcher approved and speak for themselves. Yet the truth is VAM is just a corrupt tool used by and even more corrupt and contemptable DOE to punish teachers and privatize schools using callously manipulated data. White argues he should not have oversight, and one can clearly see why that is what he fears the most. White fired or is in the process of firing most Louisiana citizens to replace them with drones reportable only to him, that will strip our state dry and leave us as educationally naked as the emperer with no clothes. He tells us we look fabulous and parades us around naked for the country to see. White tells us our children’s data are safe, but dares not reveal the devil’s contract he signed with inBloom, White tells us SPS scores are dramatically improved under his watch, while refusing to admit the increase is due solely to a test with more questions and points, White tells us to Just BELIEVE, but is it a surprise to anyone that almost everyone who puts Louisiana and our children first know firsthand he is a lying charlatan selling us snake oil he has intentionally mislabeled to promote is fictional success. White must be fired. He is a scoundrel, a scofflaw, a cheat and a thief. To do any less is a vast disservice to children who are secretly dropping out in record numbers, teachers who are being driven out based on a broken misguided VAM, and Louisiana parents and citizens. White has no honor, no ability to tell the truth even under oath, and no real credentials to be a State Superintendent in the first place. White is the one who should be leaving, not our dilligent state workers dealing with the layoffs White has illegally filed to remove any vestige of oversight or humanity from LDOE. Send this inveterate liar packing instead before it is too late.
OH! WHAT A TANGLED WEB WE WEAVE WHEN FIRST WE PRACTICE TO DECEIVE.
SCREAMING!!!!
I’m screaming! I teach second grade and teach my students to be fair, to be honest, to be a friend. To read about such total disregard for honesty and transparency on the part of some of our legislators and the superintendent is infuriating.
That’s how White operates! He needs to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What infuriates me most about his hubris, and his particular arrogance toward local people is that it is based in geographic bigotry. His attitude is infantile! He thinks: “I’m a smart rich Tier 1 guy from up north. I must be smarter than EVERYONE in stupid Louisiana!” He freely exhibited his contempt for the educators of Louisiana at the first “town halls” where he just talked in response to our questions without answering any of them. He thought educators would submit to his (actually Jindal’s) power like the Legislature did. When faced with a fight from educators, he sought other ways to discredit & ultimately get rid of us. He thought that everyone in Louisiana would be dazed and confused by his booby trapped data software to manipulate data to favor certain schools & the RSD collectively. This is slander, conspiracy, & malfeasance!
Now magnify that by 10 times 365 and you can begin to.understand how LDOE folks felt. I saw right through him the first time I saw the scum. Every policy he implemented was about secrecy, seclusion, deception and dehumanizing. He delighted in promoting incompetent traitors to bully everyone else, violate civil service rules with impunity and eventually fire folks of character, wisdom, experience and substance. White won’t be here forever and we all know who they are. White will probably kick them to the curb on his way out and they will be widely remembered for their collaboration and evil.
They truly think that Louisiana people are stupid. When the folks from Florida and Oregon were working a year or so ago to steal the Truck Stop Tiger of Iberville Parish, they openly called Louisianians “inbred” and tried to start a fight with one of Michael Sandlin’s employees. Plus these out of town people not from Louisiana are always badmouthing him like he is just a stupid devil from Louisiana. It all goes together. You would think the issues were unrelated but they are all part of a whole picture of people from other parts of America thinking that people here are all stupid.
Is it possible to release the audio?
ooooooo….good question Kenobi!
It has been suggested to me (and I agree) that perhaps I should wait until May 20 (after the current round of layoffs) takes effect and certain employees will no longer be subject to reprisals by those in power. That is wise counsel which I shall follow.
I can’t wait. There is no way that if this audio is as you portray it (I have no reason to doubt you) that the mainstream media can ignore it….right? The arrogance, the lies, the lies, did I mention how every time White seems to open his mouth it’s lies? I CAN’T WAIT! Oh, and Tom, thanks. No really, thanks. Thanks seems so small, so insignificant. If there was a way I can show my true appreciation I would. Keep up the good fight, people are taking notice.
Do understand that White’s contempt of us poor, dumb Louisiana crackers is no different than that slick New Orleans lawyer, rakish Paul Pastorek’s.
We really need that VAM formula – actually all of them – yes, there’s one for teachers, another for K-8 schools, and a third for high schools – we need them recorded and defined in either statute or policy. Then maybe we could pay one of our Asian friends to replicate the calculations on an abacus. At last count, 2 people dealt with the calculations and no quality control exists. We already know they have every intention of manipulating the formulas to produce the results they want.
There are a handful of us in this state that DO know how to run a regression analysis and if provided the data CAN replicate the LDE’s results. But we can’t get our corrected assessment data (after they screwed up the EOC files last year) to prove they still made errors in the calculations, let alone any of that high falutin’ VAM stuff.
Let us not for a moment forget these words by White.
“To be honest, I’m a messenger between you, Chas (BESE President Chas Roemer) and the board. All the while, the governor’s office is saying, ‘Trust me, trust me, trust me. You gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this.’
As we assign guilt, please do not forget that it all begins with Jindal. He too must go.
Could this be a way to give teachers they want to keep better scores than those they want to get rid of? That is kind of what it sounds like. And I wonder if there is not a racial component involved since the RSD schools are heavily in North Baton Rouge and the area votes Democratic. There needs to be a way to get a tap on White’s phone, especially now that the vouchers have been declared unconstitutional.
This is what I am thinking since Seabaugh is involved. He is also trying to get a law passed making it an automatic case dismissal if a gay person claims job discrimination and files a suit. Homophobes are usually also racists. The whole string of prejudices goes together. This whole thing smacks of racism, vouchers, the RSD, and bringing so many African-American faces in to do the dirty work and push for charters such as the head people in the RSD and BAEO. Evidence of such issues as racial slurs in their work that they won’t release could easily bring down the whole administration.
There are many parts of this conversation that are outrageous, but I’ll limit myself to one point of disgust. All tests have margin of error which basically means a person’s scores tend to fluctuate within a range from day to day or test to test. Even IQ tests have margin of error. I feel confident a 10-point fluctuation could easily be margin of error and NOT indicative of poor teaching. I am appalled that anyone would even consider counting such a small change against a teacher especially if the child is performing at an acceptable level. If the purported formula was “approved by a researcher” then I want to know what mail order service provided the researcher with their degree. However, I suspect that part is more readily explained like this: it is just another White Lie.
Are y’all going to get into the tiff about the NOLA Jr. League’s grant? The sponsoring legislator said “Practically everyone in NOLA belongs to the Jr. L.” What world is HE living in? Has Karen C. P. joined yet? Mildred P. Worrell Socialite & Dem Dame Clinton, LA
[…] letter grades have undergone capricious changes. White has even tried to change the rules without involving BESE. And now the legislature desires to monitor LDOE/BESE […]
[…] students were rated as “ineffective” in October 2012. This information is from a recorded phone conversation between the legislator (Seabaugh) and White as noted on Tom Aswell’s Louisiana Voice […]
[…] students were rated as “ineffective” in October 2012. This information is from a recorded phone conversation between the legislator (Seabaugh) and White as noted on Tom Aswell’s Louisiana Voice […]