“This story is pure innuendo and drama—a fiction—under the guise of investigative reporting.”
—Superintendent of Education, in a Jan. 25 email to Southern Education Desk reporter Sue Lincoln, who was preparing a story on skewed data on student test scores released by White’s Department of Education.
“He (White) told me to ‘Check with people over you to be sure this is the right thing to do.'”
—Reporter Sue Lincoln, on a conversation with White over her story about student test score data.
Posted in BESE, Education, Governor's Office, Notable Quotables, Public Records | 3 Comments »
Blind, unquestioning loyalty has long been a prerequisite for serving in the administration of Gov. Bobby Jindal.
Any administrator, of course, expects his appointees to be loyal, and rightfully so. There’s no argument at any level with that basic principle of employment, whether one works for a bicycle shop or the President.
Generally, though, an intelligent CEO will seek candid input from subordinates—even if that input differs from his management philosophy. The free exchange of ideas is, after all, the foundation for growth and progress in any organization.
Except with the Jindal administration.
At least a dozen firings/demotions have documented the belief that if you don’t drink the Jindal Kool-Aid, if you so much as give a flickering thought to dissent, you will be teagued.
Teagued, of course, is the term born of Jindal’s firing of state employees from rank and file workers to state board members to university presidents and cabinet officials and of the demotions of at least four legislators from their committee assignments.
To this point, the firings and demotions have been limited to state employees and legislators.
No longer.
Now there may reason to believe the Jindal retaliation team has reached into the private sector and the perpetrator is none other than Superintendent of Education John White.
The latest victim may be Sue Lincoln, formerly a reporter for Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB), and a veteran of 35-years’ reporting experience.
Lincoln, who lives in Baton Rouge, is careful not to say outright that White had her fired, but the evidence is pretty convincing.
The Southern Education Desk, headquartered in Atlanta, GA., is funded by a multi-million dollar grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and reports on education news from five states—Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana. While Lincoln worked for LPB as a reporter for the Southern Education Desk, her salary was paid from the grant.
It is, or was, a two-year grant administered through Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB) and involved eight stations—five National Public Radio and three Public Broadcast System television stations. They included WLPB-TV and WRKF Radio, both Baton Rouge stations.
Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) President Chas Roemer feigned surprise and/or ignorance of reports of manipulations of student test scores by the Department of Education (DOE) during a Senate Education Committee hearing last week but the truth is Lincoln first reported on the department’s suppression of data as early as February 12.
It was that report that most probably ended her reporting tenure with LPB and the Southern Education Desk.
The report cited studies by Mercedes Schneider, Ph.D., a teacher in St. Tammany Parish which called into question dramatic jumps of up to 25 points in high school standardized test scores.
Lincoln noted that Herb Bassett, who holds a master’s degree in mathematics and who teaches in LaSalle Parish, also saw major discrepancies in statistics released by DOE. Bassett is the same one who at last week’s Senate Education Committee accused DOE and White of releasing fraudulent data.
It was that data about which Roemer denied any knowledge but promised he’d “look into it.”
Immediately after we posted Roemer’s denial, Schneider emailed LouisianaVoice to say, “I have a document that proves he (Roemer) is lying.”
She promptly followed that email with a copy of a letter she sent to White and BESE members (including Roemer) on Dec. 1, 2012 in which she called attention to what she said was “scoring bias” in the 2012 school performance scores. (We will elaborate more on the contents to that and other documents in subsequent posts as our coverage of this growing story continues.)
White apparently turned up the heat on Lincoln and her bosses in Atlanta in an effort to kill the story.
He first told Lincoln the story was “too complicated for television” and that “Even the New York Times doesn’t have enough ink and paper to do it justice,” Lincoln said. “He accused me of sucking up to Diane Ravitch.” Ravitch is research professor of education at New York University and a leading opponent of current education reform trends.
“He told me to ‘check with people over you to be sure this is the right thing to do,’” Lincoln said
A series of emails between Lincoln and White is even more revealing.
At 1:28 p.m. on Jan. 23, as White prepared for a weekend in New Orleans with his wife (She has never moved to Louisiana from their New York home, which should say something about White’s long-range plans for remaining in Louisiana), Lincoln emailed him:
“John, thank you for your call and the copy of the letter you sent out. After conferring with my editors here and in Atlanta, they want me to go ahead with the story. Please don’t let it affect your evening with your wife, but I will be coming down to N.O. to interview you at 10 tomorrow morning.
“I’ll give you a statement instead,” White tersely replied six minutes later.
As Lincoln delved further into the questionable data, she sought a comment from White who, instead of addressing the apparent problem, went on the attack.
Two days later, at 8:51 a.m. on Jan. 25, Lincoln emailed White: “Due to an electrical fire at LPB Wednesday night (Jan. 23), we were without video-editing capability for the majority of the day Thursday. As a result, the airing of my story on the 2012 SPS (school performance scores) analysis has been pushed back to Feb. 1.
“Because of this delay, I have to ask again—would you consider going on camera to make a statement?”
Four minutes later, at 8:55 a.m., White, apparently not having read Lincoln’s email asking for an on-camera statement, wrote: “Your source knowingly distorts facts in print, but you are using her as a source on the very issue about which she distorts facts.
“This story is pure innuendo and drama—a fiction—under the guise of investigative reporting.”
Then, 19 minutes later, at 9:14, White, sent another email saying, “Sue, take a look at what your source has written here. First she lies about my experience working in schools. But more than that, she goes out of our (sic) way to assert that my administration created this formula regarding graduation rate bonus points and such.”
Finally, at 9:29 a.m., 38 minutes after Lincoln asked him to appear on camera, White responded: “No thanks. If reported accurately, this is a story of a formula and a calculation by way of that formula. The number and the formula can speak for themselves.”
“I can’t say for certain that the story is the reason I’m no longer reporting for the Southern Education Desk,” Lincoln said. The grant is currently under consideration for renewal but LPB informed Lincoln they were “going in a different direction” should the renewal be approved.
WRKF was not a partner in the initial grant, but has asked to become a partner if there is a third year of funding.
“The Southern Education Desk managing editor at GPB was unfailingly supportive of doing investigative stories,” Lincoln says. “And he was insistent that there needed to be a ‘firewall’ between the financial and political concerns of LPB management and what Southern Education Desk reporters covered.”
So why would LPB crater to White’s demands?
First, there is the factor of Course Choice providers. Described by DOE as “an innovative educational program that provides Louisiana students with access to thousands of high-quality academic and career-oriented courses,” the program simply allows practically any provider to offer online courses to students—on the state’s tab. Not only may just about anyone, private or public sector, offer courses, but they also are free to charge just about whatever they want.
Bottom line: there’s big money for Course Choice providers.
One of the approved providers is Louisiana Public Broadcasting.
Follow the money.
Second, LPB has a contract with the Iberville Parish School Board to provide certain curriculum and instruction to the parish system. Elvis Cavalier is the Iberville curriculum director, or Chief Academic Officer. He also serves as Director of Academies, also known as principal of the little-known Math, Science and Arts (MSA) Academy.
Little is known about the school because it flies under the radar. It does not exist for all practical purposes. It is not listed among Louisiana public schools and its student scores are not reported to DOE or to the federal government.
Known informally as a “shadow school,” scores for its 1200 students are spread out among the other public schools in Iberville Parish. This allows Iberville School Superintendent Ed Cancienne to boast—and he does—that Iberville’s performance score “has grown.” He neglects to add that that growth is primarily the result of infused scores from the “non-existent” MSA Academy.
Lincoln said she began investigating that story and her editors at LPB kept telling her to get additional information. “When I’d get that, they’d want more. It kept on that way until I was finally informed there would be no story,” she said.
Follow the money.
“I can’t prove that I was terminated because of pressure or implied threats from White regarding the Course Choice program or because of the shadow school story,” Lincoln said.
“All I can do is connect the dots.”
Posted in BESE, Contract, Contracts, Education, Governor's Office, Grant, Grants, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Teague, Vouchers | 15 Comments »
This might be considered a break from state politics and in a way, it is. At the same time, however, there is a tenuous link—a tongue-in-cheek link, to be sure, but a link nonetheless.
It is a somewhat convoluted story centered around a former co-worker. Harley Purvis (not his real name) worked with me for about 10 years as a claims adjuster for the Louisiana Office of Risk Management (ORM). A legend in his own mind, he retired about a decade before I managed to make a less than graceful exit to watching the mail for my monthly pension check.
Harley was a hoot. He was never shy about boasting of his self-anointed title of political kingmaker (or king-breaker, depending upon which politician was the subject of the day’s conversation) during coffee breaks in the old Department of Education building.
We so looked forward to those breaks because we knew ol’ Harley would regale us with tales of his epic exploits which approached reality only in his vivid imagination. All other conversation would cease whenever he began with his obligatory “I’ll tell you one damned thing…,” because we knew he was about to bestow his unique version of the truth upon us.
He claimed to be president of the board of a country club in a neighboring parish but a single phone call by yours truly confirmed that he was neither president nor even a member of the club’s board of directors. A club member, yes. But President? you can check that box “no.”
There were normally up to a dozen—maybe even more—present at many of the breaks at which he generally held court. No one at those breaks ever challenged his claims—mostly because no one wanted to interrupt his wildly imaginative flights of fancy.
When Edwin Edwards defeated Buddy Roemer in the 1993 governor’s election, Harley spread the word that he was in line to be the next commissioner of administration.
Of course, it didn’t happen. Weeks later, after Edwards mysteriously passed over Harley in favor of another, I asked him at break what happened to his appointment. Without missing a beat, Harley simply informed us that “They didn’t get the money right.” This at a time when claims adjusters for ORM topped out at somewhere around $30,000.
When Harley’s high school class scheduled its reunion (there was no word which reunion it was, but it must have been at least his 35th or 40th), he immediately began his preparations for the big event by dying his hair jet black—with liquid shoe polish.
Predictably, the polish soon began running down the back of his neck, soaking into his shirt collar. ORM’s claims officer walked past his cubicle and, seeing the streaking shoe polish oozing down his neck, asked, “Harley, what the hell happened to you?”
He once ran for the state civil service board and after taking time off to campaign throughout the state, finished last.
Anytime anyone at break mentioned any prominent resident of the parish where his country club was located, Harley would always twist his first two fingers together, hold them up and proclaim, “We’re just like this. He always sits at my table when we have a function at the country club.”
After about the 20th time hearing this (about 20 different “tight friends”), I asked, “Harley, how many tables do you wait on at these country club functions?” That was probably the angriest I ever saw him but everyone else got a good laugh.
He once spotted an attractive lady who worked for another agency in our building. Unaware that I knew her, he confided in me that he had a date with her for the coming weekend. Intent on giving her a heads up about his misplaced narcissism, I quietly made my way to her and asked her if she knew Harley. “Who?” she said. I pointed him out and informed her that he said he had a date with her. “Oh, God, no!” she blurted. “I don’t have a date with him this weekend or ever. I have to stop this.”
I never learned what she said to him but when I later asked him how his date went, Harley said, “I cancelled it. I found out she’s married.”
She wasn’t.
For the then-approaching 1997 elections, he boasted that he had to start lining up his campaign contributions because “You have to know where to put your money. That’s how I keep my political power.”
“But isn’t it illegal for civil service employees to contribute to political campaigns?” I asked.
“Hell, I’m not stupid. I give the money to my mother and she passes out the contributions.”
“So, in other words, your mama has political influence and you’ve got squat.”
That was the second time I made him angry. “I don’t know why I even talk to you,” he muttered, walking away.
Never one to be discouraged, he nevertheless did continue talking to me, later telling me his girlfriend was moving back to Louisiana from Houston. Hooking his thumbs in his belt buckle, he drawled, “I guess I’m gonna have to call Edwin (Gov. Edwards, whom he apparently knew on a first-name basis) and get her a job at (an area university).”
A couple of hours afterward, I walked into the copy room and found a female co-worker already at the copier. As I waited my turn, I related that conversation to her in full Harley Purvis mode—right down to the thumbs in the buckle. As I embellished his drawl, I noticed her eyes widening and her mouth trying to form words.
“He’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?” I asked, still imitating his distinctive cadence and inflection.
She could only nod in silent assent.
I turned and said, “Hello, Harley” and retreated to my cubicle. Nothing else one can do when busted like that.
As his retirement date approached, Harley became bolder and even more boastful with his fellow adjusters.
“When I retire, I’m gonna work as an investigator for a plaintiff attorney and I’m gonna bring this agency to its knees,” he said more than once.
Fast forward a few years and ORM becomes the first state agency to be privatized by Gov. Bobby Jindal—at a cost to the state of nearly $75 million. It was $68 million at first but the company that took over ORM, F.A. Richard and Associates (FARA) of Mandeville came back in only about eight months for a 10 percent ($6.8 million) amendment to its contract.
Then, less than a month after getting that amendment approved, FARA sold its contract to another company from Ohio which only a few months later, sold out to a New York firm—despite a clause in the state contract that strictly forbade transfer of the contract without prior written approval. No prior written approval was ever given.
Meanwhile, word coming out of ORM indicates that workers comp claims payments are about $10 million more than before privatization. So instead of the privatization saving the projected $20 million, the state now is in a $10 million hole and will now have to see a savings of $30 million to reach that $20 million estimate—and it doesn’t seem likely that those savings will ever be realized.
With a third company now serving as ORM’s third party administrator, accountability and transparency are out the window insofar as the agency is concerned.
So in retrospect, perhaps Harley was right. Maybe he was behind the privatization movement. Maybe he helped to run up the excess claims payments.
It may have taken 10 or more years, but hey, who’s to say ol’ Harley wasn’t sandbagging us all those years?
Can anyone say with any degree of certainty that he wasn’t instrumental in “bringing this agency to its knees?”
Who knew?
Posted in ORM, Office of Risk Management | 10 Comments »
“In mid-December I sent you a report documenting the gross inflation of the high school performance scores. The department covered up the inflation by intentionally mislabeling an important column of data in the initial public release of the scores.”
—Grayson teacher Herb Bassett, testifying before the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday that his research of Department of Education (DOE) data “revealed deceit, distortion, manipulation of scores and data suppression.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that but I will certainly look into it.”
—Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) President Chas Roemer, when called to the witness table by the committee to answer questions about Bassett’s charges.
Posted in Politics | 12 Comments »
The vote was a foregone conclusion; the minds were made up long before the Senate Education Committee members cast their votes to kill SB 41 by Sen. Bob Kostelka (R-Monroe).
The vote that killed the bill was anti-climactic at best. The testimony of a band director and self-proclaimed “highly qualified” math teacher, however, provided the bombshell that Superintendent John White and the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) would rather you not know.
His testimony evoked memories of Michelle Rhee’s tumultuous reign in Washington, D.C. and of more recent events in Atlanta.
It was purely academic that only two of the eight committee members would vote in favor of sending the bill to make the Louisiana Superintendent of Education position elective again after nearly two decades of having an appointive superintendent.
And one of those two votes in favor—that of Sen. Mike Walsworth (R-West Monroe) was purely for show because (a) he knew the result well in advance, so his vote would not affect the outcome and (b) about 75 percent of those attending the committee meeting were from Ouachita Parish—and they all supported the bill. Walsworth, if nothing else, is at least capable of reading a room.
Walsworth, you may remember, was the senator who last year made a complete ass of himself during a committee hearing on science vs. creationism. A teacher was testifying about how her science students were growing cultures in her classroom when Walsworth asked the stupefyingly inane question of whether the cultures could produce humans.
This is your senator, Ouachita Parish. Be proud.
But enough of Walworth’s political pandering and asinine questions; Herb Bassett of nearby Grayson was the real story because his testimony placed charges on the table that heretofore have only been whispered about in the halls of the Claiborne Building.
Where others within the Department of Education (DOE) have alluded privately to data suppression and manipulation of school performance scores that artificially inflated graduation rates, Bassett, a band director who said he was “highly qualified” to teach math, publicly charged White, BESE and DOE of misrepresenting test scores and then covering up the lie by removing the data from the Louisiana Believes website. “This is data suppression,” Bassett said.
He said he was asked by his principal last October to look into his school’s score so that it could be improved in the future. “My subsequent research revealed deceit, distortion, manipulation of scores and data suppression,” he said.
“In mid-December, I sent you a report documenting the gross inflation of the high school performance scores. The Department covered up the inflation by intentionally mislabeling an important column of data in the initial public release of the scores.”
Bassett clarified that statement later, saying he sent his findings to all 144 state legislators and every school district superintendent and that he received an acknowledgement from the legislative assistant to Sen. Conrad Appel (R-Metairie), chairman of the committee, that Appel had received his report.
“The data, the Transition Baselines, showed that the GEE (Graduation Exit Exam)—which was being phased out—and the new EOC (End of Course) tests were mis-calibrated by 7.5 points. That’s half a letter grade,” Bassett said. “Had it been correctly labeled, the inflation would have been obvious—at least to me.”
Meanwhile, he said, BESE was given a different version of the scores with the Transition Baselines correctly labeled. “This shows intent to deceive,” he said.
LouisianaVoice has received information from several sources inside DOE that corroborate Bassett’s claim but because of DOE’s refusal to provide requested records, little has been written about the claimed deception.
He later provided LouisianaVoice with a copy of the report that he sent to legislators and local school superintendents. We will be expanding on that report in subsequent posts.
Bassett further cited what he claimed was manipulation of scores.
“At Mr. White’s first BESE meeting as State Superintendent, the department recommended a graduation index formula change. The change ensured that scores would only go up or stay the same. This raised the average score another four points.
“Thanks to the Transition Baselines, the switching to the EOC did not affect the growth scores but this (the graduation index formula change) did. There are at least 20 schools that would not have earned top gains status without it. That’s over $160,000 in those big checks passed out in PR campaigns,” he said in reference to recent teacher bonuses passed out by DOE as performance awards.
“And the graduation rate data set that I used to compute this has been removed from the Louisiana Believes website (the DOE website). That is data suppression.”
Bassett said he made a five-minute video explaining the problems with the 2011 and 2012 DOE reports on the Value Added Model (VAM), also known as COMPASS, the department’s teacher evaluation program. He said the problems he found “clearly contradict DOE’s current claim that VAM is stable. “This inconvenient data have been suppressed,” he said.
He said LEAP and iLEAP data files that contain the actual numbers of students at each achievement level have been removed. “Only percentage data are given,” he said. “Meanwhile, the new School Assessment System will award bonus points based on the number or percent—whichever is greater—of non-proficient students who surpass their VAM targets. This biased system more generously awards points to schools with over 100 non-proficient students. Without the (actual) numbers, we will not know which schools disproportionately benefit from it.
“Most of the data I used are gone from the new website,” he said.
He said that White is asking “that we believe that VAM has miraculously become stable since the reports by its creators have disappeared.”
Though Bassett did not elaborate on the latter point, LouisianaVoice also has received information that the creators of VAM later became concerned at the direction the program was taking and sent several emails expressing that apprehension to superiors who ignored the messages.
BESE president Chas Roemer (R-Baton Rouge) was called to the witness table and asked about Bassett’s charges. Roemer said he had heard nothing about Bassett’s claims, but that he would “look into it.”
It would difficult to imagine that the president of BESE would know nothing of claims of manipulation of data by White and DOE in light of cheating scandals in Atlanta and Washington, D.C. In Atlanta, former superintendent Beverly Hall and several public school staff members were recently indicted in an alleged scheme to cheat on Georgia state tests, including the erasure of students’ incorrect answers and replacing them with correct answers.
A similar scandal brought down the administration of former Washington, D.C. superintendent Michelle Rhee, once the national poster child of school reform.
With the negative publicity those two cheating scandals have received, one would think that the president of a state education board would be aware of any hint of a similar event on his watch.
Roemer was asked to look into Bassett’s allegations and to report back to the committee.
If anyone reading this cares to wager that Roemer will ever report back to the committee members, that the committee will ever follow up on Bassett’s embarrassing charges, or that White or BESE will ever take corrective measures, we know several skeptics who will cover the bet—and give you odds.
Posted in BESE, Education, Ethics, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Public Records, Recovery School District, RFP, Request for Proposals, RSD, Transparency, Vouchers | 17 Comments »
