Texas Ed Spectator

At the risk of being accused of beating a dead horse:

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Education Columnist Scott Parks:

School board members, especially in the suburbs, are not wily politicos. Most are community volunteers with busy lives and jobs. What they know about district affairs comes from the superintendent and his staff. And that flow of information can be tightly controlled.In the middle of a crisis, the independent investigator serves as a clean source of information for a school board president responsible for preserving the district’s image and credibility.

Frisco ISD should have followed the independent investigator model in the case of Sydney McGee, the elementary school art teacher who claimed that her principal retaliated against her for exposing students to art works of nude people at a Dallas museum.

Essentially, the Frisco district stuck to its story line for too long: “We’re right to want to fire Ms. McGee, and she’s wrong about it having anything to do with the art museum field trip. But we won’t tell you more.”

Ms. McGee and her attorney were allowed to define the story in the public mind, and part of their story was that Frisco administrators were covering up for each other.

Only after the story exploded and went nationwide did the district begin releasing some piecemeal information. Imagine the difference had Frisco ISD announced early on that an independent investigator would be hired. It would have snuffed out the cover-up charge.

I realize that the quality of higher education has recently been cast in doubt by Spelling and company, but nonetheless, I think my post-secondary education has provided me with some valuable lessons for homeschooling.

I took the basic US History Before 1865 in a general freshman class at the University of Texas at El Paso. There were at least 100 students in the class and I can’t remember the professor’s name but everyone knew he wore a toupee since it had a habit of shifting in the wind. Anyway, large intro class, you would expect basic multiple-choice exams and formula lectures.

Not quite. We had the standard textbook and expected lectures. But we also were assigned several other textbooks, including After the Fact. Now I never remember names but I do remember this book. Just before the first exam, we were required to come up with five essay questions that could be on the test. They had to be comprehensive in nature and we had to document where the answers could be found from our reading. If one of your questions was choose, you received a significant extra point bonus added to your final test score. During the class before the exam, the professor broke us up into groups and handed out five questions that had been submitted and of which three would be on the exam. Each group worked together to answer as many of the essay questions as possible during class.

I would guess that the professor didn’t receive too many questions that he had never seen before. But I don’t think that was the point. Rather, the students had to take responsibility for understanding the material well enough to be able to ask the questions and provide the answers. Ultimately, he wasn’t transferring knowledge to us but facilitating us learning how to process and analyze information.

This philosophy of education is most evident in graduate classes and beyond. At the highest level of education, the student must teach herself. My first reader for my Master’s Report was a statistician but in no way an expert in the method I was using for my analysis. I was the one answering his questions. My second reader was broadly familiar with education policy but had never worked directly with dropout data. If I was homeschooling, people would be asking me how could I learn if my teachers didn’t know the subject well enough to teach it to me? I think the more appropriate question would be how do we expand our knowledge if we assume knowledge is static and people can’t learn without someone else teaching the specific information?

For a while, my husband taught in a pharmacy school. The mantra of the classroom professors was “stay one day ahead of the students.” There was just too much new information to do otherwise. Most of the faculty were just out of graduate school themselves and their specialities often had little to do with the basic classes they were teaching. And when the residents asked questions while on rounds, the preceptor would respond with “that’s a really good question, why don’t you look up the answer and bring it tomorrow?” That way he would learn the answer as well as the other students on the rounds.

So when you’re wondering how homeschoolers can possibly have all the expertise to teach all the subjects children are supposed to learn through high school, remember that they don’t have to. The basic premise of education is to learn how to learn. If your child is able to memorize Yu-Gi-O cards on his own and is your technical support in programming your Ti-Vo, why wouldn’t he be able to master algebra or read Shakespeare?

Just in case anyone relies exclusively on Dr. Phil for information on homeschooling.

The Homeschool Scuttle: The Great School Debate – Local Homeschool.com:

The Great School Debate The Dr. Phil Show, “The Great School Debate” (Proposed Air Date: October 27, 2006) begins with a couple that calls themselves “Radical Unschoolers.”

During a recent discussion on the California Homeschool Network E-mail list, Kirsten shared her first-hand experience as an invited guest on the Dr. Phil show for an upcoming episode about the controversial subject of Unschooling.

First of all, I was present during the taping of the program, which is scheduled to air later this month. Additionally, I’d like to provide a little background history into the Dr. Phil Show.

The Homeschool Scuttle: The Great School Debate – Local Homeschool.com:

Presenting, “Radical Unschoolers,” as the norm of homeschooling to the mainstream world, implies that all homeschoolers are radical, controversial, Unschoolers. Unschooling is by far the least understood and radical concept of homeschooling, and the easiest target for critics to judge and condemn.

To use this family as representative of the homeschool population is sensationalism at best, and deceitfully manipulative, at worst. The film portrays the Unschoolers as spending all of their days basically playing and hanging out. To seasoned homeschoolers, that may not seem a bad thing, and, to some, would even seem a good thing. But, to every mainstream American, who does not understand homeschoolers and homeschooling, let alone Unschooling, the film and the footage shown of the family serves to reinforce every negative stereotype mainstream America has about homeschooling.

The Homeschool Scuttle: The Great School Debate – Local Homeschool.com:

Stereotypes and Hype I know that we value play, and why we value play. But mainstream America does not value play the way homeschoolers do, and has many ingrained negative stereotypes about homeschooling. To them, we are Religious Zealots, or Unschooling Hippies, or Over-Permissive, Overly Attached Parents, or Paranoid, Overly-Protective, Control-Freaks, or, perhaps, Just Plain Lazy.

Dr. Phil plays upon every one of these stereotypes in his “Great Debate,” episode. There were so many homeschooling families that Dr. Phil could have chosen to represent homeschoolers, and he deliberately chose the family with the least understood homeschool style to promote his own bias and agenda on homeschooling that day.

The Homeschool Scuttle: The Great School Debate – Local Homeschool.com:

It was then that I realized that the huge groups of teenagers were from local high schools from the San Bernardino and Inland Empire Areas, and that these school children had been deliberately and purposefully bussed in specifically for their presence on the Homeschooling Episode.Ontario Christian High School was represented; San Bernardino High School was there, as well as several other local Inland Empire High Schools.

After the lady who chewed homeschoolers out as the future of her government had spoken, Dr. Phil then did something that clearly indicated why the homeschoolers had been brought to be part of an audience of an episode in which hundreds of high school students had been bussed in: Dr. Phil then asked the audience, “How many of you support Homeschooling and how many of you support sending children to school?”

Well, of course the 10% to 15% of the sparsely spread audience that were passionate homeschoolers proudly raised their hands in support of homeschooling. And when Dr. Phil said, “How many people do not support homeschooling,” all those young high school students that had been unwittingly bussed in specifically for that question in this episode, raised their hands — A forest of “No’s,” against homeschooling.

Although, that was just one brief question in Dr. Phil’s episode, he took no chances. He deliberately rigged that audience to be a few sparsely spread homeschoolers, and an imposing majority of those who were currently in traditional schools.

The Homeschool Scuttle: The Great School Debate – Local Homeschool.com:

We certainly left our young ones behind. We did this, because of our passion for homeschooling, and Dr. Phil preyed upon this passion in having us as his audience, so that we could be the flimsy 15% that raised their hands in favor of homeschooling, so that he could have his biased TV show. He preyed upon our cause, our dreams, our passion and our hope. A true predator.

The show is actually only about a half hour long. In between sets, the guests are quickly hurried off stage, and swiftly replaced with new, equally bewildered guests. Between sets, Dr. Phil deliberately goes out of his way to avoid eye contact with the audience, thus avoiding engaging the audience.

So it looks like we’ll never know after all. I still think that the principal’s handling of this situation warrants a “growth plan”equal to that of McGee’s. Lawson had already collected her data/evaluation before the museum trip but they weren’t revealed to McGee until after the trip. That, in of itself, is no big deal.

Star Community Newspapers:

The April 18 appraisal included a “below expectations” mark on an item titled “policies, procedures and legal requirements.” In a related area of the form titled “Areas to Address,” it states “Appropriate Art substitute plans, specific lesson plans updated weekly. Appropriate monitoring during duty assignments.”While those marks and comments are dated April 18, another document indicates McGee appears to have become aware of her review only after the trip.

Or at least the paperwork part of it anyway.

Star Community Newspapers:

In a May 11 memorandum, McGee states that the “evaluation was conducted April 18.” However, McGee states in the memo that a copy of the report did not reach her until April 28. That was two days after the field trip, according to documents, and one day after McGee was called into principal Nancy Lawson’s office to address the nudity complaint. McGee contends that she was “verbally admonished” by the principal at the meeting.

Even if McGee received it sooner, at this point there is no reason for me to have ever heard of Sydney McGee.

Star Community Newspapers:

On May 4, McGee met with Gonzales and Lawson for the teacher’s yearly “summative appraisal conference,” in which the appraiser discusses the appraisal document with the teacher, according to documents. McGee was informed at this meeting that the administration wanted to place her on a “growth plan” to address areas of concern.McGee has said she viewed the growth plan as a preliminary step to eventual non-renewal of her contract.

Gosh, you think? Anyone who has worked with human resources knows that if you want to fire someone and you want to do it right, you have to some version of a growth plan to allow the person a chance to improve.

Star Community Newspapers:

In her May 11 memorandum, McGee challenged the “below expectations” mark, saying “no negative written documentation was given to me prior with ‘areas to address,’ ” which she said is required by the state administrative code. She also disagreed with the substance of the mark.McGee said she would have expected to see documentation throughout the year had she been doing anything wrong in the classroom.

In fact, it’s not just people who deal with human resources but anyone who understands how evaluations are supposed to work as apparently McGee did.

Star Community Newspapers:

The mark was upgraded to “proficient,” and the growth plan nixed, documents indicate. On May 17, McGee and Gonzales signed a revised appraisal document, with the “below expectations” mark upgraded to “proficient.”Also on May 17, Lawson and McGee met again to discuss her performance, documents indicate. Lawson produced a memorandum May 18 that summarized the discussion.

That memorandum included issues surrounding the museum field trip, including the nudity complaint, as one of five areas of concern about McGee’s performance. It also lays out a list of improvement measures that Lawson expected McGee to meet.

So here is the first sign that Lawson failed to administer her responsibilities properly. Obviously, she must have thought McGee had a point since she changed the evaluation and dumped the growth plan. Apparently, working “verbally” and “informally” to deal with issues as Frisco ISD has repeatedly said was the case, doesn’t meet state administrative code. Since she can’t have a growth plan because she has failed to documented the situation properly, what does Lawson do next? She creates a memo that lists areas for improvement and the infamous parent remark regarding nude statues. And I hear the name McGee and Frisco ISD.

In the meantime, McGee manages to convince the principal of another Frisco ISD school to hire her. The Frisco superintendent, Reedy blocks the transfer so as not to undermine a principal’s authority to discipline an employee. ( I thought this was just about helping a teacher improve her teaching?) We all know what happens next. McGee goes to the press with parent’s complaint.

Why doesn’t anyone think that Lawson and Reedy screwed up as well? If McGee’s job is to have complete lesson plans, isn’t it Lawson’s responsibility to have complete documentation that can stand up to the scrutiny of legal requirements? If it’s McGee’s job to project a professional appearance to maintain standards isn’t it Lawson’s job to appropriately select examples and issues that illustrate an employee’s weakness rather than a parent’s small mindedness? Come on! Everyone is telling me that the nude statue had nothing to do with the situation. Then why did Lawson bother to include it, especially if she had other legitimate concerns? It was a mistake for her to include it.

Then there’s superintendent Reedy. He’s all for supporting Lawson’s authority even though she has failed to administer it properly. I guess he didn’t think it was a big deal that Lawson had to retract her “below expectations” evaluation because, hey, McGee’s just an art teacher and everyone thinks she is a pain to work with anyway? (I would hate to be the social studies teacher that teaches flag burning is a first amendment right or an English teacher discussing race relations in Huckleberry Finn and not be on the good side of the principal.)

Did he try to find out why Lawson’s evaluations differed from her predecessor’s? Did he think that McGee should be concerned about a parent complaining about nude art? (BTW, for all his protests to the contrary, his answer has been a very subtle, yet still very public “yes.”) And finally, he’s settling because he screwed up and recommended “not renewing McGee’s contract” before having the appropriate paperwork. Think about it. The memo wasn’t an actual growth plan. There was no growth plan since Lawson screwed up. To start non-renewal, he would have had to have the same paperwork Lawson was missing. Since it seems unlikely that they were able to come up with a legitimate workplan based on her summer performance, he plowed ahead anyway, contributing to the grounds for a lawsuit.

Will someone tell me who’s evaluating Lawson and Reedy? Where are their growth plans?

Someone has pointed out that taken to extremes that you could use the analogy of a murderer getting off because someone didn’t read him his rights. Yeah, okay. So the police officer not only didn’t read the rights, admits that she didn’t read the rights, presents as a witness someone who swears the person did it because everyone of his “racial epitaph of your choice” does it, and the chief of police says none of this matters because the guy is a murderer. All the officer had to do was to do her job correctly and read the suspect her rights. Because she didn’t do her job, the murderer gets off.

We are a society of rules and laws that apply to everyone, not just the ones we like. And if society’s basic institution for instilling these rights is unable to adequately apply them itself, then there is a problem and blaming it on the press or McGee isn’t going to make it go away.

And I know the answer to the question of the post’s title, for the children’s sake, right? I just wonder if the adults involved have learned anything from this.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

FRISCO – The elementary school art teacher entangled in a fight with the Frisco school district turned down the district’s settlement offer Thursday morning.

Sydney McGee’s lawyer said he submitted a counter-proposal to the district, but he declined to discuss the proposal.

Maybe we’ll get to see it all come out in court after all. Naaah, the district would settle before it made it that far, just like McKinney did.

Actually, I guess “less” would be more appropriate:

Dig Deeper Texas – Sometimes you have dig deeper to get past the bs:

I have spent the last two days looking for anything on these candidates and have found nothing. You have to wonder, if we the people think education is a top issue why isn’t there a huge uproar? I understand the state board of education doesn’t have a huge glitz factor but they have much more to do with what happens in texas schools than anyone in Washington.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

FRISCO – The elementary school art teacher embroiled in a public fight with Frisco ISD has until noon Thursday to approve a settlement deal or the district will start the process to fire her, Superintendent Rick Reedy said Monday night.The proposed agreement calls for Sydney McGee to be paid for the rest of the school year and prevents her from suing the district. It also stops her from working in Frisco ISD in the future.

Dr. Reedy said the deal would eliminate further interruptions for the district, which has been the subject of a national media firestorm in recent weeks.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

The proposed settlement agreement would avoid a formal nonrenewal decision.

I can understand why the district would push for this, the only thing they have to look forward to is more bad press while waiting to formally “non-renew” her contract. In the mean time, it’s just more stress for the teachers and students.

Now someone who might be more skeptical about the district’s offer might note that the agreement serves the districts interests in not having to face a lawsuit and ultimately defend it’s actions. I’m sure they would love to have the opportunity but are only taking this route in the best interest of the student’s well being.

I know, I know, it’s all McGee’s fault and the Lawson and Reedy walk on water so she better shut up and take the money and be grateful.

For those interested in a new and growing force in Texas politics.
Texas Parent PAC – Home – Standing Up for Texas Children:

Texas Parent PAC is a newly formed political action committee for parents, grandparents, parents-to-be, and anyone who loves children and supports high-quality public education. The future of Texas rests in the children of today, and our public schools are the best opportunity we have to ensure the state’s future is bright and prosperous. Unfortunately, state legislators continue to shortchange students by refusing to adequately fund neighborhood public schools. There are no good excuses for failure by the Legislature to meet the needs of 4.4 million students enrolled in Texas public schools!

The PAC is supporting a local candidate here in San Antonio.

MySA.com: Metro | State:

Texas Parent PAC, forged a year ago to elect public education proponents to the Legislature, threw its support Thursday behind Democrat Joe Farias in the closely watched race in Texas House District 118.

MySA.com: Metro | State:

Many of the PAC’s endorsements went to candidates running against recipients of campaign contributions from Dr. James Leininger, a San Antonio businessman and school-voucher advocate.

MySA.com: Metro | State:

The PAC’s biggest contributor has been another San Antonio businessman: Charles Butt, chairman and CEO of H-E-B. He’s given at least $133,000 to the organization in the past year, according to campaign finance filings.

I’m generally not a big fan of one issue organizations. However, education is Texas’ second largest budget expenditure which ultimately impacts other areas such as health care and public safety. And it’s nice to know that you can still get a group of people together to challenge the status quo and win.

There seem to be quite a few people who were willing to give Sydney McGee the benefit of the doubt until she posed for a photograph at the Dallas Museum of Art. Because of this, many people seem to believe she has lost the moral high ground.

I’ve been thinking about this and trying to figure out what bugs me about this position. First, let me state again that I am not defending McGee’s professional abilities. She may be as bad as her critics claim.

So what’s the problem with McGee going to the New York Times? As best as I can figure out, it has something to do with going to an “outsider” with no connection to the community. I think to keep her high ground, she was supposed to turn down any request from the New York Times. Because of her interview, Frisco ISD is now having it’s basic values cast in doubt and the student’s education experience suffers.

Now anyone who has been following this realizes that there were plenty of people who found her performance to be less than desirable long before the art museum trip. The principal had plenty of opportunities to document problems with her performance. So what does it mean when the principal provides legitimacy to a parent complaint about nude art by including it in her evaluation? Wasn’t this a “low blow” without possible justification? Didn’t she loose the moral high ground when she included the complaint?

I imagine many would argue that it was only one of the complaints, kind of like the New York Times was just one of the newspapers. And besides, these same people would point out, there are so many people who thought the principal was right. But McGee could make the same point.

The publicity that McGee has generated for the district is not be in the best interest of the children and the teachers. However, I would argue that the student’s, and especially the teacher’s experience will be far more at risk from a prinicipal and district that includes a parent’s suspect complaint in evaluating a teacher.

No one would have ever heard of Frisco or Sydney McGee if the principal had not included the complaint from which the district is trying to distance itself. Who lost the moral high ground?

Frisco ISD has provided their version of the McGee timeline.

Timeline Regarding Proposed Non-renewal Of Art Teacher Contract (October 12, 2006)

Due to constraints imposed under State law, public school districts in Texas are at an extreme disadvantage in publicly discussing personnel matters that may involve employee privacy and ethical considerations.

However, since an employee of the district has chosen to express opinions and allegations against the District publicly in a hearing and in the media, Frisco Independent School District has an obligation to its employees, patrons and taxpayers to correct misunderstandings that have been expressed in the media. The information outlined in this timeline is limited to information discussed by the employee in the public hearing or in public statements the employee and/or her attorney have made in the media or information included in the documents disclosed by Mr. Dunn to KRLD Radio. Unfortunately, the District’s efforts to fully respond to the employee’s allegations have been hampered by the continued refusal of the teacher and/or her attorney, Mr. Dunn, to provide written consent from the teacher permitting the District to release the teacher’s records in their entirety.

Within these constraints, the District provides the following timeline of events regarding this matter:

And Frisco still hasn’t said why a parent complaint about a student viewing nude art was included in the memo/evaluation. In fact, it seems to me that the district is trying to move away from acknowledging that the parent complaint ever existed and was used in the context of the teacher’s evaluation. The most recent time line states:

The memorandum summarized the ongoing concerns regarding the teacher’s performance and provided directives for the end of the year and the following school year. The field trip experience was mentioned in one paragraph of the five-page document because it was a recent example of ongoing concerns with issues regarding the teacher’s planning, organization and follow-through.

Where as in his guest editorial to the Dallas Morning News, Reedy states:

One paragraph in the five-page memo discussed concerns regarding the field trip and mentioned the parent complaint. It was included in the memo as a recent example of concerns involving Ms. McGee’s planning, organization and follow-through.

I know, picky, picky, picky.

Some more information has made it to the press concerning McGee’s performance evaluation and it mentions the fact that students were exposed to nude art.

Star Community Newspapers:

The third point of the memo addresses the trip to the art museum. It states that students were exposed to nude statues and other nude art representations.

I ask the same question that has yet to be addressed by the Frisco administration. With so many complaints, why was this one included especially since Frisco would never discipline a teacher because a student saw nude art. Oh, that’s right, I keep forgetting, this in no way had any disciplinary consequences.