If this contract was not approved by the board, and it doesn’t appear that it was, the money should be refunded, the findings should be dismissed, and those violating standard practices should be fired.
On Thursday, February 16th, Dr. Wardynski began to make public a process that he started in private in October with the hiring of Bryon Headrick of LEAN Frog. Speaking of the findings, Dr. Wardynski has claimed, “this is what incompetence looks like.” Dr. Robinson, as usual, praised Wardynski for bringing in a “culture of change.”
There are going to be “firings, demotions, and transfer,” and everyone said, “STRONG LEADER, STRONG LEADER” because that’s exactly what Wardynski paid them to say. And when they didn’t say it often enough, he led the chorus himself.
And much of the public buys into the message that our schools are finally going to be run by people who do things the right way, who follow the rules, who don’t just put their friends, regardless of their inexperience or incompetence into highly paid positions of power.
So where’s the evidence that Dr. Wardynski and his administrative team are doing things any differently?
There doesn’t seem to be any, and as Mr. Blair pointed out on Thursday, February 16th, that doesn’t make us feel any better.
Everyone knows that Dr. Wardynski has made a habit of hiring his friends. That’s old news.
Everyone knows that Dr. Wardynski is bringing in TFAers, even though they cost more and there is no shortages of highly qualified and fully certified teachers in the district.
As I said, old news. What have they done lately?
What about these two tidbits of information:
On Thursday, Mr. Headrick criticized the District’s Procurement Process. He claimed that there was “Significant opportunity for fraud, waste and abuse, and legal liabilities associated with non-compliance to state and federal law.”
The bid law is indeed state law. Was this contract with LEAN Frog executed in accordance with the bid law? That the school board approves the contracts that Dr. Wardynski enters into is also a requirement. (And since they’ve approved every single recommendation the man has brought so far, that shouldn’t be too onerous of a requirement, should it?) Was this contract approved by the board? If so, when?
Also who paid for this LEAN Frog evaluation that is offering Dr. Wardynski political cover to do whatever he wants? The first time that the school board voted to approve hiring Mr. Headrick of LEAN Frog was yesterday at a special called board meeting. AND YET, Huntsville City Schools has been paying LEAN Frog since November. Here are the numbers
So, the Huntsville City Schools has paid LEAN Frog at total of $26,270.00 since November 2011, but the first time the board approved hiring of this company was February 25, 2012. I have asked Dr. Robinson about this oversight in oversight, but as of this writing she hasn’t responded to my question.
A culture of change indeed, Dr. Robinson.
What about hiring practices, and the posting of jobs?
On Thursday, February 16th, Mr. Headrick pointedly stated that the Human Resource department was “inefficient” and “2.5 to 3 months behind at time of assessment.” He claimed that HR received “32 hours of interruptions in two days.” (You’ll note that he did not offer any details to put these numbers into context like sharing how many total working hours were performed in that office in those two days. That would be helpful information, wouldn’t it?) Mr. Headrick claimed that the department was having to waste time examining and re-doing work.
Perhaps one reason that HR is running behind is because Dr. Wardynski and his Administrative team aren’t following the standards and procedures for hiring themselves.
Goodness, but wouldn’t it be embarrassing if, say the then Director of Transition and the now Director of Operations were, oh I don’t know, posting jobs that haven’t even opened yet on his Facebook Wall?
That would require some additional oversight and re-doing of work on the part of the HR department, don’t you think?
Here’s a screen shot from Mr. Aaron King’s Facebook Wall. Assuming that he doesn’t lock his Facebook account down in the near future, you can see this for yourself if you wish. Just scroll down to a post on January 2, 2012.
In addition, I’ve “shared” this posting on the Geek Palaver Facebook Page. Here’s a screen capture of the posting for those of you who don’t use Facebook.
I wonder if this posting, “for all positions (directors, coordinators, principals, teachers, etc)” is following the standards established by the HR department, state and federal law? Perhaps the New Employee Orientation Materials that Mr. King received were not current. That must be the problem, right?
Giving your friends a two month head start on applying for state jobs, jobs that must be open to everyone, jobs that were not open on January 2nd, is a violation of the state requirements for hiring. And as Mr. King posted, he and Col. Wardynski, should “take ownership for their decisions.”
Doesn’t this basically prove that the current witch hunt that Dr. Wardynski is engaged in is politically motivated? I mean, why else would he instruct his XO to talk to his buddies about jobs nearly two months before he discusses any of this with the public? It would seem that he is hoping to take advantage of the public outcry over this issue to place yet more like-minded, inexperienced people into positions of power (that pay well) throughout the district, don’t you think?
See, I’ve gotten a good amount of grief since the 16th of February for questioning our “Strong Leader.” I’ve been told that I should just support what he’s doing to clean up Huntsville City Schools. I’ve been told that these changes, this culture of change that he’s bringing in, will be good for our schools. I’ve been told that ultimately these changes will be good for the system. I’ve been told I should quit being apprehensive and that the whining must stop.
But the simple fact of the matter is that all this talk of inefficiencies and criminal behavior that happened in the past is simply being used to cover up inefficiencies and criminal behavior that is happening right now.
As I said long ago, the new boss is the same as the old boss, and anyone telling you differently isn’t paying attention.
After all, “effective” teachers, administrators, directors and even parents “have no need to be concerned” about the direction Wardynski is taking us.
Dr. Wardynski appreciates a plainly spoken phrase, so here’s one for him. This is hypocrisy, plain and simple hypocrisy.
“I’m not sure that makes me feel any better.” David Blair.
I know exactly how you feel, Mr. Blair, and thank you for asking a good question on Thursday night. (Yes, I actually have something positive to say about a member of our school board. It can happen.)
It seems that there have been some bad, and perhaps in some cases even criminal, decisions made in the past concerning the business practices of Huntsville City Schools for the past ten years. There may have been both sins of commission and omission. You can read a summary of three reports offered by consultants hired by the superintendent to review business practices before he came to town to save us in the Times. In addition to that, I would recommend that you take a look at the presentations that were offered to the board. You can find those here.
So after an extensive, lengthy and costly discussion about the business practices of the system from the past ten years, the board moved out of the work session and into voting on some of the current superintendent’s recommendations.
Dr. Wardynski loves to question the past. Throughout his hour and fifteen minute presentation on how terrible things were in the system ten years ago, Dr. Wardynski asked many questions of his consultants: Most of which were designed to show alternately how terrible the leadership of the system used to be as opposed to how wonderful the leadership of the system is today.
Even though his consultant, Byron Headrick of Lean Frog, explicitly stated numerous times that the system must have a “Strong Executive Leadership Team,” Dr. Wardynski wasn’t satisfied with that. So he asked Mr. Headrick (who gets paid to find inefficiencies) to say one more time that the only thing that the system currently has gotten right is, wait for it, a “strong executive leadership team” willing to address these changes.
[For some reason, the final conclusion slide is not included with the presentations found on the HCS website. I'm sure that's just an oversight of our strong executive leadership team. Here's a quick snapshot of that slide if you're interested.]
However, once we move out of the past and into the present, Dr. Wardynski is decidedly less interested in questions about his decision making processes.
Once the Work Session of the board meeting was finally over, the board quickly moved from the past to the present. Under the agenda action items, the board was asked to approve the minutes of previous meetings and then to approve, upon the superintendent’s recommendation, the current “Consent Agenda” which included Gifts to Schools, Temporary Agreements, and Bid Tabs.
Here is a transcript of the board discussion during that portion of the meeting.
McCaulley: “The superintendent recommends the approval of the consent agenda consisting of gifts to schools, temporary agreements and bid tabs. Before we vote on bid tabs, let me. Um, board members, delete the directive, the parking signs. The superintendent said that was a little premature. So delete that, item, right there. We’re not going to get those.
Birney: Delete 1270?
McCaulley: Delete 1270.
McCaulley: Motion?
Blair: Motion to approve the consent agenda.
Robinson: Second.
Blair: Okay, I’ve got a question.
McCaulley: Discussion.
Blair: So after hearing all of this [the discussion concerning business practices], so how do I get comfortable with um, building materials, telephone replacement, and school communications center. How do I get comfortable with that?
Wardynski: Well we’re reviewing all of these, and we can always come back to the board as we did before with cell phones. But we have to keep the district running while we get things straightened out. And so these processes we’re recommending continuing, and if we need to stop we will.
McCaulley: Any more discussion?
Blair: I’m not certain that makes me feel any better.
Robinson: [Speaking over Blair and redirecting the Superintendent] So I was going to say, thirty days from now do we know that this, that we’re actually going to be what we said. I’m assuming there’s going to be more oversight, maybe some monitoring. These might be your test cases here as you develop your processes.
Wardynski: That’s right.
Blair: Okay
McCaulley: All in favor say Aye.
While Blair cannot be heard voting in favor, his mouth does move during the Aye vote. No one opposed the recommendation.
So thanks to David Blair, we have a clear understanding of the limits of Dr. Wardynski’s interest in transparency, addressing inefficiencies, and providing strong executive leadership. All of that ends prior to July 5, 2011, the day that Wardynski was hired.
For questions about his recommendations all he really has to offer is Just Trust Me.
We’re supposed to just trust him that he isn’t going to be inefficient. We’re supposed to just trust him that he isn’t going to use the system for personal gain. We’re supposed to just trust him.
Doing so would be easier if his comments in the past had proven to be more trustworthy.
Doing so would be easier if he did not seem to be constantly redirecting system funds to Broad Foundation funded organizations.
Doing so would be easier if he would simply answer questions once in a while.
In short, once again, Dr. Wardynski is engaged in a witch hunt with internal reviews that only review the past.
Please understand that I too believe that the school system must be efficient. He’s absolutely correct that inefficiencies, particularly ones like the E-Rate Review, are inexcusable. The people responsible for this must be held accountable. However, we must review more than just the past. Our board members (four of whom were on the board when all of the inefficiencies were taking place) must hold our superintendent accountable for his current actions and recommendations.
Even though Mr. Blair (the only member who wasn’t on the board during the years reviewed by Dr. Wardynski) asked a good question, he went right ahead and voted for the recommendation despite his statement that the answer of just trust me didn’t make him feel better.
This is blind faith.
Blind faith got us into this mess; it will not get us out.
I feel your pain, Mr. Blair. Dr. Wardynski’s answers (when he actually offers one) rarely leave me feeling better either.
The difference is I wouldn’t go ahead and vote for the recommendation anyway.
One efficiency that might need to be made is not wasting teachers’ time by making them read TFA propaganda.
On Thursday, February 2, 2012, Dr. Wardynski, in his monologue, had this to say about my comments when I mentioned in passing that teachers weren’t simply teaching to the test:
Uh, those who claim that testing, we teach to the test, that testing is not a valuable resource simply do not know what they are talking about. There is no way to test, to take, to teach to the STAR test. It’s a computive, computer-adaptive test in which every child will face a different question. And the questions aren’t the kind you can teach to. If you don’t know algebra, you can’t teach to answering an algebra question. If you don’t know how to factor an equation, you can’t teach to answering a question like that. If you can’t read, we can’t teach you what the paragraph said, cause you haven’t seen the paragraph. And so we’re after the business of literacy and numeracy. Uh, we’re taking a very strategic approach to raising the proficiency of our children, and our excellent teachers are responding.
Wow, where to begin.
It’s important to note that I didn’t claim in my statement that the district was teaching to the test. What I actually said was:
It’s [a love for education] what motivates Mrs. Dodson to take on extra work of evaluating additional assignments like poetry writing projects to encourage advanced students to continue to grow beyond merely the requirements of the test.
Perhaps he was reacting to others’ comments that claim that when testing is the single method of evaluation offered for both students and teachers, then our classrooms set education aside in deference to teaching to the test. While I didn’t say this on Thursday night, it is a problem that I recognize. If the score on the test is the only metric by which we evaluate student and teacher performance, then the test takes the highest priority in the classroom.
It becomes more important than critical thought.
It becomes more important than critical analysis of ideas.
It becomes more important than guided social development.
It becomes more important than intellectual curiosity.
In short, teaching to the test leaves a whole world of education in the dark. You can read more about what standardized tests do and do not cover in The Myths of Standardized Tests: Why They Don’t Tell You What You Think They Do.
But with his decades of experience in education, Dr. Wardynski wants you to know that “those who claim we teach to the test, that testing is not a valuable resource simply do not know what they are talking about.”
That’s right. Dr. Wardynski thinks I don’t know what I’m talking about. Thank you sir, that’s high praise coming from you.
So let’s look at his argument to see if Dr. Wardynski is right or not.
The Straw Man Fallacy
It’s always useful, when you enter into a debate with someone, to have an opponent who says something that’s easy to rip apart. Sadly, sometimes we enter into debates with people who aren’t stupid. When this happens, one common method of attack is to set up a straw man that’s easy to knock down. This is a useful technique as typically if you can show that your opponent is wrong on one point, then those listening to the debate will assume that your opponent is wrong on all points. But when your opponent doesn’t give you an easy target, well then you can just create your own.
This is the straw man fallacy. Claim that your opponent has claimed something that is false, even when he or she hasn’t.
Despite Dr. Wardynski’s claims, no reasonable person is claiming that “testing is not a valuable resource.” Every educator knows that testing does have value. But every educator also knows that no matter how fantastic the test is, the test is but one of many methods needed to evaluate education. You’re claiming that your opponents are speaking in absolutes when it is in fact you who are elevating the test to the level of absolute in student performance, in teacher performance, and in school performance.
I am not claiming that the test has no value. I am simply claiming that the test does not have absolute value.
Knowing What You’re Talking About
Dr. Wardynski then goes own to offer an impassioned defense of how it would be impossible to teach to the STAR test. He says:
There is no way to test, to take, to teach to the STAR test. It’s a computive, computer-adaptive test in which every child will face a different question. And the questions aren’t the kind you can teach to. If you don’t know algebra, you can’t teach to answering an algebra question. If you don’t know how to factor an equation, you can’t teach to answering a question like that. If you can’t read, we can’t teach you what the paragraph said, cause you haven’t seen the paragraph.
His argument seems to be that since no one sees the actual questions ahead of time, that it would be impossible to teach to the test. He’s arguing for the security of the STAR test and in doing so, he shows that he doesn’t understand teaching, testing or teaching to the test at all.
I do so love situational irony.
Let’s see if we can help him out here a little. If a teacher knows, as he claimed in his “we’re not teaching to the test speech” that her students are going to be tested on algebra, then a teacher knows that spending time talking about geometry is a waste of time, even if the students raise questions that are geometry questions. If a teacher knows that the test questions are based on the ability to remember details from a paragraph, then a teacher knows that spending time talking about the meaning of a paragraph is less important than talking about the content of the paragraph.
Teaching to the test doesn’t require knowing exactly what questions will be asked on a test. That’s cheating, not teaching to the test.
Teaching to the test means that a teacher knows that the test will cover 10 mathematical concepts, and so the entire focus of the class is then directed toward mathematical concepts ignoring the other questions or pathways that might arise from classroom discussion, questions, or as I mentioned above, intellectual curiosity.
In short, Dr. Wardynski has once again demonstrated his failure to understand the educational process.
Education is More than Testing
Let me see if I can finish with an example of what I am talking about here.
I teach, among other things, a Survey of the New Testament class. In this class, we review the historical underpinnings and development of the New Testament. One of the final assignments in the class is to write an argumentative research essay on what the New Testament has to say about a controversial subject such as abortion, homosexuality, poverty, whatever the student wishes to study.
This is the test that the students must complete. It tests their ability to use resources they’ve been exposed to in the class. It tests their ability to use various methods of Biblical criticism that we’ve discussed in the class. It tests their ability to discuss Scripture intelligently and reasonably.
One semester, I had a student who just couldn’t get her mind around the assignment. She had been struggling all semester, her writing was, to be frank, terrible, and I was to the point of suggesting to her that perhaps trying the class again at a time when her personal life wasn’t interfering with her education might make the class and the assignments easier. You see, her child was dying, and the idea of debating Scripture just wasn’t connecting with her.
But while talking to each other, I discovered that she did have an extensive interest in Mary, Jesus’ mother. She felt connected to her and her loss of her son, especially at that moment in her life. So since I had been the one to design the test, and since I have the freedom to find a student’s interest and run with it, I was able to redesign the assignment into a research essay on Mary.
This student, who had had difficulty even stringing together three sentences in a coherent way, wrote the best essay of the class, and in fact, one of the best essays I have received since. She was getting the learning objectives of the class, and once the test was modified to the student, she was able demonstrate that to me.
Education must be a personal, direct experience between the teacher and the student. When a district determines the test, the curriculum, and what’s important for a student to accomplish, they are taking education out of the hands of the teachers and students, and putting it into the hands of politicians and private companies who sell the test.
We should, we must teach to the student not to the test.
This is why Dr. Wardynski is unconcerned about the quality of the teachers he hires or the experienced ones he runs off. Teachers don’t matter in this brave new world.
A hyper-emphasis on testing results in an educational system where neither the teacher nor the student actually matter.
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Wardynski’s Business Practice Comments
Permalink | Shortlink | Comments (0) | TrackbackFiled in polityTags: board comments, dr. casey wardynski, huntsville city schools, school board, teachingThis is a transcript of Dr. Wardynski’s comments during the board meeting on February 16th concerning business practices efficiency.