It's okay to cheat off a guy getting an A, right?
The Washington Post published a front-page story today saying that the city's mayor1 put forward a school plan that is exactly like the one in Charlotte, N.C.
Using a word-for-word plagiarism detection system (similar to the one Marnie had to use), the newspaper concluded that 32 percent of D.C.'s school plan came from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg plan. "It's quite unethical," some guy says in the article.
Wait, why is it unethical? I don't understand this scandal. Do our nation's 13,000 school districts need to have 13,000 different school plans?
If Charlotte's plan sucks, then fine. But if it is a good system, why should Charlotte be the only one that gets to use it?
1I didn't vote for Mayor Fenty, or Mayor BlackBerry as his critics have dubbed him, but I think he's done a pretty good job so far.
Using a word-for-word plagiarism detection system (similar to the one Marnie had to use), the newspaper concluded that 32 percent of D.C.'s school plan came from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg plan. "It's quite unethical," some guy says in the article.
Wait, why is it unethical? I don't understand this scandal. Do our nation's 13,000 school districts need to have 13,000 different school plans?
If Charlotte's plan sucks, then fine. But if it is a good system, why should Charlotte be the only one that gets to use it?
1I didn't vote for Mayor Fenty, or Mayor BlackBerry as his critics have dubbed him, but I think he's done a pretty good job so far.
2 comments:
Okay, so the key to getting me to stop lurking is to turn to a topic in my wheelhouse.
While stealing 'best practices' is certainly a common enough practice in education, three things about this story strike me as concerning.
First, Fenty has tried to present himself as someone who will refocus the city's attention on education and will approach the issue with greater thought and seriousness than past school boards. However, Victor Reinoso's excuse for stealing ideas was that he was real busy -- so busy evidently that he couldn't come up with his own vision statement. In addition, though not reported by the Post, one of the problems wasn't so much that the DC plan borrowed from others, but rather that as a result of borrowing wholesale, the plan lacked internal consistency. This approach doesn't seem to match the seriousness that Mayor Fenty is trying to convey.
Second, as noted by C-M officials, the right way to create a school plan is to get input (and as a result buy-in) from the community, teachers, business leaders, etc. That is what NYC did when launching reforms after Mayor Bloomberg got control of the schools. It seems unlikely that DC's cut and paste job had broad community support.
Finally, one reason to create a plan thoughtfully and methodically is that, done right, the plan has implications for the whole school district and for the city budget. For example, the idea of using "secret shoppers" may be a great one, but if you don't reserve resources (FTEs, funds for training, and mechanisms for using the information) it can't work. You can take the words from another district, but it is meaningless without building a program.
I did vote for Fenty and have even been known to defend Mayoral control, but this is a very bad first step for the mayor's education agenda.
Thanks for the explanation, PAW. I'm glad I struck upon something that triggered a response from you. (I figured if you didn't comment when I mentioned your wife, you were lost forever.)
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