Wednesday, November 25, 2009

IN THE MAILBOX


Did Ed Sector fudge Toch's research?

It looks that way. Here's a note FairTest's Monty Neill posted this morning on the North Dakota Study Group listserv:

EdSector CMO Report: Who Lost Tom Toch?

Thanks to a couple of eagle-eyed readers (including MDM) for pointing out that the much-delayed Education Sector report on charter management organizations lacks the name -- and apparently much of the content provided by -- its original author, writer and EdSector co-founder Tom Toch.

Asked about the situation, Toch said, "I removed my name from the report because a good deal of my analysis was removed and, as published, the report does not reflect my research findings on the current status and future prospects of charter management organizations."

Toch says he submitted the 20,000-word report in June, based on two years of investigation, but did not see anything further until a paper copy of the final report was shown to him this past weekend. A good deal of the candid commentary from those within the charter community "had been removed," according to Toch. And the report recommendations were added on by someone else.

Toch can't publish the original version of the report because of copyright issues but he points to several other pieces (in Education Week and the Kappan) that reflect his findings more completely, and notes that he will continue to write and speak on the issue.

No response yet from Education Sector.

5 comments:

  1. So Monty is denouncing the report as "pro-privatization" even though he didn't actually read it? Did you?

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  2. hey, mike -- can you pick a sentence or two from my post to excerpt for your readers, rather than copying and pasting the whole thing into your own blog? thanks -- alexander

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  3. Alexander,

    You've got to be kidding. Is this April 1st already? Your blog post (yes, it's a blog post--not War and freakin' Peace--)is mainly a bunch of quotes and reprints from other bloggers.

    To quote Alexander Russo himself--"Welcome to the world-wide web, Mike"

    Oh,and here's another from Russo: "Get over it. Why don't you cut the angry guy crap and stop being so PC."

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  4. Hah! Russo hoisted with his own petard (I always wanted to say that). Oh and you can quote the whole thing, bro.

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  5. Good choice of words, my brother. The word "petard" actually comes from the Middle French peter, to break wind, from pet expulsion of intestinal gas, from Latin peditum, from neuter of peditus, past participle of pedere, to break wind; akin to Greek bdein to break wind. (Merriam-Webster)

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