"She writes:
When the school board reached a severance agreement with Deasy in
October, it issued a statement that board members do “not believe that
the superintendent engaged in any ethical violations or unlawful acts”
in regard to the emails. That statement was completely inappropriate
considering that Bramlett’s investigation into the emails was still
underway—as it is now. The board has no authority to direct the
inspector general’s investigations—but it can hire and fire the person
heading the staff office, and controls his office’s budget. (In fact,
just a week or so before the board made its statement, Bramlett’s office
pleaded for more funding, according to a KPCC report.) The statement
could be seen as pressuring the inspector general not to find
wrongdoing; in any case, board members are in no position to prejudge
the matter.
For that matter, none of us are in that position. The emails
could be perfectly legal and appropriate—or not. It’s unknown whether
even a federal grand jury will be able to ferret out the full picture,
since many earlier emails were apparently deleted and aren’t available.
And if it uncovers ethical rather than legal problems, the public might
never know; the grand jury is looking for evidence of crime. Federal
crime at that. This might not be the best mechanism for examining the
iPad purchase. But the investigation at least ensures that an
independent authority is examining the matter, unimpeded by internal
politics or pressures.
Yes, the public has a right to know and a right to expect that public
officials will act in the best interests of students. As for the huge
purchases for technology, we in New York have learned that even the
sharpest and most ethical city officials have trouble monitoring the
technology purchases. The largest financial scandal in the city’s history
occurred recently, when a company called Citytime won an IT contract
for $63 million in 1998 which ballooned into a $600 million payout; the
principals went to jail. The school system’s ARIS project, launched in 2007,
was supposed to aggregate data on the city’s 1.1 million students; it
was recently dumped because so few teachers or parents used it, at a
loss of $95 million. There were other instances where consultants bilked
the city, in large part because no one supervised what they were doing.
Is there a moral to the story? Choose your own. Mine is that these
multimillion dollar technology purchases must be carefully monitored,
from beginning to end, to be sure that the public interest is protected
and served. The problem is that many school districts lack the expertise
to know whether they are getting what they paid for, or getting a pig
in a poke. When even New York City and Los Angeles can be misled, think
how much easier it will be to pick the pockets of mid-size and smaller
districts."
no diane ravitch's blog... aqui.
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