Mainstream Greenwich Time Education Reporter Colin Gustafson And Betty Sternberg Both Get Big Fat F's. Colin Gets An F for letting The Board Of Education Spoon Feed Greenwich Parents Misinformation About The Harris Survey Via His Pitiful Reporting.A Citizen Journalist Bill Clark For Going Down To The School Administration Building And Actually Picking Up A Copy Of The Harris Survey And Independently Interpreting The Data With Out BOE Communication Director Kim Eves Spin.
If Greenwich Time Editor David Warner Was Worth His Salt He Would Walk Over To Cub Reporter Colin Gustafson Desk And Say, "Show Me Your Copy Of The Harris Survey."
And When Armature Reporter Colin Gustafson Could Only Show Him Board Of Education Press Releases About The Survey. Colin Would Be Shown The Door And Given Information On How To Reach The Other Fired Greenwich Time Employees At Our Greenwich .
Why Isn't Greenwich Time Editor David Warner Smart enough to hire real talent like Citizen journalist Bill "The Scribe Of Greenwich" Clark who is not afraid to bring the Greenwich school parents and the single family homeowners this exclusive news story:
By Bill "The Scribe Of Greenwich" Clark
Your scribe has been down to the Board of Ed, and has picked up a copy of the Harris survey that was carried out in May and June of this year. As you may recall, dear reader, the survey was machine-readable, having been filled out with #2 lead pencils just as we all used to do with the SATs. Theoretically, the raw results should have been available within 24 hours. But that's not the way these surveys work.
Clearly the public cannot be trusted with the raw data. It has to be massaged and obfuscated first. If certain results are not as wished, a portion of the surveys can simply be declared unusable. If a certain issue - e.g., the level of dissatisfaction with the superintendant - is too one-sided, the "impact index" must be applied to mitigate this fact. Other factors used to massage the data are called the "incidence rate" and the "penalty", which must be multiplied together to provide the numerator of the "impact score", and so on and so forth. Finally, if a certain segment of the population survey (in this case, community leaders and RTM members) is wildly anti-Betty, you can just decide not to report most of their results at all.
The survey was filled out by four general categories of "stakeholders" (shades of Wall Street!): students, teachers, parents, and community leaders. The students, being clearly not yet fully educated by definition, were not allowed to register an opinion of Betty. But the other three categories were, and in each of these groups Betty came in dead last in the "satisfaction" sweepstakes.
The scale used by Harris is the usual 1 to 10. As we all recall from our own schooldays, a grade of 60% was a low pass - a "D". 70% was a "C"; 80% was a "B"; and 90% or better was an "A". Anything below 60% was an automatic "F".
The teachers and staff gave the school system an overall satisfaction rating of 66% - a D+, let us say. The highest satisfaction for them was with the school atmosphere, parental support, the local principal, their own careers, and the students. These grades averaged out to just under 80% - call it a B-.
But Betty? She got the lowest rating of all at 50%, closely followed by the School Board at 52% and the central administration at the Havemeyer Building of 54%. Oops. Looks like they all got an F.
Betty did better with the parents, oddly enough. The parents' overall satisfaction rating was 76% - a C+. But Betty again got the lowest rating from them, at 57%. Oops. Another F.
The community leaders had an overall satisfaction rate of 70%, down from 83% just two years ago. That's a solid C, folks. Not a great grade for the Town of Greenwich school system. And who, of course, got the lowest rating in the survey? Why, Betty, of course - 54%. Oops again. Yet another F.
The only group allowed to rate the School Board as a separate category were the community leaders. Only two years ago, the level of community dissatisfaction with the Board (why does Harris suddenly reverse the reporting methodology like this?!) was 17%. Now it has soared to 39%. Harris deems this to be a "Negative" trend. No sh*t, Sherlock. For this they get the big bucks?
So there you have it, dear reader: Betty gets a resounding "F" from teachers, parents, and the community. But she continues to draw her obscene salary and benefits package of well over a quarter of a million dollars. Is there something wrong with this picture? Are we living in Greenwich or Wonderland? Or is there any difference between them?
Greenwich Gossip - http://greenwich-gossip.blogspot.com/
09/21/08 Around Here When Bill Clark Says Frog We Jump. When The Scribe Of Greenwich Says Jump We Ask,"How High"?
Comment:
Definition: Bill Clark » A journalist worth his salt
Many would-be amateur journalists like Colin Gustafson seem intimidated by the Board Of Education. Thank God Greenwich Taxpayers have the Scribe Of Greenwich to alert them to what is really happening at the BOE.
You can't trust the sloppy and incomplete reporting at the Greenwich Time, but you can trust the factual writings of Bill Clark so do the smart thing and subscribe to Greenwich Gossip's RSS Feed.================================================================
Please send your comments to GreenwichRoundup@gmail.com
Citizen Journalism - What Is It ?
http://www.cctvcambridge.org/) has just published a very interesting short video explaining what grassroots, citizen journalism is. The video includes some interesting contributions and examples of what citizen reporting may be all about. Here is a shorter, edited version of the original (15 mins).
See the full original version at:http://blip.tv/file/60931
See more new media video clips and news about independent use of communication technologies at:www.masternewmedia.org
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