Superintendent John Collins sanitizes devastating report about Poway Unified School District

 Poway isn't the only school district where secrecy protects incompetence and bad behavior. All school districts need a heavy dose of sunshine.

Morning Report: Report Sanitized for Poway’s Protection
By Randy Dotinga 
VOSD
Aug 31, 2015

Turns out a tough analysis of dysfunctional management at Poway Unified School District that we got after a public records battle was a lot tougher before we got it.

Superintendent John Collins decided to take a red pen to a $40,000 consultant’s report about district tech problems.

VOSD’s Ashly McGlone uncovered the superintendent’s significant edits, but only after we threatened the district with litigation. As she reports, “words like ‘arrogance’ were replaced with ‘overconfidence.’ ‘Dysfunction’ became ‘issues.’ ‘Extreme and even chaotic’ decision-making became just ‘problematic’ and ‘reckless and wasteful decision-making’ became ‘uncontrolled and inefficient,’ while other descriptors like ‘short-sighted’ and longer passages were scrubbed entirely, district records show.”

The superintendent’s told us this about the report: “The result has helped us to celebrate the outstanding work we do and formulate new goals and organizational structures to continuously improve upon our successes.”

A tech staffer went to a meeting with Collins and said the chief wanted to avoid “calling anybody out for the problems that were discovered.”

Judge: Missouri's 'Facebook Law' Violates Teachers' Free Speech Rights

Judge: Missouri's 'Facebook Law' Violates Teachers' Free Speech Rights
by Wendy Davis
Media Post Publications
August 29, 2011


A state judge in Missouri has struck down a new law in that state that would have restricted teachers' ability to use social networking sites.

The law, which aimed to protect students from sex abuse, prohibited teachers from having accounts on Facebook or other social networking sites that allow "exclusive access" with a student.

Last Monday, the Missouri Teachers Association filed suit to have the statute declared unconstitutional. The teachers' group argued that the law violates their First Amendment free speech rights. The teacher leading the protests, Christina Thomas, argued that the law's provisions were so broad as to make it illegal for her to communicate with her own child through social sites.

Late last week, a judge agreed. Cole County Circuit Court Judge Jon Beetem issued an injunction banning the state from enforcing the new law for at least 180 days.

"The breadth of the prohibition is staggering," Beetem wrote.

"Social networking is extensively used by educators," he continued, adding that the law is so far-reaching that it "clearly prohibits communications between family members and their teacher parents using these types of sites."

It isn't surprising that the law was struck down, given just how broad it was -- and how little sense it made. Rather than protecting students, the law would cut off a means of communication for no reason other than a fear of technology. After all, teachers can talk to students in person every day of the school year.

Ed-Tech Advocates Eye Rupert Murdoch's Move Into K-12 Market

December 2, 2010
Ed-Tech Advocates Eye Rupert Murdoch's Move Into K-12 Market
By Ian Quillen
Edweek.org.

Educational technology experts say the purchase of ed-tech company Wireless Generation by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. raises questions about how effective the partnership will be over the long haul, but they hope the Nov. 22 announcement inspires further large-scale private investment in the K-12 technology market.

They say the deal—in which News Corp. bought 90 percent of New York City-based Wireless Generation for $360 million—is far from a certain success. While the media conglomerate’s expansive resources may be unparalleled within the relatively small ed-tech business sphere, News Corp. may find it challenging to define its footprint in that world—perhaps one of the reasons it also recently announced the hiring of outgoing New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein as an executive vice president in the office of the chairman, where he is expected to help oversee educational endeavors.

Further, observers say, the longer, slower business cycle that typifies the education market may take some adjustment on the part of the world’s third-largest media company, which counts the 20th Century Fox film company, Fox’s numerous TV enterprises, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and book publisher HarperCollins among its holdings.

“It’s a very different business than any of the different businesses they’ve been in,” said Karen Billings, the vice president of the educational division of the Software and Information Industry Association, or SIIA, based in Washington. “Everything is a longer cycle. If they’re expecting revenue or profits over a traditionally shorter time cycle to satisfy investors, it’s going to be difficult to do.”

In addition, the widespread perception of News Corp. as conservative in its political sympathies—with such outlets as the Fox News Channel—combined with the for-profit nature of its new education endeavors may make building trust with many educators harder than it’s been for the philanthropic ed-tech efforts of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and film producer George Lucas, said Mike Lawrence, the executive director of Computer Using Educators, an advocacy group based in Walnut Creek, Calif...