Attorney General needs to investigate Seattle Schools Superintendent

December 10, 2010

Dear Seattle Schools Director Michael DeBell,

Given a significant number of revelations about Superintendent Goodloe-Johnson’s actions, it is clearly time for the Seattle School Board to request that the Governor ask the Washington State Attorney General to investigate the Seattle Schools Superintendent in regard to a series of violations of state laws. I believe that the AG will find “gross misdemeanors” and at least one “felony”. Please request the Governor to have the Attorney General investigate.

Joy Anderson et al. have notified Superior Court Judge Gregory Canova that they are dropping the appeal of the Board’s NTN contract decision of April 7, 2010. This is being done so that the Board can publicly discuss what happened in the making of that decision. On October 25, 2010 I left a copy of the initial brief and all the exhibits in this case for you at the JSCEE.

Among the actions that we wish to have you bring to the attention of the Governor to request the Attorney General to investigate are:

(1).. Misleading public officials by providing them with oral and written information that she knew was incorrect. The June 4, 2008 Strategic Plan statement on page 11 that 17% of SPS graduates meet the minimum credit requirements to enter a four-year college is a prime example of her work. The fact you and others asked:
“How this figure could possibly be correct?”
Yet she failed to clarify this lie for more than two years. This speaks volumes about the Superintendent’s mode of operation.

(2).. As recently as this week’s article in the Seattle Times, I find deception continuing with:

“the district wanted to make it clear that, in its new school reports, it measured test-score gains based on students' performance compared with their academic peers, not their past performance”.

Yet when viewed on the whole district level the reports say absolutely nothing of value because comparing a cohort against the bottom third of a cohort will always produce 66% of the students making gains regardless of the performance of the students. This fallacy has been repeatedly pointed-out; in fact, I did so in my testimony before the Board and Superintendent at the Board meeting on Wednesday December 8. You have my written testimony in regard to 66% of the District’s English Language Learners making progress on the State Reading test. I included the test performance gauges for that group of students from grade 6 in 2008 to grade 8 in 2010, which reveals and entirely different picture. This is another example of the Superintendent’s desire to produce misleading statistics for the School Directors and others in the public, which makes things appear far better than they are.

(3).. The Superintendent is the Secretary of the School Board as such she bears a lot of responsibility for the Board’s failure to fulfill RCW 28A 645.020 in failing to provide the filing of a complete certified correct transcript of evidence to the court in the appeal of the April 7, 2010 New Tech Network contract. Not only was the filing not certified correct, it was incorrect. The filing shows that the memo used in the preparation of the New Tech Network contract was not the original memo sent to the Board but rather a draft version of that memo masquerading as the original. The Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer were responsible for the production of the Action Report. In the evidence submitted to the court the draft version of the memo was placed into evidence and the memo sent to the Board was missing. The Superintendent in my opinion is guilty of the class C felony of forgery in the production of the 3-12-2010 NTN Action Report.

It is time to get the Attorney General to investigate the actions of the Superintendent.

The oath of office you took as director states I:

“Will to the best of my judgment, skill and ability, truly, faithfully, diligently and impartially perform the duties of the office of Seattle School Director.”

A diligent and impartial performance of the duties of the office of Seattle School Director given the knowledge you have in regard to the actions of the Superintendent would require you to contact the Governor to get the Attorney General to investigate the Seattle Schools Superintendent for multiple violations of state laws. Your duty calls for this action.

Sincerely,

Danaher M. Dempsey, Jr.

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To our faithful blog readers:

Do NOT miss the Fabulous Meg Diaz with:

Sunday, December 5, 2010
Crappy! Chart! Thursday! Simple Cons: Beating the Last 17% Out of a Dead Horse.

Which includes my comment:

Note on page 11 of the plan it states:
17% of students satisfied Minimum credit requirements to enter a four-year college.

It seems only reasonable to put forth a figure that actually applied to the students graduating. The students and their counselors were not trying to meet 2012 or 2013 standards for admission but rather 2007 standards.

This is just another example of the Superintendent failing to report the relevant data and preferring to submit something less relevant in a deceptive way. That has become her hallmark in Seattle. Her title of "Dr. No Confidence" is definitely merited by her actions and words.