Distorting the System

As part of my stud­ies in the Uni­ver­sity of Day­ton, I recently com­pleted a won­der­ful book by Don Wheeler enti­tled Under­stand­ing Vari­a­tion. The book is only 151 pages long, and is full of bril­liant obser­va­tions and the­o­ries. One of Wheeler’s points is that There are 3 Ways to meet a goal. 1. Improve the sys­tem. 2. Dis­tort the sys­tem. 3. Dis­tort the data. That is it. If you aspire to reach a higher tar­get, those are your choices. Wheeler then pro­ceeds to empha­size the impor­tance of focus­ing on choice num­ber one — improv­ing the sys­tem. I was reminded of this point yes­ter­day morn­ing when I saw a tele­vi­sion cam­paign that is cur­rently being run by Day­ton Pub­lic Schools. The cam­paign informs par­ents whose chil­dren attend Day­ton Pub­lic Schools that an atten­dance “count week” is approach­ing soon, and that it is impor­tant to make sure chil­dren actu­ally come to school that week.

Scott Elliot of The Day­ton Daily News had this descrip­tion of last year’s adver­tis­ing cam­paign for count week in the Novem­ber, 21^st, 2005 edi­tion of the paper.

The dis­trict is espe­cially aggres­sive with adver­tis­ing in advance of “count week,” the third week of Octo­ber, dur­ing which the state uses atten­dance fig­ures to deter­mine enroll­ment. That enroll­ment fig­ure is vital because the dis­trict receives state aid only for those stu­dents who attend dur­ing count week.

Here is the prob­lem. Atten­dance is not mea­sured daily, but on spe­cific dates that are pre­de­ter­mined. Good atten­dance that week means a good score, although actual daily atten­dance the rest of the school year may be poor. A good score, which is likely to be a dis­tor­tion of the sys­tem, means a bet­ter rank­ing. The result­ing rank­ing, which is not likely to be accu­rate, yields more fund­ing and a bet­ter pub­lic per­sona. In Dayton’s defense, more fund­ing may actu­ally help to solve some of the daunt­ing issues fac­ing Day­ton Pub­lic Schools, and hence the moti­va­tion for the cam­paign. So based on the activ­ity of one week, the school board can make the claim that it has improved the edu­ca­tional sys­tem, when in actu­al­ity it improved noth­ing but atten­dance on one spe­cific week, which it needed paid adver­tis­ing to achieve. To sum­ma­rize this is a group of pub­lic offi­cials, going on the pub­lic air­waves, using pub­lic funds, to adver­tise an attempt to dis­tort the edu­ca­tional sys­tem look­ing for par­ents to buy into the plan. In 2005 Day­ton Pub­lic Schools spent over $150,000 in tele­vi­sion adver­tis­ing. What if that $150,000 went to pay for col­lege schol­ar­ships for grad­u­ates of the Day­ton Pub­lic School Sys­tem? What do you think that would do to atten­dance? Would it encour­age stu­dents to come for more than just a week?

Instead of talk­ing about the suc­cess they have made in improv­ing the schools, they are ask­ing for peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in a lie. Instead of sell­ing the the life­time value of edu­ca­tion that comes from send­ing chil­dren to school every day, they are ped­dling a myth. Some­thing about that just does not sit right with me. Let me be clear that I would love to see Day­ton Pub­lic Schools score well. I firmly believe that strong schools ben­e­fit every­one, and as some­one who works in Day­ton, I help to pay for them too. How­ever I think we should expect more from those charged with edu­cat­ing chil­dren than a pub­lic dis­play of a dis­tor­tion of the edu­ca­tional sys­tem. Time, money, and effort would be bet­ter spent on Wheeler’s choice num­ber one — improv­ing the sys­tem every­day.