Washington Post and Gazette fooled again by MCPS

Tofig admits that $25,000 stock trading fund never really existed at Gaithersburg High School

Stock Trading Room equipment mysteriously disappears

The MCPS announcement on November 26, 2006 was big news.   "Gaithersburg High School Celebrates Opening of First High School Stock Trading Room in Nation."  Funded by a $75,000 grant from the NASDAQ foundation, the school had received an electronic ticker board, a NASDAQ data board, and other equipment to support the Academy of Finance program.  This was a huge win for a school that had a high poverty rate, declining test scores and a seriously decaying building.

Adding even more excitement, MCPS claimed that "Students Have $25,000 Fund to Trade", donated by "a longtime supporter of the school system who wishes to remain anonymous."  And for good measure, according to the announcement, "the school will keep any profits in the account."

The Washington Post and The Gazette both picked up the story, devoting considerable coverage to the grand opening of the trading room.  

"The most intriguing part, financial educators say, is that students will invest real money," wrote Daniel de Vise of the Washington Post.  "You have to have real money involved in order to get the students to take it seriously," said Scott Hoover, adviser to the student investment club at Washington and Lee University. "If you can get the students to take it seriously, they can do wonders."

In the Gazette, reporter Jamie Ciavarra included a quote from Principal Darryl Williams:  "Any money the students make will go back to the school to fund additional programs, while the donor has agreed to absorb any losses."

It sounded almost too good to be true.   And in fact, it wasn't true, according to a letter obtained last week from MCPS Public Information Officer Dana Tofig.  The $25,000 "donation" never took place.  No investment profits have been contributed to the school.  The "real money" that was "needed to get the students take the program seriously" was as fictitious as the profits that were contributed to the school.  

Adding further insult to the integrity of the finance program at GHS, the electronic ticker board, the NASDAQ data board and other equipment obtained with the $75,000 NASDAQ grant have disappeared from the school.  

"No one knows what happened to it," said a GHS finance teacher at an onsite visit by a Parents' Coalition member. The only physical evidence that the NASDAQ-funded equipment ever existed are the screw holes in the wall where the large displays were mounted.  

As for evidence that the anonymous donation "never came to fruition" -- or even that there was an anonymous donor at all --  the Parents' Coalition has requested documentation showing that someone had planned to fund the trading account.   So far, however, MCPS has not come forth with anything, even with names redacted, that shows that anyone ever intended to create the stock trading fund.

(Photo of Superintendent Jerry Weast yucking it up on opening day is from The Gazette archives.)


   

Texas Observer Exposes Washington Post Education Reporting

Washington Post reporter Daniel de Vise covered Montgomery County Public Schools before moving to his current assignment covering higher education.

Washington Post Reporter Allows College Officials to Alter Story on Controversial Test 

Reporter breaks journalistic convention by sharing entire drafts with ‘customers’ in University of Texas press office.

In February, Daniel de Vise, a reporter for the Washington Post, arrived at the University of Texas at Austin campus to work on a story about a controversial standardized test sweeping the nation’s colleges and universities. The test purports to determine how much students have learned in college, part of a movement to bring No Child Left Behind-style accountability testing to higher education. University officials were nervous about what the story would say about the politically sensitive topic. Before he landed in Austin, de Vise emailed UT’s director of communications to reassure him that the article was “NOT meant to be any sort of hit piece, more of a thought-provoker.”
De Vise’s visit was fairly routine journalism. He toured campus, visited with students and interviewed administrators. But when de Vise returned to Washington, D.C., he employed some unusual, perhaps even unethical, techniques.
Before publication, de Vise shared at least two complete drafts of his article with UT’s press officers and allowed them to suggest critical edits, some of which ended up in the published story, according to emails obtained by The Texas Observer through a public information request... 

..."Everything here is negotiable," de Vise wrote to Tara Doolittle, director of media outreach at UT-Austin on March 5. "Help me out by not circulating this material very far and by stressing that it is an unpublished draft. If you or anyone at the university has any concerns about it, I implore you to direct them to me. I'm one of a very few reporters here who send drafts to sources!"

In another email, de Vise wrote that he's "never had a dissatisfied customer in this process. And that includes an article a few months ago about a school with one of the nation's worst graduation rates.”...

...De Vise declined comment and referred questions to his editor Nick Anderson, the education editor for the Post, who said he stands by the story. “The story was completely up to our standards,” Anderson said. “It’s a good, fair story and tough story that I think stands the test of time.” Asked about de Vise sharing drafts with sources, Anderson said that the reporter’s “interaction with sources are made in an effort to be fair, complete and accurate as possible.”
Anderson wouldn’t comment on whether the Post has a policy on reporters sharing story drafts with sources. A call to a Post spokesperson seeking comment about editorial policy wasn’t returned...

WaPo Live Q&A Now - Chef Cathal Armstrong discusses Healthy School Lunches

Now at the Washington Post: Chef Cathal Armstrong discusses healthy school lunches

Today
12
P.M.Chef Cathal Armstrong discusses healthy school lunches

The Post is taking questions now.

About the topic
Chef Cathal Armstrong, founder of Chefs As Parents, will chat about healthy lunches for the back-to-school season.

Go here to submit your questions now:
http://live.washingtonpost.com/lean-and-fit-0809.html?hpid=z7

Shareholders lob allegations at The Washington Post’s Kaplan unit

Premium content from Washington Business Journal - by Ben Fischer

Date: Friday, July 8, 2011, 6:00am EDT

Already besieged by federal and state investigations, The Washington Post Co.’s star subsidiary is staring down another gauntlet, this time in the courtroom.

In a new court filing, investors accuse the Post and two senior executives of hiding aggressive and potentially unlawful recruitment tactics of Kaplan Inc., and downplaying the risk that regulators would eventually target the operator of for-profit colleges. Those actions, the suit claims, artificially kept the parent company’s stock price high for a year before government investigations became public.

Citing 21 former Kaplan employees and one former client as confidential witnesses, the plaintiffs allege widespread company practices designed to maximize government-funded revenue at the expense of the students’ best interests, as well as tactics instituted to skirt regulations that govern recipients of federal student loans

Read more here.

Wash Post to Fed Workers: Drop Dead

As someone who works with the federal government, as do many of my neighbors, imagine my surprise to pick up yesterday's Washington Post 'Express' and see this headline: 'What Shutdown? Wondering what you'll miss if Congress can't reach a deal on the spending cuts? The answer: not much.'

Wow! how about a paycheck? how about that mortgage payment? the daycare payment? groceries? miss much? Not sure which editor was asleep at the wheel on that one.  So much for the 'hometown newspaper.'

Let's reverse the headline.  Let's see...if we cancel our WashPost subscriptions, how much will we miss? Answer: not much.  Lots of other great choices here in the DC area.  And what about those courses our kids take at Kaplan, which is what keeps the Post afloat financially.  What if we switch to the Princeton Review, or one of the many other private companies offering tutoring for SATs? What would we miss? Again, not much.

So, how about it folks.  To drop your subscription to the Post, call 202-334-6100.  And, forget about those Kaplan tutors.  We have plenty of choices in the Washington area for first-rate tutors and SAT prep classes.

Miss the Post? not much.

One credit card cut up! Thousands to go!

Unlike Montgomery County Public Schools where eating out on the MCPS procurement card is a perk that goes with the job, Montgomery County's Planning Director Rollin Stanley has been ordered to turn over his agency credit card. The Washington Post's Miranda Spivack reports.

Montgomery County's planning director Rollin Stanley has been ordered to turn in his agency credit card and has paid back about $600 for meals and other expenses auditors said were wrongly charged to the agency, officials said. Stanley also reimbursed the agency for about $600 in personal cellphone calls....

Amazing! If Mr. Stanley worked for MCPS he would have just been called an "administrator" and he would have simply been one of 1,400 employees able to charge the taxpayers!

...Stanley, 51, who joined the Montgomery planning agency 18 months ago, said he is being singled out for special scrutiny and is "frustrated" by the probe....

True enough. In MCPS using a procurement card for restaurant meals, gifts for a co-worker or candy for staff is considered part of the job and no audit will change that, even if those uses were prohibited by MCPS policy in place at the time.

..."If I am accountable for something, it is that I haven't been giving them [detailed] receipts and I owe them $11 for a beer I bought for a guy who had worked for 38 years and retired," he said. He said he had never been audited to this extent in previous jobs...

Not turning in receipts and logs? The Maryland Office of Legislative Audits discovered those issues at MCPS. But MCPS didn't take any action on that issue.

...Acting Montgomery Planning Board vice chair Jean Cryor, who also sits on the bi-county commission's audit committee, said she thought the audit would help the Montgomery agency improve internal practices. "An audit is done to find the challenges and procedures that aren't followed as well as they should be . . . to find how we can do better with taxpayers' money."...

Don't worry Delegate Cryor, the next generation knows better! Just take a look at what the Whitman High School students wrote about MCPS' credit card usage here!