The University of Alabama in Huntsville recently dissolved a contract with a self-styled business guru — who had a history of fraudulent business practices — to help develop a piece of teaching technology aimed primarily at K-12 students. But some observers are wondering why it took the university six months to terminate the relationship after unsavory details of the entrepreneur’s past came to light — and why due diligence did not stop the university from signing the contract in the first place.

The university went into business in 2007 with Bernard Dohrmann — an entrepreneur who has a long history of run-ins with federal watchdogs, including two convictions — to help monetize a tool called Super Teaching. It entered into a contract in December of that year with a company called Life Success Academy, headed by Dohrmann and his wife, as well as another company called Monte Sano Associates, to help test and improve the Super Teaching hardware.

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The University of Alabama in Huntsville has put up its credibility as an institution of higher learning as collateral to develop and market the invention of a twice convicted con man — and no one seems to be paying attention.

The “invention” in question is called Super Teaching (interchangeably used as one or two words). Here is the description of this revolutionary learning system from the UAH website:

SuperTeaching is a multi-sensory instructional system designed to utilize computer generated audio and imagery in order to engage learners. The SuperTeaching system includes three screens positioned at the front of the room, which display images in a seemingly random pattern. The images included in the pattern roll are those of the instructor, learners, course content, and nature scenes.

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In Phil Schlechty’s book, Working On the Work: An Action Plan for Teacher, Principals, and Superintendents, I was struck by some of the statements made in this book.  Many of the statements directed toward teachers are things already taught in university.  However, “skills” taught to principals and superintendents are instructions promoting manipulation of the work force and community to reach the goals of the superintendent.  And of course, this goal is to promote Schlechty and his standard bearer network.

In the introduction, Schlechty’s states, “For those who insist that the only way to improve schools is to proceed on the basis of the ‘research’, this book will be a disappointment.  No systematic research program has been directed at assessing the impact of the WOW approach on improving schools.”  As you read the laws surrounding Title II professional development, you will see a common strain, a requirement for professional development that is research based.

WOW promotes a philosophy that people learn and retain much more when they enjoy and see the relevance of the topic.  This philosophy has been espoused for more than 2000 years and is a part of university courses of study in education.  Philosophy is important to start us in the right direction, but worth little without practical knowledge of implementation   Ongoing research based professional development is necessary at this point.  In my opinion, an initial training in the philosophy of the district is enough.  The remaining PD should be directed toward research based training as required by law.  Training should be specifically designed to address the needs of students identified through systematic assessment and the needs of teachers identified through their professional growth plans.

Some teachers told me that they had requested training that was directly related to their growth plans and they were told there was no money for this training.  This is difficult for me to understand when the district was able to find enough PD money for the last three years to pay the Schlechty foundation $216,000. (This does not include the hidden expenses of travel, food, stipends and substitutes.)

I’d like to quote another statement from chapter 3, page 46.  “Most parents know their children much better than most teachers know them.  Parents are therefore a valuable source of information for the teacher.”  I also agree with this statement and feel that many teachers agree as well.  This is another piece that could easily be presented in that initial training.

It is later in the book where the roles of Principals and more specifically, Superintendents are discussed.  The book explains how these administrators develop a “guiding coalition” that is “favorably disposed toward the kind of changes he or she has in mind.”  Principals are supposed to carefully observe to see which teachers respond positively to the activities presented by the principal.  In that way he or she “can make a reasonable judgment regarding those on whom he or she can depend to share an agenda and push a real effort to bring about change.”

It seems to me that the focus here should not be the Principal or Superintendent’s agenda.  The focus should be on bringing together a staff with various talents and ideas and using that wealth together to promote an environment where children are happy, safe and learning.  That is the agenda of the teachers and should also be the agenda of the principals and superintendent.   The principals and superintendent should not have a separate agenda in which they subtly manipulate the teachers, community and board into believing that their agenda is “our agenda” and their vision is “our vision”.  And that agenda or vision should never be designed to promote a specific institution that profits financially from the said “vision”.

Please access the article at its source since there are so many cross links involved.

Moving at the Speed of Creativity

When Willard R. Daggett gave a day-long series of talks to the Grosse Pointe, Mich., school district last November, faculty, parents and students thought they were listening to a top expert in education.

Such an expert, in fact, that Grosse Pointe paid him $10,000 for the day — triple what respected education scholars usually get for speeches, several education consultants said.
A high school science teacher was skeptical, though. Among other things, Daggett had told the educators that the U.S. was the only nation that still taught chemistry and biology as separate courses. The teacher looked into it and found no nations that integrated the two subjects.

He sent a note to Gerald Bracey, a psychologist who specializes in education statistics.
Bracey was livid. In a 1995 article in the education journal Phi Delta Kappan, he had taken Daggett to task for talking at length about a study that Bracey couldn’t find. None of the top scholars he had contacted knew of the study either. And the study’s findings seemed implausible.

When he asked Daggett for the sources of that study and several other statistics, he got a letter from Daggett’s lawyer. It said, in essence, that Daggett was too busy to help Bracey.

Yet here Daggett was again, spinning anecdotes and statistics in return for big bucks. Tax dollars, in fact. So Bracey sent Grosse Pointe’s top officials a letter. It detailed several of Daggett’s claims and Bracey’s rebuttals, with his sources.

The district passed Bracey’s concerns on to Daggett. Daggett replied with an eight-page letter that attempted to answer only a few of Bracey’s questions. Even the answers he did give were mostly unsourced and full of information irrelevant to the questions Bracey had posed.

The district’s response? In a written statement, district superintendent Suzanne Klein would only say, Dr. Daggett continues to be a popular speaker in other school districts in our area. (Klein refused to be interviewed for this story.)

Grosse Pointe North High School Principal Caryn Wells, who pushed to invite Daggett to speak at Grosse Pointe after hearing him at a conference, said she was satisfied with Daggett’s response. Asked whether she would invite him back, Wells said yes. District spokesman Kathy Roberts said Wells viewpoint reflected the district’s.

The problem, said several education scholars, is that Daggett is only one of dozens of self-described education experts who prescribe reforms that are based on shaky research. In some cases they are merely marketing whizzes who sell videos and books and provide training sessions, though they often do no research themselves.

The education community is constantly and chronically taken in by any peddler of snake oil or witchcraft that comes down the pike, said Chester Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and a former assistant U.S. secretary of education. They just mutter words that educators like to hear.

If you used the right buzzwords, added Finn, you could turn yourself into a millionaire. Most of it is just hocus-pocus.

Daggett himself has spoken in dozens of districts ranging from Olathe, Kan., to Niagara Falls, N.Y. He’s been a keynote speaker at a Kentucky Department of Education conference, the Midwestern Governors Association conference and the 1995 National School Boards Association annual conference.He’s even given the graduation speech at Georgia Southern University.

The Center for School Leadership and the Kenan Best Practices Center at the University of North Carolina have set up a partnership with Daggett’s firm.

Sam Houston, the center’s executive director, said, I’ve known Bill Daggett for years. I think (he) does very good work.

Daggett’s firm lines up speaking and consulting engagements for Houston.
In Idaho, the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson foundation paid $ 175,000 to bring Daggett in for a series of talks and workshops with state educators.It also offered hundreds of thousands of dollars to districts that were willing to work with Daggett.

“He’s very research-based”, Sharron Jarvis, the foundation’s executive director, told the Idaho Statesman.”I do like his perspective that we’re a global economy.”

The Hernando County schools in Florida paid Daggett $8,000 for a day-long speech in August 1998 and sent 10 educators to Daggett’s Model Schools Conference at a cost of almost $10,000. The money came from a federal School-to- Work grant.

Hernando County superintendent John Sanders reaction to Daggett’s talk: The content of his message is very pertinent to education today. I’ve been in the business for over 35 years. Much of what he had to say I’ve seen firsthand myself.

Maryland’s Baltimore County schools took their 160 principals out of school to hear Daggett talk in 1997.

Pricetag: $6,000, from a federal grant.

One wonders which is worse, a top education consultant who knows Daggett’s work well said, (Daggett’s) flimsy work or the districts willing to pay him $10,000.

Daggett styles himself a global expert on school reform.He claims to have served on school-reform commissions in Germany and Japan and to have worked with reform efforts in districts on four continents.

Yet Harold Stevenson, an expert on international education systems at the University of Michigan, has never heard of Daggett and has no idea where he gets his international statistics.

Daggett claimed in a 1998 speech that 29 countries require four years of technical reading and writing in high school (i.e., learning how to read a computer manual). Two years earlier, he told an audience that 19 countries had that requirement.

Even an expert wouldn’t know the details of what happens in 29 countries, said Stevenson. Daggett said the statistics were based on his own travels.

After leaving his post as the director of occupational education for the New York State Department of Education, Daggett set up the International Center for Leadership in Education.

It now boasts a staff of seven and several senior consultants, nearly all of whom have doctorates. Even Thomas Houlihan, the former senior education adviser to North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, is listed as one.

What about Daggett’s own resume?In his speech to Grosse Pointe, he claimed to have been a university president and to be a trustee of two major universities. When pressed for their names, Daggett said he had been a professor, not a president. He has claimed to be a former university president in other speeches as well.

The two major universities he claimed to have been a trustee of: Northwestern Business Institute in Pennsylvania (not affiliated with Northwestern University) and, formerly, Kent College in Great Britain.

Daggett’s speeches are a mix of futurism and warning. Some of his observations are vague: Our children live in a technological information society pushed by global competition.

He tells faculty, students and parents that the skills needed for entry-level business are higher and fundamentally different than those needed to succeed in higher education.

For instance, he says, schools teach algebra, but high-skill jobs require knowledge of statistics, logic and probability. Also, schools teach kids to read novels, Shakespeare and poetry, he says, but businesses need people who can read technical manuals.

As proof that high schools aren’t teaching much of value, he told Grosse Pointe that, according to College Board data, 68% of colleges don’t require a high school diploma.How is this possible? Community colleges, he said, don’t require diplomas, bar none.

Renee Gernanda, who runs the College Board’s database, said the College Board had never calculated that statistic. Asked to do so, she found that 25% of community colleges don’t require diplomas. Daggett said her statistic was wrong, but offered no proof.

Other gaffes included telling the audience that California has 21% of its kids in charter schools. The actually statistic was around 1%.

He talked at length about a Harvard study that took the top two seniors from 2,100 U.S. high schools and had them take the ninth-grade exams in math, science and social studies. Nearly 90% supposedly failed two out of three exams.

The problem: No one at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education knew of the study. Daggett says he heard about it at Harvard, but didn’t provide a source.

In a long talk on biotechnology, he told the crowd that Pfizer was able to invent Viagra, its wonder drug for erectile dysfunction, after scientists discovered the gene domination that causes male sexual dysfunction. Viagra has nothing to do with the human genome.