Sunday, April 21, 2013

Former MDE employee included in department e-mails

A former Mississippi Department of Education employee appears in department e-mails regarding assessments for public school ratings at a time when, according to him, he did not work for the department in a full-time or contract capacity.
Russ Davis, proprietor of AccountabilityAnalyzer.com, a web-based service that helps public school teachers and administrators interpret school accountability data, told Bigger Pie Forum he has not worked for MDE in "several years." In response to a question about whether he performed contract work for MDE in 2011, Davis said no but he was "still answering questions (from) while I was there. Whenever you leave a job, people have questions about where's this and where's that. That kind of thing."

MDE e-mails provided to Bigger Pie Forum show an entity labeled Russ Davis from the e-mail account russ@russdavis.com communicated with the former MDE director of the Office of Research and Statistics Ken Thompson and current MDE contractor Steve Hebbler about calculations for the state's accountability model in 2011.

The Mississippi public schools' accountability model is a system of complex computations that has traditionally assessed three categories: student achievement, growth, and high school graduation. These calculations are used to determine the ratings of schools and districts. MDE formerly used a seven-tiered ratings system beginning with "star school" and ending with "failing." The system was changed to use "A-F" labels in 2012.

In an e-mail conversation beginning on July 28, 2011, Thompson and Hebbler received an an e-mail from russ@russdavis.com saying "district-level" reports relating to student scores in U.S. history were being run.

After a July 29 reply from Hebbler, a message from russ@russdavis.com to Thompson and Hebbler said: "The rest of the state reports are running now, I'm working on AYP."

AYP is the acronym for "annual yearly progress," a measure factoring into U.S. Department of Education evaluations of the amount of federal funds given to schools.

Hebbler then sent a message to russ@russdavis.com saying he had found the problem with the calculations for U.S. history.

A subsequent e-mail from russ@russdavis.com to Hebbler and Thompson said more reports were being run. Hebbler sent a message to Thompson and the Davis account and provided a status update on his accountability work. Thompson sent a message saying he would be accessing files remotely from his home. A message was sent from russ@russdavis.com to Thompson inviting him to login into a personal Dropbox account with the username "mdereports@gmail.com."

Additionally, an e-mail dated Nov. 14, 2010, shows a Russ Davis at russ@blueconsultinggroup.com sending a message to Thompson at KThompson@mde.k12.ms.us about schools' accountability data in response to a mass e-mail sent by Thompson.
Thompson had sent a message to an undisclosed number of recipients at 7:07 p.m. titled "[accountability] "2011 Preliminary Senior Snapshot" saying that the results of the preliminary report should be used to help in "ensuring that students are assessed in Algebra I, English II, and Biology I."
Davis sent an e-mail to Thompson at 7:23 p.m. with the subject "Re: [accountability] 2011 Preliminary Senior Snapshot" that said:
"Thanks for the heads up. I'm going to compare it against mine and tweak as needed to make sure it mirrors yours exactly. Hopefully, they'll go ahead and start uploading their documentation to be stored in the package, so when it rolls around they can just print and be finished.
"PS: We're going to Disney next month. My first time as an adult."
Bigger Pie Forum has filed a public records request with the Mississippi Department of Education for records showing the employment of Russ Davis in both full-time and contract capacity.

Read more at biggerpieforum.org.

Bigger Pie Forum purchased distribution rights on Jackson Jambalaya.  This is a sponsored post. 

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, but please tell me why I'm supposed to care? This seems very mundane.

Anonymous said...

I love kingfish's blog, but aaaaamen. Who cares?

Seems like this was probably a 'paid' post for a reason.

Anonymous said...

I'm sorry, but please tell me why I'm supposed to care?

If you can't figure it out you are either ignorant and are purposefully attempting to mislead.

MDE monies are being laundered through 3 edu-focused non-profits before landing in the bank account of the Parent's Campaign. Should you give a damn about that?

Shadowfax said...

The buzz question used to be: "What did he know and when did he know it?" Now, just as important, is: "Where did he work and when did he work there?"

If the man had reason enough to lie about where he worked or where he was affiliated and when, then there's reason enough to out him for lying. And, further, there's reason enough to figure out why he conventiently forgot the association timeline.

Instead of falling into Hillary's 'What difference does it make?' camp, maybe he should change his answer now to 'I don't recall.'

Anonymous said...

Why is someone working on confidential state data while not employed by the state?

Security issues, anyone?

If not the state, then who's paying him? And with what?

Anonymous said...

4:34 and 5:12 have fallen for the 'who cares' tactic. Perhaps they're complicit. Perhaps they are missing the curiosity-gene. Maybe they missed the class on connecting-dots.

Anonymous said...

Well, I've never heard of Russ Davis or Amy McCullough. Not all of us follow the intrique to the point that some of you apparently do. So I am appreciative of whoever helped to connect the dots on the comment section. I (and several others apparently) are simply not aware, that doesn't mean we are stupid or don't care. I think the first poster asked "why" should we care and that was a legitimate question.

Anonymous said...

After being hit over the head with facts in the opening post, how is it that 'why should I care' is a legitimate question? Or do some need multiple prods in order to engage?



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