9486 in the collection
Out-of-state consultants critique city school district
Comment by Jason Spencer, Houston Chronicle reporter, March 10, 2007
Mr. Positive
It seems Houston ISD press secretary Terry Abbott's advice is in demand among school districts hoping to get more positive coverage from their local media. According to this story published in yesterday's Journal Gazette in Fort Wayne, Ind., Abbott visited last month to offer some tips for working with reporters. His trip was coordinated through the Los Angeles-based Broad Foundation.
That's the same non-profit school reform group that dubbed Houston ISD the best urban school district in America in 2002, before the rest of the nation learned that HISD has drastically under-reported the number of students who dropped out of its schools. HISD Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra is a graduate of the Broad Foundation's urban superintendents academy.
The folks in Fort Wayne were impressed with Abbott's presentation and the job he's done getting positive press for HISD, according to the story:
"We're always trying to engage with the community, and Terry Abbott's visit provided us an opportunity to learn how another district's approach has been successful," said Connie Casson, a two-year intern paid for by the Broad Foundation to help bring business practices to the school district.
HISD pays Abbott $158,060 a year to "gain favorable media coverage" of its schools, according to the district's media policy.
Over the last few years we've heard anecdotally about Abbott taking time off to do consulting work for other school districts nationally. The Los Angeles school system brought him in not too long ago, for example. Abbott also speaks regularly at national school conferences about how to "manage the media," as he likes to say. His advice has included admonishing school officials to never wear sunglasses on television and never let an investigative reporter interview the superintendent.
It has always struck me as odd that while Abbott regularly complains that this newspaper is consistently unfair to HISD, he's also considered an expert at obtaining positive media coverage. How can both be true?
Maybe that's why he focuses so much on TV news.
Here's what he said in last December's American School Board Journal:
"If it's not on TV, it's not on," says Terry Abbott, HISD's spokesman and the former chief of staff for former U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige. "You have to aggressively manage the media by promoting positive news and defending against the negative."
With public education constantly under attack, school leaders need to wage a "permanent campaign" to win more battles for public education, Abbott says. School systems also have to excel at providing the top-notch customer service parents expect at schools and district offices.
Abbott's preference for TV coverage is apparent in the way he issues some press releases. One of his tactics is to e-mail press releases to local media on weekends for no discernible reason. He sent this one about teacher signing bonuses last Sunday ( click here for a copy posted to the HISD Web site the next day). It begins:
Editors: Good Sunday story. We are proposing this to the school board TOMORROW. Let me know if you want to get video/audio and I can set you up to interview someone. HISD goes after new teachers with big money early
Plan calls for teacher signing bonuses of up to $6,000 to be offered this spring
March 4, 2007 - Battling to recruit hard-to-find math, science and bilingual teachers, HISD has a new plan to offer big bonuses - as high as $6,000 - earlier this spring to lure teachers before they get away to other school districts, administration officials said Sunday.
Abbott was hoping that news editors desperate for live weekend stories would jump at his suggested story. The tactic worked last Sunday with at least one TV station. KHOU Channel 11 posted this story, which was pretty much a reprint of Abbott's press release, to its Web site three hours after Abbott sent his e-mail. They also broadcast the story on the Sunday evening news without any apparent reporting beyond what was in the press release.
The Chronicle ran this story (No longer available) in the following day's newspaper with more context and balancing comment from the teachers union.
Notice how the TV story makes it sound at first like the teacher signing bonuses mentioned so prominently in Abbott's press release are new? The fact that these same bonuses have been offered for awhile now isn't mentioned until the seventh paragraph. It's easy to see how the folks at Channel 11 didn't think this fact was particularly important, since that's exactly the number of paragraphs you have to read into the press release to get that context.
The only "news" in the press release is that HISD will now be able to promise the money to job candidates earlier in the recruiting season, instead of having to wait until the board approves the budget in the summer.
In this case, Abbott masterfully took a marginally newsworthy policy proposal and framed it in a way that seemed much more interesting than it really was.
My theory is that he waits until the weekend to send out some press releases because he realizes newsrooms operate with skeleton crews on weekends and won't take the time to thoroughly investigate the story, instead relying almost entirely on the press release as the sole source of information. And even if reporters try to flesh out the story, Abbott knows they'll have a hard time doing so because everyone they'd want to interview (teachers, administrators, education policy experts) are home for the weekend and almost impossible to reach on deadline. That way, reporters are more likely to tell the story from Abbott's perspective.
I'd never been involved in covering a school district with a "press secretary" until I came to work in Houston. Most other school districts use "public information officers." There's a difference. Public information officers serve as a clearinghouse for information. Their job is to get pertinent information to the media in a timely fashion and set up interviews. Press secretaries try to orchestrate media coverage to make their school districts look as good as possible.
Which do you think serves the public best?
By Jeff Raymond
Several high-profile consultants have "audited” Oklahoma City Public Schools operations in recent weeks to determine where the district needs to improve.
Visitors have been funded by the Los Angeles-based education reform Broad Foundation. They include Terry Abbott, press secretary to former Education Secretary Rod Paige, and Arlene Ackerman, former superintendent of the San Francisco and Washington school districts.
Visitors have examined the district's:
•Image.
•Media policies.
•Curriculum and instruction.
The curriculum and instruction audit took four, 16-hour days of interviews with everyone from the superintendent to students and teachers to see how the district's teaching lines up with state standards and how effective it is.
"They're coming in, doing a snapshot (of the district) based on their experience,” Oklahoma City Public Schools Superintendent John Q. Porter said of the consultants. "They're digging layers and layers down in the organization at a very fast rate.”
Next time around
Future audits likely will examine the Oklahoma City district's:
•Finances.
•Human resources department.
•Alternative education programs.
•Special education areas.
Consultants will return throughout the year to evaluate the district's progress and make suggestions. Porter said he already had incorporated at least one recommendation: rebuilding the district's communications office.
Porter is a graduate of the competitive Broad Superintendents Academy. As an academy fellow, he has access to resources for Oklahoma City schools, such as the consultants. Audits range in cost from $3,000 to $15,000.
Word of caution
Tim Quinn, managing director of The Broad Center for the Management of School Systems, said new superintendents have a lot of learning and listening to do.
"We encourage fellows not to make quick judgments ... and what is often helpful is to have an external review team come in,” he said.
— Jeff Raymond
NewsOK.com
2007-07-24
http://newsok.com/article/3090052
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
Pages: 380
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