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Pr. George's Schools Chief's PhD Under Scrutiny

Deasy is a graduate of the
Broad Superintendents Academy.

By Nelson Hernandez

The University of Louisville announced
yesterday that it will investigate the awarding
of a doctorate to John E. Deasy, now
superintendent of Prince George's County
schools, after reports that he completed his
graduate work there on an unusually fast track
in apparent departure from the university's
standard practice.

Deasy, leader of the 130,000-student system
since 2006, was awarded a doctorate of
philosophy in education in May 2004 after
completing nine credit hours of work at the
university -- equivalent to one semester -- in
addition to 77 credit hours he earned from
other schools. Deasy also wrote a 184-page
dissertation.

At issue is the relatively small number of
credit hours Deasy earned from the University
of Louisville and what kind of exception to
university policy might have been made to award
his degree.

The university's graduate handbook indicates
that doctoral students typically complete their
work in a minimum of three years, including at
least one year -- 18 credit hours -- in full-
time residency.

This week, Kentucky media reported on questions
raised about the awarding of Deasy's doctorate
as part of news coverage of a federal
investigation centered on Robert Felner, the
former dean of the university's College of
Education and Human Development. Felner was
also Deasy's academic adviser and chairman of
his dissertation committee.

The university president, James Ramsey,
announced the appointment of a six-member
committee to review the awarding of Deasy's
degree. "Now we are dealing with an issue that
strikes at the heart of our institutional
integrity," Ramsey said in a statement, adding:
"If someone received a degree he did not earn,
we would have no choice but to recommend
rescinding that degree."

Late yesterday, Deasy said: "If the university
made errors in the awarding of the degree, I do
hope they rescind it. My responsibility is to
do everything I was advised and told to do. If
I was advised wrong and given wrong
information, the university needs to take
responsibility for that. I certainly would not
want anything unearned."

Doctorates are valuable credentials in the
field of education leadership. Two years after
getting his degree, Deasy jumped from a small
Southern California school district to take
over Maryland's second-largest school system,
receiving a $250,000 annual starting salary. He
pledged to raise student achievement and bring
stability to a school system that had
experienced leadership turmoil.

At Louisville, records show that Deasy earned
nine hours of credit for a research course in
spring 2004. Yesterday, Deasy allowed The
Washington Post to review his academic
records. They showed that he completed 77
credit hours of doctoral work at other
institutions: 33 at the State University of New
York at Albany, where he studied from 1991 to
1993; and 44 through a joint program operated
by the University of Rhode Island and Rhode
Island College, from 1997 to 2003. While he was
in the Rhode Island program, Deasy said, his
adviser was Felner. Deasy said that when Felner
moved to Louisville, Deasy followed him and the
credits were transferred.

Felner is under investigation by the U.S.
attorney's office for the Western District of
Kentucky for the alleged misappropriation of a
$694,000 grant from the U.S. Department of
Education, according to Kentucky media reports.
Felner has not been charged with a crime.

Felner's attorney, Scott C. Cox, said Felner
would not comment "on this case or anything
surrounding his tenure at the University of
Louisville."

Deasy's dissertation, titled "An Analysis of
Leadership: Investigating Superintendent
Leadership in Context Within a Standards-Based,
Non-Optional Reform Initiative," examines the
records of four Rhode Island superintendents.

A spokesman for the University of Louisville,
John Drees, said privacy laws prevented him
from commenting on any possible waiver to
university policy granted for Deasy. But Drees
said this week that "exceptions to the policies
can be made based on faculty recommendations
and the best interest of the student. They're
rare, but they can be made."

Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director
of the American Association of Collegiate
Registrars and Admissions Officers, said cases
such as Deasy's are unusual.

"It is true that students earn credits in a
variety of venues, and those credits should
certainly be recognized to the degree they're
comparable," he said. "But institutions
typically do not operate as credit aggregators
only. Institutions typically require that a
significant chunk of those credits should be
earned at that institution if that institution
is awarding the degree."

The dean of the University of Louisville's
graduate school, Ronald M. Atlas, was on
sabbatical overseas and could not be reached.

Deasy's and Felner's careers overlapped in
Rhode Island, where Felner served as director
of the University of Rhode Island's School of
Education from 1996 to 2003 and Deasy served as
a local school superintendent from 1996 to
2001.

A year after taking over as superintendent of
the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District
in 2001, Deasy recommended that his school
system pay $125,000 for a survey performed by
the National Center on Public Education and
Social Policy, which is run by Felner. The
survey was later extended for two more years at
the same price, for a total of $375,000.

John White, a Prince George's schools
spokesman, said there was no connection between
the awarding of the contract and the awarding
of Deasy's doctorate. "They definitely did have
a contract, and they provided a survey, a
study, something like that, that they used in
driving instruction and improvement," White
said. "So he feels it was a valuable tool, and
his school district wasn't the only one that
used that tool."

Deasy briefed the Prince George's school board
this week about the doctorate issue.

"Our superintendent has spoken to the board,
and as a member of that board I am satisfied,"
said board member Rosalind Johnson (District
1).

Howard Stone, a former school board member who
was on the board when Deasy was hired,
expressed surprise at questions about the
doctorate. "It would seem a little difficult
for me to believe that John Deasy would cut any
corners when it came to something like that,"
Stone said.

— Nelson Hernandez
Washington Post
2008-09-11


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