The DC Plagiarism "Scandal," Day Two

And on the second day, the Post made the Fenty school reform plan plagiarism "scandal" front-page news again. The story basically consists of the requisite statements of regret from the administration, quotes from the mayor's political and ideological opponents taking easy--if nonsensical--shots at the mayor and the plan, and various others insightfully observing that it's never good to have your reform plan subject to scandal stories in the Post.

Which just goes to show how completely self-contained the news cycle is in cases like this. Once the first story runs, you have a problem, which then becomes the subject of the second story, and so on. Whether the original story was legit or not doesn't matter; the fallout from the story becomes the story itself. (A separate profile of the "whistleblower" is here.)

Here are some questions that haven't been asked or answered in two days and thousands of words of coverage: What, exactly, are the policies that were copied? Are they good policies? Would DCPS students be better off if they were adopted? The Post makes much of the fact that Charlotte-Mecklenburg, source of the copied ideas, is bigger and different in composition than DCPS, calling into question whether its ideas are readily transferrable. Good question -- but what's the answer? Here, from yesterday's story, are the only actual published details of the copied ideas:

In Fenty's document, with "DRAFT" stamped on each page, strategies to create reading and math classes for middle school students, recruit teachers and use "secret shoppers" to judge how parents are treated by school employees come directly from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg plan.

Intensive reading and math instruction in middle school, enhanced teacher recruitment, more focus on customer service to parents--while those wild, crazy notions might work in an urban / suburban district of 130,000 student in North Carolina, they obviously have no place whatsoever in an urban district of 57,000 students in DC. In fact, it's well-known within the research community that there's a point between 57,000 and 130,000--I believe the exact number is 94,583--where hiring better teachers and providing better math and reading instruction to at-risk students simply doesn't work anymore. You can look it up.

The Post has always been tough on DCPS, both in its news coverage and on the editorial page, and rightly so. But you can bet that all the problems the paper has covered and condemned--crumbling schools, high drop-out rates, sub-standard teaching, and more--aren't getting the full attention of the mayor and his staff today.