Plagarism, Policy and Protection

The news last week that the Fenty administration took verbage, word for word, in its draft education plan from school system plans of other cities should not come as much of a surprise. The Mayor and his team specifically expressed that they were using best practices to make up the bulk of the school takeover implementation. Using best practices is an excellent way to find a solution that works, and an academic citing the work of others is completely acceptable. Unfortunately, this work was not attributed.

Fenty's gaffe is serious, but should not be used to criticize his administration's education policy. The Mayor is well-intentioned and wants a stellar public education system in Washington, DC. He made a mistake, now let him move on so that we can help our kids. What really worries me, though, is that blame is being put squarely on the shoulders of Victor Reinoso. Note that in an earlier blog I wrote about the risk to the oversight of DCPS if Reinoso had to spend most of his time facing attacks that had little to do with the day-to-day operation of schools. It looks as if we are facing that right now. Here is my blog from 4/5/07:

I haven't seen much publicly written about this topic yet, and criticism
has not really been aired citywide, but I would like to offer some advice. In
New York, when people attack Joel Klein, Mayor Bloomberg immediately rushes
to his defense. After all, Mayor Bloomberg is really the person in charge,
and he needs to take the heat so that the Chancellor can do his job without
distractions.Mayor Fenty needs to do the same thing with Mr. Reinoso if it
ever gets to that point. It will be some time before we can objectively rate
the job that Mr. Reinoso is doing, so let's not make predictions or launch
ad homonym attacks. Only the children will suffer if the new education
system falls prey to politics and public relations.

We are now at "that point." Now is the time for Mayor Fenty to ensure that Victor Reinoso is protected so he can effectively manage DCPS. We all know that plagarism is wrong, but let's put our childeren first and let the Deputy Mayor for Education concentrate on the job of educating our children.