Jul 10, 2008 Posted | 1 comment

Education Blogs and the PR Spies Who Love Them

In case you haven’t heard about the NYC-DoE-KGB-CIA:

Employees at the city Department of Education‘s press office have a new assignment: They are to scour a group of 24 education Web logs, e-mail Listservs, and Web sites in a hunt for factual errors and misinformation. Department officials are calling the unit the Truth Squad.

The squad’s latest triumph should appear today on a Listserv operated by the parent organizer Leonie Haimson — in the form of an e-mail message arguing that Ms. Haimson’s characterization of summer school programs as underfunded was incorrect.
Press officers have also posted responses in the form of comments to the blogs they read.

Good God, creating this Truth department is like Alexandria’s librarian getting late fees in order while the building is burning down.

The idea here isn’t a bad one, but it really isn’t newsworthy. Nothing new here about an organization keeping tabs on its brand. Everyone does it - via LexisNexis, various online alerts, media tracking companies, etc.

The real problem is how embarrassingly inefficient this is. Really, 7 people for 24 outlets? Consider the following stats from my own RSS Reader:

1:425 is better than 7:24. Yet another example of the free market handling things far better than the bureaucracy. Somehow I don’t think the folks at the DoE will toss me an e-mail asking how they can do it all more efficiently, though they’re certainly welcome to.

A bit of self-reflection would’ve done the DoE well, too. If your organization has problems with distortions/inaccuracies in the community at large, it’s partly your own fault. Look at how to disseminate information more clearly, and at a higher effective volume - then start regulating. That too will probably go by the wayside.

And, of course, the irony gives a chuckle. When an organization implements a watch program for blogs and the like, it’s because those media are effective means of communicating - otherwise, the organization wouldn’t bother with the misinformation. One would think that a light-bulb would go off, something like:

DoE 1: “Hmm… they’re wreaking havoc on our PR. We could police them… or… we could use the same distribution channels ourselves! And do it right!”

Which would likely lead to:

DoE 2: “Ms. 1, you haven’t been with the Department very long, have you? Let’s stick with what education does best - reactionary finger-pointing and chastising, preferably without much knowledge of scholarship, fiscal responsibility, teaching… or general smarts, for that matter.”

DoE 1: “Good point.”

The DoE has chosen to monitor the symptoms and leave the disease alone. Well done, guys. Maybe the DoE could refocus its efforts to do things like:

• Raising the bar for teacher certification. Or is a 99% pass rate on New York’s ATS-W an acceptable standard? If you’ve got a heartbeat, you’ll pass the ATS-W. No heartbeat? Probably 50/50.
• Getting rid of teacher certification altogether. I’m not opposed to monopolies. I am opposed to monopolies that are expensive, inefficient and, overall, do a terrible job.
• Getting serious about teacher - and especially administrator - quality. Or does the DoE support that 40.2% of administrators-to-be score between 200 and 390 on the Verbal portion of the GRE, 200 points of which comes from showing up? To translate that, 2 out of 5 administrators are barely, or only functionally, literate [page 19 of PDF].

That’s a short list of other stuff you could work on, DoE.

But you don’t have to take my word for it [hat tip on phrase: Reading Rainbow!]:

• Mr. Russo, who actually knows the identity of TWIE’s spy.
• And Flypaper, which knows its peeper, too.
• PhiBetaCons, which points to Sol Stern’s tongue-in-cheek Orwell reference.
• UFT’s Leo “Logical Garbage Plate” Casey, who references Orwell - and apparently means it.
• Eduwonkette, who could’ve done better than the Lennon quote - perhaps Johnny Cash’s “What Is Truth?”
• EdNotesOnline, who’s pithy from the get-go.

One Response to “Education Blogs and the PR Spies Who Love Them”

1. hall monitor says:

   July 13, 2008 at 8:15 pm

   http://detentionslip.org was here