Dear Josh

Dear Josh,

I’m calling you Josh only because you wish it so. You can call me Joe.

Congratulations on the new job. Now, keep in mind that the last 2 MCPS superintendents—Drs. Paul Vance and Jerry Weast—logged 20 years between them as the head guy. Let’s hope you stick around that long.

You don’t actually know this about me, but I worked in the MCPS accountability office for nearly 19 years. I’m definitely a data person. And from what I’m reading about you, I’m hearing that you’re a data guy too. But to be fair to you, you also need to know that I really love data people who are open and share their data. So, right now, I only asking one thing from you—please adopt an open book data sharing policy. Previous MCPS superintendents frequently talked the data guy talk but were always opposed to sharing. It literally was probably easier climbing Mt. Everest than getting an electronic Excel spreadsheet from Dr. Weast.

Now, I specifically used “open book” because I came across a new KIPP transparency initiative called “Open Book” and I immediately thought of you—the data guy. You win my undivided attention and “love” if you do what no other MCPS superintendent has ever done—open the books. You can read about the KIPP Open Book initiative here.

http://www.kippphiladelphia.org/transparency-initiative.html

By the way, I know you are on the record as saying no to charter schools for the county, but you ought to know that MCPS did once upon a time toy with the idea of opening a KIPP school. And being the bright person I hear you are, I’m going to assume that you are familiar with the KIPP network of high performing charter schools.

In a nutshell, KIPP schools in the city of Philadelphia (PA) are putting lots of details online about student achievement (e.g., mobility rates and test scores), school financials (e.g., revenues and expenditures, and individual school audits), and employee statistics (e.g., teacher retention data and salary information for teachers and administrators).

And why are KIPP schools in Philadelphia opening the books? Well, as a data guy, it seems to me that they are backing up their commitment to the principles of true transparency and accountability. What is that? Letting the public in so that they can “kick” the tires or pop the hood to figure out why things work when they work.

So, Josh, since you’ve done your homework—I also heard that about you, you’ve probably already learned that MCPS has in place a fairly complex data management system called M-Stat. You can read about M-Stat here and here.

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/mainstory/story.aspx?id=19436

http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/boe/meetings/agenda/2007-08/2008-0225/4.0%20M-Stat%20Board%20Paper.pdf

One of the things that I noticed, and I hope you notice as well, is MCPS uses the “community” word a lot—we even imply that “the community” is involved in an “open examination” of data. Not sure about that one. But it almost sounds like we are one huge village of data people living in total harmony. Now, some in MCPS may believe this. But I think those are the same individuals who tell people like me that the only way to get an Excel file out of MCPS is to file a Freedom of Information request and fork over a check payable to MCPS for $50,000 worth of labor charges. Not sure about that one either—why a school district with such a sophisticated M-Stat system needs 1,000 hours to produce public use data files that real data guys like you and me could probably export in an Excel readable format in about 10 seconds.

So, Josh, after you get to town and settled in, you can count on me knocking on your door and asking for a more open book policy. And don’t worry—I have a long list of data files I’m dying to get my hands on (hint: the National Student Clearinghouse data for starters—after all, we taxpayers—“the community”—paid for it and we ought to be able to play with it).

Again, congrats and good luck.

Sincerely,

Joseph Hawkins

Bethesda, Maryland