Mississippi Education Investigation

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Results of Mississippi Education Investigation 2010-2011

In memory of Charlie Evers, 1962-2013.

Date of publication: Oct. 24, 2013

The following is the transcription of a Sept. 9, 2011 meeting regarding an internalinvestigation of the Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) that found improperactivity resulting in false assessments of the quality of Mississippi public schools.

The investigation was conducted by MDE's then-CIO Toby Frazier and then-MDEemployee Charlie Evers during the spring 2010 through the end of 2011. The results wererevealed to then-Chairman of the Mississippi Board of Education (and current Boardmember), Charles McLelland, and Board member Bill Jones at his law office in Petal,Miss. The results of this investigation were allegedly quashed, and Frazier and Evers

were forced to leave MDE. Evidence indicates that illegal activity and lack of oversightstill continue.

You may listen to this audio recording at archive.org:

Tape 1:http://archive.org/details/MissEducationInvestigationPartI

Tape 2: https://archive.org/details/MissEducationInvestigationPartII

Related stories are:

Private Service Using Miss. Public School Students' Data

http://biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-data

Former MDE Employee Included in Department E-mails

http://biggerpieforum.org/blog/former-mde-employee-included-department-

e-mails

Miss. Public School Ratings Falsely Inflated

http://biggerpieforum.org/blog/miss-public-school-ratings-falsely-inflated

DATE: Sept. 9, 2011

LOCATION: Law office of William H. Bill Jones in Petal, Miss.

MEETING PARTICIPANTS:

(1) Charles McLelland: Then-Chairman and current member of Mississippi Board ofEducation. His term is set to end in July 2019.

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http://archive.org/details/MissEducationInvestigationPartIhttp://archive.org/details/MissEducationInvestigationPartIhttps://archive.org/details/MissEducationInvestigationPartIIhttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-datahttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-datahttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/former-mde-employee-included-department-e-mailshttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/former-mde-employee-included-department-e-mailshttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/miss-public-school-ratings-falsely-inflatedhttps://archive.org/details/MissEducationInvestigationPartIIhttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-datahttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-datahttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/former-mde-employee-included-department-e-mailshttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/former-mde-employee-included-department-e-mailshttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/miss-public-school-ratings-falsely-inflatedhttp://archive.org/details/MissEducationInvestigationPartI


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(2) Bill Jones: Mississippi Board of Education member. His term is set to end in July2017. Attorney in Petal, Miss.

(3) Charles Charlie Evers: Then-Bureau Director of the Statewide Longitudinal Data

System within the Office of Educational Accountability. Left MDE in June 2012. Eversdied August 26, 2013.

(4) Toby Frazier: Then-CIO in charge of the Management Information Systems (MIS)department within the Office of Educational Accountability. Retired from MDE in 2012.Worked at Office of the State Auditor prior to serving at MDE.

(5) Lisa Williamson: Contractor hired by Charlie Evers to assist with internalinvestigation. She is now the regional manager of public sector sales at Cisco Systems inRidgeland, Miss.

STATE EMPLOYEES REFERENCED (in order of appearance):

John Gilbert: Former Director of MDEs Office of Educational Accountability.

Left MDE in December 2012. Wayne Gann: Current Chairman of the Board of Education. Served as

superintendent of Corinth Public Schools for more than 25 years. Derrick Lindsay: WasCIO for MDE prior to Toby Frazier.

Steve Hebbler: Current MDE contract employee who works on state

accountability model calculations. Was the director of the Office of Research andStatistics prior to Ken Thompson. Left ORS circa 2004. In January 2013, advisedMDE to keep Mississippi's accountability model and not adopt Florida's.

Ken Thompson: Former director of MDEs ORS. Left MDE in November 2011.Currently offers consulting to school districts through KenAndAssociates.com. Tom Burnham: Former State Superintendent of Education. Current interim

director of Mississippis Principal Corps at Ole Miss. Lynn House: Former DeputySuperintendent of Education. Served as Interim

Superintendent of Education prior to new state Superintendent Carey Wright,chosen in September 2013.

Hank Bounds: Current State Commissioner of Higher Education. Was State

Superintendent of Education prior to Tom Burnham. Steve Williams: Apparent Director of Educational Accountability at MDE prior

to John Gilbert.

Claude Hartley: Former member of state Board of Education. The Governor: Former Gov. Haley Barbour.

Hal Gage: Current Vice Chairman of state Board of Education. Chairman of

Vicksburg-based River Hills Bank. Cecil Brown: Currentstate representative from Jackson.

Audra Rester: Current upper elementary school principal for Petal Schools.

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Russ Davis: Current owner ofAccountabilityAnalyzer.com. Violated state policy

during his prior work at MDE's Office of Educational Accountability. Worked onstate accountability model calculations as recently as 2011 without stateauthorization.

Kris Kasse: Was at one point director of Student Assessment at MDE. His

current status is unknown. Joe DeCastra: started at MDE June of 2010 as a consultant for two federal grants

to develop a Business Intelligence system and a Statewide Longitudinal DataSystem for the state. He supported the organization of the Office of Reportingwithin the Office of Educational Accountability. He was Manager-AccountabilitySystems, with responsibility for the Accountability System for MDE. He is nolonger with MDE.

Kim McCurley: Current Director of Internal Accountability for MDE.

Paula Vanderford: Current Director of Accreditation at MDE. May be a relative

of Tom Burnham.

NOTE: The state Accountability Model is a system of complex computations that isused to determine the rating labels of public schools. Mississippi schools used to be ratedby a seven-label system that began with Star and ended with Failing. Schools arenow rated with A-F labels. The accountability model has traditionally assessed threeareas: student achievement, growth, and high school graduation.

Each of the 50 states has its own accountability model and state ratings system, whichmust be approved by the U.S. Department of Education. States are required to file aseparate set of evaluation reports with the government according to federal standards.

Emphasis has been added for the readers convenience.

TRANSCRIPT:

[Trivial opening conversation.]

[Tape minute 1, 20 seconds.]

Charles McLelland: Well, lets get right into this meeting. I have been talking with kind of a confidential type conversation with Charles (Evers). And it got so in-depth thatI told him I wanted to bring you (Bill Jones) in the loop to discuss. And I wanted to bring

you in the loop simply because you and I see eye to eye on the Board (of Education). Weworked together on the Board to get a number of things done, including getting John(Gilbert) a job. There is an accountability plus, you is an attorney to kind of lead us,so that we wouldnt get our feet wet and couldnt dry them off. The problem is, as youand Charles talked the other daythe concern is that the numbers in our AccountabilityModel not the model but the numbers. As you know, Ive been jumping up and down

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about local public schools, and I had an opportunity yesterday to take kind of a peak athow the labels are going and that would make me feel good if the numbers are right. ButI dont think theyre right. And I'm going to leave it Let somebody else, Charles.Maybe you, Charles.

Note:John Gilbertwas Director of MDEs Educational Accountability department. He left MDE

in December 2012.

Charlie Evers: Sure. First of all, I want to thank you guys for listening. Uh, I'll be honestwith you. Toby and I arrived in April of '10. Toby arrived, as y'all know, in May of '10.And we had about three or four, maybe five, good months of doing analysis and chasingdown the numbers, but pretty soon after that it got real difficult to do our jobs.

Bill Jones: John solicited y'all from the Department of Audit?

Toby Frazier: Right. Right.

Charlie Evers: Yes, sir.

Bill Jones: All three of y'all.

Charlie Evers: Lisa works forshe owns Willow Consulting Group. She is a confidant,and she is also an organization and a business specialist, if you will.

Bill Jones: Does she work for the Department (of Education) at all?

Charles Evers: No, sir, she does not work for the Department.

Bill Jones: Go ahead.

Charlie Evers: She has been brought in contractually by the Department to work onreporting [unclear].

Bill Jones: Shes run into the same problems you have?

Charles Evers: That's correct.

Charles McLelland: So you're a contract worker?

Lisa Williams: No, Im not a contract worker. I am an independent contractor. OK?Which is different. Contract worker would mean that the Department of EducationImjust another employee, not on the regular payroll.

Bill Jones: Under the supervision and control.

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Lisa Williamson: I am not under the supervision and control.

Bill Jones: So what was your company hired to do?

Lisa Williamson: [Unclear]. SLDS.

Charlie Evers: State Longitude and Data.

Lisa Williamson: State Longitude and Data.

Bill Jones: So John got you on board.

Charlie Evers: I brought her on board [unclear] for reporting [unclear].

Bill Jones: So after four or five months of this thing, everything became bogged down.

Lisa Williams: Yes, sir. Just so we're totally clear on that: I have not been nearlyinvolved nearly the time they have. My span of time is about 120 days, but it's quite ...

Bill Jones: You know what a CPA does.

Lisa Williams: Absolutely.

Bill Jones: And you know brick wall they're hitting.

Lisa Williams: Absolutely. And just a little bit of background: I come from privateindustry. Have had 25 years of experience and worked with everything from Miami DadeSchoolswhich their operation budget is a billion dollarsto the city of Los Angeles to[unclear] 1,200 schools districts with in that [unclear]. So there's a [unclear] with a lot ofdifferent things.

Bill Jones: [Unclear] a lot of different stuff.

Lisa Williams: [Unclear] a lot of different stuff to do different things with a differentexpectation from it.

Charlie Evers: OK, so we appreciate you listening, and I was going to start off bysaying, you know, there's a phrase out there: that no man is an island. I'm going to tellyou: youve got two islands sitting here at the Department of Education, and its beendifficult on a lot of different levels. One thing I want to make sureand I told Charles(McLelland) thisI told the Chairman this directlyand I want to make sure youunderstand this: John Gilbert and I go back 30 years. So it is a difficult place to be. Thefirst thing I wanted to do is come right out of the box with discharging our

responsibilities before both the Chairman and the Vice Chairman. Basically,

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information and want your confirmation that we have been authorized by you to

conduct a preliminary investigation into Education Accountability as it relates to

assessment and calculation. We just want yall to agree with us that thats what Ive

been asked to do and thats what were about to present to you. I think were in

agreement with that.

Bill Jones: Let me ask you a question:Is John standing in your way?

Charlie Evers: Yes, sir.

Bill Jones: OK. Go ahead.

Charlie Evers: There are three areas of any type of audit, any type of review. It

begins with the model. There needs to be an audit of the model. There needs to be

proper procedures and processes, an audit of the process, and an audit of the results.

The findings that we have to this point indicate that you as Chairman and Vice

Chairman of the Board have problems, that in my opinion, are the extreme. And hasthe state of Mississippi and the Department of Education at extreme risk in several

areas. One of those areas is with the Accountability Model and the calculation. We'll

get into the deep

Bill Jones: Let me correct you:Im not vice chairman. Wayne Gann is actually vicechairman. Im the past Chairman. Charles (McLelland) is the present Chairman. Togetherwith Claude (Hartley), we work pretty closely on most everything. But this was a goodget-out-of-town meeting site.

Note:Wayne Gann is the current Chairman of the state Board of Education. He served asSuperintendent of Corinth Public Schools for more than 25 years.

Charlie Evers: Sure. I appreciate that correction. There are three areas where theDepartment of Education is put at extreme risk. One is on the Accountability Model

and the accountability process, the process being the calculation, the review, the

appeals. The Accountability Model and the process is one area. Second area is you

are at extreme risk as far as FERPA. FERPA has to do with the control of the states

information.

Bill Jones:What is that?

Toby Frazier: I was thinking this morning of all these acronyms. I wish I had a

dictionary for some of them. FERPA is essentially the (Family) Education (Rights andPrivacy) Act. It means that we are guardians and trustees of the students' data.

Actually the data belongs to the districts and MDE collects the data, and we have

like a fiduciary responsibility over that data. As you know I come in from the

standpoint of being charged with this protection of this data as the CIOthe guy in

charge of MSIS (Mississippi Student Information System). The guy in charge of

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trying to keep our data secure. I came in, as you know, from the (state) Department

of Audit. I have a CISA, which is a Certified Information Systems Auditor

designation. Its not active. I retired.When I came over to MDE, I went inactive onit. Ive done this for about 30 years. I dont want to go off on a tangent, but

essentially, where were seeing through the MIS (Management Information Systems)

department and saw, actually, in the past is the continuous blocking of the MISdepartment to be able to carry out its duties. Because of the more or less secondary

IT (Information Technology) department created by ORS (Office of Research and

Statistics) and its practices. And its practices in my opinion are dangerous.

Bill Jones: Secondary IT?

Toby Frazier: What started it years agoand it really got terribly bad right beforeDerrick Lindsay left. Starting with Steve Hebbler. And when he spun off

Note:Derrick Lindsay wasCIO for MDE prior to Toby Frazier.Steve Hebbleris a current MDE contract employee who works on accountability model

calculations. He was ORS director prior to Ken Thompson.

Bill Jones:We got two MSIS?

Toby Frazier:Well, you really sort of kind of do. Theyre not directly MSIS, but youhave copies of MSIS floating around that building. Oh yes, copies in many places.

Theyve had carte blanche authority tonow, I shut down the ability to get to our

protection system, but [unclear]. The folks in ORS. Ken Thompson. Office of(Research) and Statistics.

Note:Ken Thompson is the former director of ORS. He left MDE in November 2011. He now

offers consulting to school districts through KenAndAssociates.com.

Bill Jones:So they had their own files.

Toby Frazier:Oh yes. They had their own servers. The servers were the cause ofyour security exposures several years ago.

Charles McLelland: Im assuming that's what he was trying to do earlieris to get allof that back over to his shop.

Charlie Evers: Correct.

Charles McLelland: Im beginning to pick up that Tom Burnham is beginning to leantowards letting it go back over there. Im assuming that he picked up that somethingsgoing on.

Note: Tom Burnham is the former state Superintendent of Education. He is now the interim

director of Mississippis Principal Corps at Ole Miss.

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Toby Frazier: I think you would be correct, sir.

Charlie Evers: The three of us have a degree of passion about all of this, but one

thing that I want to be really clear is that April/May of 2010, the Board so voted that

myselfand then Toby Frazier came on, and then John Gilbert came onandduring that time frame there was a very stringent investigation that was conducted.

Toby and I came to this game early, prior to even being employed by the

Department of Education.

Bill Jones: [Unclear] the investigation?

Charles McLelland: We got rid of Derrick Lindsay.

Charlie Evers: We brought in Callahan & Associates to do a study. That study wasbrought in initially with me. I suggested it to John Gilbert. We sat at the table with Dr.

(Lynn) House and with Dr. (Tom) Burnhamon two separate meetings and exposed thesecurity risk. Exposed the situation.

Note: Lynn House is the former DeputySuperintendent of Education. She served as InterimSuperintendent of Education prior to new Superintendent Carey Wright, chosen in September

2013.

Bill Jones: It was really bad?

Charlie Evers: It was really bad.

Bill Jones: And the Department of Audit was conducting an audit. [Unclear.]

Charlie Evers: Yes sir. And Tobys got the whole volume on that. Let me say this: Whatbothers me immenselywe got rid of folks that had done, basically, what the Departmentof Education had asked them to do. There were file servers on the second floor. Therewas connections directly from servers down into the MSIS. There was no firewallprotection. There was no process, no procedure, no anything.

Bill Jones:Numbers coming and going?

Charlie Evers:Numbers coming and going. But at the time, understand that thatloose operation enabled Hebbler and ORS to do all the things that theyve been

doing. Toby comes in. I come in. Ive been stealth in this. Very, very stealth, OK?Because I came in to work on the SLDS project. But I truly came in when I first got

there to work for John as [unclear]. I was going to be the one who carried out the

difficult work of Education Accountability. Now, thats just the truth of the matter.

OK? Sounderstand this: We came in and we dismantled. We sent folks home. We

sent a lot of people home. Did they do the right thing from an operational, from a

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technical, perspective? Were they handling it right from a technology perspective?

From a CIO perspective? Absolutely not. Had they been doing what they were told

to do? You betcha they were. And we got them sent home.

So Toby comes in, and we start establishing standards and procedures and

everything else, and we have information here [pats papers]

Bill Jones:Shut down their servers, didn't you?

Charlie Evers:Shut down their servers. We moved them.

Toby Frazier:That was a terrific battle.

Charlie Evers:It was a terrific battle.

Charles McLelland: To get it done.

Bill Jones: With Burnham?

Toby Frazier: With the people. With John getting the cooperation from ORS.

Charlie Evers:Theres been no support from Dr. Burnham on this. Theres been nosupport from Dr. House on this. John has been caught up in a vicious, vicious cycle.

In defense of his inactivitythere is no defense, and Ill tell him that face to face one

day. My pursuit is this: the truth is consistent in this. The truth is consistent. And

Im in pursuit of that truth. Im not going to waiver. Part of the reason why John and Iwent separate ways, to some degrees, isand Toby can attest to thiswe damn nearcame to fisticuffs a couple times, because I was so passionate about Youve got to stopthis. You need to be talking to the Chairman (of the Board). You need to be enacting yourlaw. You need to be taking this by the you-know-whatsexcuse meand running thisbusiness. You do not report to Dr. Burnham. We need to move out of here.

After October I came in and literally had all the locks on the doors changed. OK?

Within the department of Education Accountability. And I made a suggestion. I told

John, You need to get Josh to find out where we can move to. We need to get out of

this (MDE) building.

Bill Jones:Ive said that many times.

Charles McLelland: [Unclear] out of our control.

Bill Jones: No, we can order it.

Charles McLelland: We can?

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Bill Jones:This department isnt doing anything. The problem we have. Let me giveyou a little backgroundWe want to hear everything youve got to say. And we

know were in a dilemma. But weve got more than dilemmas than this one. This

ones the main one, but weve got several cannons shooting at us.

Charlie Evers:Understood.

Bill Jones:Number one is we dont want to give the public a black eye.

Charlie Evers:Certainly.

Bill Jones: And number two, were not going to burn you guys at all. Im going to

stand by you till hell freezes over.

Charlie Evers: Thank you for that.

Bill Jones: But, I want you to understand when Hank Bounds was hired I had peoplethat knew Hank, worked with Hank, [unclear] Hank from Hattiesburg, call me and say,Do not hire this man. And they had their own personal reasons for it. And I ignored allof them, because he was a star. And Hank canpardon the expressionsell you thesweat off his balls. He isgood. Hes got that air of confidence that is rare. But its not

legitimate. Theres a certain side to it that is seldom We hired Hank.And Hankwith Steve Williamsand I think Steve Williams had pretty much shut downEducation Accountability before Hank got there. Hank began to decimate the

department. And Claude (Hartley) was on my ass a good deal about the departmentof Education Accountability [unclear]. I just wasn't really interested. Then Steve

left. He retired. So we gave it to a young manwhat was his name? Went to North

Carolina?

Note:Hank Bounds was state Superintendent of Education prior to Tom Burnham. He is thecurrent state Commissioner of Higher Education.Steve Williams was Director of Educational Accountability prior to John Gilbert.Claude Hartley isformer member of state Board of Education.

Charles McLelland: [Unclear.]

Bill Jones: He had no business with the job. He didnt have any backbone at all. Ofcourse, he didnt have any employees either, nor equipment to work with. And he retiredor went back to school. And Claude and we all talked about itit was more than just

me and Claude. department of Education Accountability reestablished. I wrote Hank aletter that y'all may or may not be aware of. I pointed out to him what in my opinion waswrongwith what the department was not doing. And what our job was. Number one isthat director works for the Board. He doesnt work for Tom Burnham. He works for thedepartment.

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John understood these things. And he was recommended highly to me byI wasChairman at that timeand I had written this letter. And Hank just threw people downto the [unclear]. But they never responded to the letter. I said, We have got to reestablishto the Department of Educabecause were not doing this right.

But Hank didnt want any oversight. And that was the beginning of the end ofHank. I thought he knew at that timehe was thinking about moving on. Because wegot into a knock-down, drag-out battle with Hank over who we were going to hire for thedepartment. Hank wanted Todd. I didnt want anybody within the department for the job.I had made clear to Hank that I didnt want him involved in this. It wasn't his job.

And Charles (McLelland) chaired the committee to select a new director of

Education Accountability. After many discussions it became Charles job to tell

Hank: You cant sit in on interviews. We dont want you there.

Charles McLelland:And I did.

Bill Jones: And bear in mind, this is a political atmosphere. Hank had gotten very closeto the Governor (Haley Barbour). The governors people were calling us dirty dogs onthe Board pieces of shit

Anyway, we won on a 5-4 battle, pretty much right down the line and beat Hank back andbeat Todd back. I had literally called Hank one afternoon. I said, Hank, youve gotyourself involved in this hiring of this Education Accountability person. I am pissed

off about it. I want you to know Im pissed off about it. Youve got no business being

involved in it. And thats kind of where we separated most conversations at that point.He lost. He did everything he could do to get Todd the job.

We hired John. John was qualified.

Charlie Evers: Right.

Bill Jones: But Johns been in town a long time. Johns been in town a long time. Anytime youre in a political atmosphereJohn knew he didnt have the five members of theBoard. And he didnt really feel like he got the strong support from the Board he needed.He didnt make the decisions he needed to make. It soon became a weak system. I saw it.You saw it. And this started a year ago about these numbers from Ken Thompson. WhenHebbler leftHebbler would never answer our questions that I asked.

So I knew this, but at the same time we didnt haveweve still got a split on the Board.[Unclear] was in Hanks corner. Hal Gage was in Hanks corner. [Unclear] was in Hankscorner. And then they bring on Cami. She dont know anything, bless her heart. But theywould use her. And the governor just basically wanted to control the Department of

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Education. He didnt give a [unclear] about Accountability. He didnt support

public education anyway. You might not want to believe that, but he dont.

Note: Hal Gage is now Vice Chairman of state Board of Education. He is chairman of Vicksburg-based River Hills Bank.

Bill Jones (continued): Sojust to give you that background. I am notI am not happyat all with John Gilbert. But, on the other hand, hes diplomatic enough and knows howto maneuver himself, and he lives in that political environment. I know that hes no matchpersonality-wise for Tom Burnham. I cant say we made a mistake in hiring him asdirector. I think at the time it turned out to be a political battle just to get him hired. Andafter thatI cant tell you whats happened. But we dont have a functioningDepartment of Education Accountability. I know it. You know it. We still have someof the problems with the Board that we had, but I dont think its like it was at all. I thinkHal Gagehas come around. Wayne Gann has come around.

When you called, and yall started talking around John Gilbert, who we nearly died in the

ditch forwe reallywe were in a knock-down, drag-out battle. Hank lost the battle,and Todd wouldnt speak to us for a year. Hank wanted Todd, because Todd would dowhat he said.

Charlie Evers: Exactly.

Bill Jones: Ive mentioned that the Department shouldnt even be in the damnbuilding with us. It ought to be somewhere else. Bear in mind, its not just an

indigenous problem for you. Its the same problem with Tom Burnham over at the

Capitol all day long. Hes over there begging for money, and he is in their pocket,

because hes got to make a deal every day with somebody rather than arguing and

becoming an advocate for [unclear] running our schools properly. He is their buddy.His relationship with (state Rep. Cecil Brown), in my opinion is bizarre

Note: Cecil Brown of Jackson is still astate representative.

Charlie Evers: To say the least.

Bill Jones: Its a political relationship. But he cant call Cecil out. Hes going to do whatCecil tells him what to do. As a result, Cecil can only do what he can do in the House,and we have nothing going on in the Senate. My point is: Tom is a political animal.Hes been in town before. He knows how to survive. Andnobodys taking up for

education. [Unclear] Department of Education Accountability [unclear].

Charlie Evers: And thus, what I realized about 12 months agoand I think Toby did aswellwas that if there was going to be Education Accountability, I believed we weregoing to have to do it.

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[Multiple speakers. Unclear.]

[End Tape 1 (of 2).]

[Overlap from end of Tape 1.]

Charlie Evers: And thus, what I realized about 12 months agoand I think Toby did aswellwas that if there was going to be Education Accountability, we were going to haveto do it.


Bill Jones: This happened a year or so ago when we were talking about formula. Atfirst Burnham was furious.

Charlie Evers: Sure he did.

Bill Jones: And Charles said, next time he does it again, let him go.

Charlie Evers:Get down to the details on thisand Im not interruption--you cantcross train for what (Ken) Thompson does.

Bill Jones:Its all in his head.

Charlie Evers:You cant cross-trainits in his head

Bill Jones:Let me tell you about Thompson. Thompson knows how to play thepolitical game, too. If theres a superintendent whos going to stick him in the butt realhard, he goes out and makes friends with that superintendent.

Lisa Williamson: But the line that comes intoCalling on favors and makingcompromises versus if youre charged ... to be ambiguous to the outside forces and onlyreport the facts, thats different. Dr. Burnham and Cecils relationship? It has to do withfunding, but it isnt the fox watching the hen house. Ken Thompsons only responsibilityonly responsibilityis watching the hen house. He has been set in place over all thingsMississippi Department of Education to waive a wand and make things happen.

Bill Jones:Well, look. Lets talk about basic fairness, OK? See, with all KenThompsons machinations over there with those numbers and playing around,

which district has totally gotten screwed? Which districts have been given benefits

theyre not entitled to? Thats the kind of thing were interested in.

Recently, the numbers came in [noise] Burnham came walking in and said,

Congratulations. And I said, For what? [He said,] Star district. I said, We

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didnt make it. He said, Huh? Yeah, you did. I said, No, look at the numbers

here. And he realized Ken Thompson had given us the wrong damn, old sheets.

And he walked off.

So I came home to Petal thinking we didnt make it. Saturday morning Im out

riding my bike at the bike trail at USM. The head of security at USM He pullsup, and we get to talking. He said, Yeah, we made it. Im on the damn state Board

of Education, and Im wrong! I call superintendent and said, What the hell? How

did we make it? He said, Well, I got an e-mail from Ken Thompson. He figured

that was the gold standard.

Charlie Evers: Oh, sure. Do you know Audra Rester?

Note:Audra Resteris now the upper elementary school principal for Petal Schools.

Bill Jones: The name rings a bell.

Charlie Evers: Here we go. [Reads e-mail.] This is on September 6 at 9:03 a.m.Kenfrom AudraI didnt want to add any labor to your Labor Day holiday, so Iheld off sending you this e-mail till today. When I downloaded of our district statereports, I noticed that the level changed from High Performing to Star. Yay! Sheproclaims. However the graduation rate did not change from 79.0% to 79.5%. Justwanted to call your attention to that. It looks like all is good to go on the [Annual YearlyProgress] forms. See you tomorrow.

Ken's response: I think the wrong rate got pulled into the report. Im looking at thedocument that will go public with your grad rate, and it shows 79.5% on it. That report isfor internal use only. Since the label changed to Star on the report, it has to be picking upthe right rate but displaying the wrong rate. See you tomorrow.


Lisa Williamson: Nobody checking

Charlie Evers: That doesn't happen.


Toby Frazier: I want to comment on that since my name is all over that because ofmy deep concern for data leakage out of MDE. I do not venture ...

Lisa Williamson: basically on the discharge that we were asked ...


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Bill Jones:Petal makes it from High Performing to Star. So what. Maybe they didn'tdeserve Star. But show me where a school that should be successful is not being

successful because of what he's doing.

Charlie Evers: We can lead you towards that. And we haven't validated this part, but--

Bill Jones: So y'all will understand where I'm coming from on thisI was told theyneeded at least one drop out, and they found a dead child that was put in the drop out thathad died. girl. What's this program?

Charles McLelland: SPED (special education).

Bill Jones: No. Assessment. Online assessment. What do they call it? You know what I'mtalking about.

Charlie Evers:Accountability Analyzer?

Bill Jones:Yeah.

Toby Frazier:OK, we got worries about that.

Bill Jones: I called Burnhamnot Burhnam. (Dr. John) Buchanan (superintendent ofPetal School District) that dead child.

Charlie Evers: Imagine that.

[Laughs. Multiple speakers. Unclear.]

Charlie Evers: Let's go to Pass Christian. I want to answer another question for you.Check this out This is from Ken Thompson on July 25, 2011 at 3:19 p.m. The subjectis Pass Christian. The addressees are Tom Burnham and Lynn House. We did it! Wefound three kids in other districts that had once attended Pass Christian who werereported incorrectly. Because we apportioned their final status, it was enough to get PassChristian to a 79.6% grad rate. Rounds to 80%. And a 235 QDI. Listen to this: She'sall Star schools and a Star district.

Bill Jones: Well let me ask you this ...

Lisa Williamson: [Unclear.]You cannot have an accountability model that allows anyhuman to manipulate. That goes ...

Bill Jones: Unless you have some kind of written, legitimate appeals process.

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Charles McLelland: We have an appeals process.

Lisa Williamson: The appeals cannot be done by the person who ran it. The appealsprocess should be: You run it. You appeal it. There is a formula that says if it's this, thenthe answer's this. And if it's this, the answer's this.

Charles McLelland: They don't have any process

Charlie Evers: Did you hear me? They're blocked from you all.

Bill Jones:I want you to understand ... these are favors to School Board members.

Lisa Williams:Oh, absolutely.

Bill Jones: But I had no pressure put on me to put any pressure on anybody. And

don't really care. The guy gave me the wrong data to come home with. That pissed

me off worse than everything else. And I'm sitting there tellingapologizing to(Petal) school board members, mine, because we didn't make it. And I'm out of the

loop.

So why is Burnham telling Ken Thompson to jump through hoops other than

because I'm on the Board? There's no reason

Charles McLelland: I don't believe that. Let me

Bill Jones:The reason is, otherwise, with this whole process, you wouldn't have butone Star district in this state. And all the Board would have to do is change the

criteria.

Lisa Williamson:But if you go back to what you shared with us before about thevotes, the way that it happened, the political posturing, the master thought process

that says ...

Bill Jones:Let's don't piss them off.

Lisa Williamson: And if we do that knowingly or unknowingly, from there, we know forsure and certain If that's what naturally happened, and it came out that there was thisstudent, it ought to be able to be broadcast, totally transparent, that said this is this, andthis is this. It's kind of like, let's go back here ...

Bill Jones: You still have a rotten system.

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Lisa Williamson: Which, it comes back totake all the people and the personalities

out of thereyou don't have a fundamental accountability system. You have aperson in a position.

Charlie Evers: So as the changes are madeHebbler is the guru. He goes to Ken and

says, Ken, I need this district and school values changed and updated as part of the file, which is the file for Pass Christian.

Toby Frazier:Of course, Hebbler is running the model, still, from Ocean Springs.

Lisa Williams: You asked me if I was a contract employee. I am not. I have a contractwith the Department of Education. I do not work ...

Bill Jones: Hebbler has a contract, because everybody was afraid Ken didn't knowhowto do it.

Lisa Williamson: Hebbler is a contract employee. He's not getting retirement. He isunderthe rules of ...

Charlie Evers: [Reading e-mail.] Since the five-year graduation target for AYP is only65%, the change for Pass Christian will have no effect on any other district or schoollevel AYP calculations. Since the reports show the four-year, five-year and previous four-year rates, I would of course run a program to replace those values in the district andschool preliminary AYP output files. That would be a simple procedure for correcting thepreliminary run. And the values would of course be picked up automatically when we runthe final model. In other words, do it systematically. Don't plug these numbers Thenhe comes back and says, Otherwise, I will have to go back and run phases for A, B, C,D, and E copying the appropriate efficiency index files for each of those. That's reallya lot of extra work, and I could screw up if I'm not careful. Let me know as soon aspossible so I can get back on the equipment tracking issue. This is Ken's response: Kensays, Get back on improvement tracking. I don't think it was enough of a change toeffect anyone's status. I'll run the risk. We'll look carefully at anyone going intoimprovement anyway. I'll work on the SLAIF layout for you. I've got Sheila working onthe Title I school codes.

Toby Frazier:Let me interject a couple things here. This letter in particular isHebbler writing Ken saying, How many things have you changed? It's getting

dangerous. They're changing stuff. Ken's writing back saying Obviously, you know

when you take those three students in Pass Christian. Take them away from

[Multiple speakers interject.] And didn't notify Gulfport that you just lost ...


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Toby Frazier:Really and truly, I would love to stop for a second and discuss Accountability Analyzer, the people involved, Hebbler's relationship, Ken's

relationship to all this and why I'm interested about data leakage and data

corruption inside of MDE. We hadwhen I came in a year ago, I had one youngmanI don't know if you remember a guy named Russ Davis. He is

Accountability Analyzer. Russ is a friend of Ken's. They went to school togetherdown in, I think probably, in Picayune. They're related to Picayune somehow. Russwas part of the real problem inside of MDE. He was the one running fast and loose.

He was overrunning Derrick Lindsay. Derrickhe was just stupid. He didn't know. I'msorry. And Russ would go to Kris Kasse and got enabled to begin starting implementinga new e-mail system they were going to put in. And Russ was going to do it off fromORS.

Note: Russ Davis is the owner of AccountabilityAnalyzer.com. Violated state policy during hisprior work at MDE's Office of Educational Accountability. Worked on state accountability model

calculations as recently as 2011 without state authorization.Kris Kasse was at one point director of Student Assessment at MDE. His current status is

unknown.

Toby Frazier (continued): In other words, it was kind of like a take over of the MIS

department engineered by Russ. As I continued on, I realized he was a threat to the

security, so I brought him down to MIS as an employee. Got John to get him

transferred. That was back when we were going pretty strong and getting a few

things done. I actually had job description revisions to change some of the other peoplein ORS back down to the appropriate MIS level. Designated job descriptions and salariesand stuff, because they were being paid way too high at the time.

We brought Russ down and began to realize Russ had a lot of game going on. He

wanted a private office where he could shut the doorthat was the first thing. I

discovered through some discussions with some districts that districts were actually

paying Russ Davis money--

Bill Jones:For consulting work.

Toby Frazier:For consulting work. Natchez Adams had paid ... It's a violation ofpolicy inside of MDE. Not a violation of state law, but a violation of policy. We also

discovered he had received, I believe, money, and the largest amount was from, I

believe, Picayune. It was an amount of $114,000 that they had paid him in the years

past. Kimwhat's Kim's last name that works in audit? McCurleydid that. Andwe pushed it to Kim. She was really mad at me about it. Because she didn't want to

be involved in that investigation. Still, again, we found thatand John brought it,

toowe brought it to Russ's attention. And John allowed him to resign.

Note: Kim McCurley is MDE's director of Internal Accountability.

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Charlie Evers:And he quickly resigned.

Toby Frazier: And he was white as a sheet. Nervous as crazy and out the door.

Bill Jones: But he walked off with a bunch of data.

Toby Frazier:Not just then, but now. He has access to your data, and I can tell youhow he's doing it. And the problem is, I would like to know the answer to the

question I don't know. Does Accountability Analyzer come with all the data in it?

When you sign up ...

Note: The story, Private Service Using MS Public School Students' Data, shows that

Russ Davis was given access to all public students' data via Ken Thompson. One source

said Accountability Analyzer provides data to schools.http://www.biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students

%E2%80%99-data

Bill Jones: I think the school district is sending him their data.


Toby Frazier: Even the Senior Snapshot Russ has access to.

Bill Jones: I think what he's doing is they get the data from the school.

Toby Frazier: I think Russ is running part of the actual Accountability Model. He ranpart of the model.

Charlie Evers:Russ is doing this calculations for Hebbler this year.

Note: The story, Former MDE Employee Included in Department E-mails,shows

that Russ Davis was working on MDE Accountability calculations in 2011.

http://biggerpieforum.org/blog/former-mde-employee-included-department-e-mails


Toby Frazier:He's moving data back and forth through an unapproved method,and that's where I came in. I discovered how they're moving their data around.

They're violating our practices. They're going out to a web-based thing and putting

it in a cloud.

Bill Jones: How much does Burnham understand about all this?

Toby Frazier: Burnham doesn't know this

19
http://www.biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-datahttp://www.biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-datahttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/former-mde-employee-included-department-e-mailshttp://www.biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-datahttp://www.biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-datahttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/former-mde-employee-included-department-e-mails


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Charles McLelland: I remember.

Bill Jones: Why is it that John-he's got a good Board behind him now. The Board wouldsupport him if he wanted to do his job. Why won't he do something about this?

Charlie Evers: Let me tell you this. You got to understand one thing about John, andthen I'll give you an opinion. This is an opinion only. First of all, John has always workedas a support personat an executive levelfor older, elderly men, most of which are fullof integrity. He worked for Mr. Garland over at Archives and History. He worked forWilliam Winter. He has worked for some really good people who have led him in somegreat direction. And he has always managed from a position of not being committedhejust holds back, and he waits to see what is going to happen. In this situation, John, in myopinionand nobody can prove me wrong, because I'm rightJohn is beingmanipulated by two individuals. He's having his ass whipped unmercifully by ClaudeHartley and by Tom Burnham. They are whipping his ass so bad.

Charles McLelland: Why is he afraid of Claude?

Charlie Evers: Because Claude is an elderly gentleman who's just sat him in his lap.He's made everything OK between him and Dr. Burnham. And I will tell you right nowI know we're not down to solutionbut I will tell you this: There will be no solution tothisyou keep Claude Hartley plugged into this at the education levelyou won't haveeducation accountability.

[Unclear.]

Charlie Evers:No, no, no. Burnham and Claude are this. [Motions.] It's not a controlthing.

Charles McLelland: [Laughs.] He don't know what we know, does he? I want to goback to something before we get too far away from it.

Charlie Evers: Sure.

Charles McLelland:You mentioned when Hebbler left. And I was following you thatHebbler have all of this information that he carried with him.

Toby Frazier:Well, Hebbler Hebbler is still continuing to run the thing remotely.

Charles McLelland: That brings me to what I want to ask: We were told it back when allof this started that the people that left the department put us in such a bind and screwedup the numbers so that couldn't be [unclear] but they were going to fix it and beaffected ... Greenwood was going to be affected and some other school was going to be

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affected when these people left the department. You remember what I'm talking about?Do you thinkwhen they left, did they really screw up so that you all wouldn't be ableJohn, anybody elsecould not determine the actual scores?

Toby Frazier: We have to start over.

Charles McLelland: Am I making sense?

Lisa Williams: Oh, yeah. You are totally making sense. You want us to show you whatdistrict, but its so convoluted


Bill Jones: It's a violation of basic accounting principles.

Toby Frazier: [Unclear] checks and balances [unclear].

Bill Jones: What I'm upset about is I asked Tom, Do we have somebody crosstrained to take of Ken Thompson's job if he wants to leave again? He said, Yeah, wegot somebody. And John admitted to me a couple months ago there is no one crosstrained.

Charles McLelland: This brings me to my next question and what I'm leading to. In

you all's mind, do you all think Burnham knows that there is something going on

wrong?

Lisa Williamson, Charlie Evers and Toby Frazier:Yes.

Toby Frazier: As I continue to point out, in July of last summer is when the tide turned,when we wereKen Thompson was leaving. Of course, I, as a former auditor, was askedby John and another gentleman, Joe DeCastra that works with us, was asked to go in andbegin auditing Ken Thompson's affairs and work and understanding how the modelworks, to pick it up. Now I would have to walk out of my duties in MIS, but at that timethere was no alternative. We talked to Burnhamactually, Charlie was there, tootalkedto Burnham on a Friday afternoon. I don't remember the date, but it was in July.

Notes: Joe DeCastra:started at MDE June of 2010 as a consultant for two federal grants todevelop a Business Intelligence system and a Statewide Longitudinal Data System for the state.

He supported the organization of the Office of Reporting within the Office of Educational

Accountability. He was Manager-Accountability Systems, with responsibility for theAccountability System for MDE. He is no longer with MDE.

Charlie Evers: Prior to fourth of July weekend.

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Toby Frazier:And he was all for it. Something happened. I contacted Ken on thatweekend and said, Ken, I understand you're leaving. We need to understand how

the model runs. Immediately, the Monday morning after, Charlie and I get a

message from Lynn House, and she does an interception on us. She stops us from

going over there. And wants to be with us if we go over there.

Charlie Evers: [Mocking.] But he's so sensitive, and we don't want to

[Laughs.]

Bill Jones: He didn't have anything written down.

Lisa Williamson: No. Because he's not doing it. Steve (Hebbler) is and Russ (Davis).

Charlie Evers: And the other thing that changed is we went from being welcomednewcomersApril/May we got there

Bill Jones: [Unclear.]

Charlie Evers: To that Monday after the Burnham-Thompson discussionTom

Burnham would not even look me in the eye. And we walked right up and down the

hall way together.

Charles McLelland: You're bringing me home to what I've been trying to get to allalong: So Burnham knew when he came to us [unclear] saying that these people wereleaving the department and they screwed up those numbers so that we couldn't get anaccurate report. He knew exactly then he what he was But we got some false numberslast July, and that's when all of this was

Toby Frazier: He walked away from John Gilbert last summer.

Charles McLelland: Right. And it brings it home to me, now, exactly what is takingplace. The reason why these numbers never got corrected last year and are not

correct this year, but we can't prove they're not correct.

Lisa Williamson: Not yet. Not yet.

Bill Jones: Charles, we both made it last year to Star district. We threw out the alternateassessment test [unclear] because they were buggered up. [Unclear] brought the QDI upjust enough to make Star district.

Toby Frazier: Oh, there's a lot of that going on.

Charles McLelland: But let me tell you, lady and gentlemen, this stuff is ...

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Bill Jones: Remember? You kept saying you had all these other performing schools.How many of them all of a sudden were successful?

Charles McLelland: You haven't heard me brag [unclear] these numbers that we're

talking about in July.

Lisa Williamson: Statistically speaking, it's clearly impossible to go from 2009 having158 to 2010 (having) 121 to 2011 (having) one. You can't.

[Looking at materials.]

Charles McLelland: Bill, you have not seen this.

Bill Jones: I've heard you talk about it.

Charles McLelland: This is what we're going to have to be dealing with next week.

Charlie Evers: Look at the school. Look at the school. Look at the one on Failingschools. Next page.

Charles McLelland: In '10, you have 32 At Risk (of Failing) schools. You have none forthis. You can't prove that, but ...

Bill Jones: [Unclear] and you've only got two Failing all of a sudden.

Charlie Evers: And look at page two.

Bill Jones: Oh my God.

Charlie Evers: 129 to one.

Bill Jones: You moved 134 Low Performing schools to only six Low Performing schoolsin three years?

Charlie Evers: Look at Failing. Look at Failing.

Lisa Williamson: One. 158 to one.

Charles McLelland: Last year, it was 129 and then to one.

Lisa Williamson: Why does Dr. Burnham know this, and why is he doing this?Basically, he's trying to justify his job.

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Charles McLelland: He's trying to satisfy Charles McLelland, too, because heknowsthat this is my pet peeve, and all the sudden we [unclear].

Bill Jones: But this is manipulation.

Lisa Williamson: That's what we're coming back to.

Bill Jones: If you don't know it, you can see: What are the chances of? But you've got noway to tell the Board anything.

Lisa Williamson: But in an auditif this was set up. An accountability Model saysanif-thenif this happens, then run these checks. If the variance isyou, the Board wouldsayif the variance is greater than 10 percent, you would come up with, what could weaccept with no question? Five percent? Ten percent?

Bill Jones: If it don't pass the smell test, you would run an audit.

Lisa Williamson: You would do the audit that saidyou should be able to have a pieceof paper that says on this piece of paper, this is the specific reason we had 129 and nowwe have one. There is no mystery. This is how. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Bill Jones: Or here is what you did that made this work. Apply it across the board toeverybody.

Lisa Williamson: It is statistically impossible. It comes back toI said on the way downhere, if I was a criminal, I'd be smarter than this.

Bill Jones: This is insulting to our intelligence.

Charles McLelland: But if we don't come up with a plan that's going to prove, it's goingto get rubber stamped.

Bill Jones: We have to approve this.

Charles McLelland: You and I have to come up with some kind of strategy, because ifnot, it's going to get approved. Now, he's going to dress it up. I see him nowI'm talkingabout BurnhamI see him now looking at me saying, Charles, I know you're happy.Look where we moving these numbers ...

Bill Jones: [Unclear.] When I called him about thistake this another step forward. Idon't want to rain on my school district's parade, but you've got to have some ethicssomewhere. When a guy tells me that we that made it, and I thought before I go

home we didn't. And I call (Dr. John Buchanan, superintendent of Petal School

District), and he's just hanging on to his job, too. Bear in mind, this is a good school

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district comparatively, and why go beat up the four or five topwhy drag them

down? I don't want to do that. So when I got off the phone with Buchanan, I called

Tom Burnham. I said, Tom, you're right. We did make it. And he wouldn't give

me a decent [unclear]. All he would say was, Well, we try to help these districts.

You know, if we can help them, we help them. And I said the problem is [unclear]

dead kids who died. And I understood what he was saying: We try to help thesedistricts if we can.

Charles McLelland:And we help you.

[Laughs.]


Charles McLelland: When you talk about running an audit on these numbers thatdon't look rightI asked John a month ago when these numbers first appeared,

please run a check on [unclear] and Hollandale. Hollandale had jumped I think ahundred and something points. It would be great if that happened, but it's

unlikely. I have asked him just about every week. Well, he tells me that he have

Toby, or somebody, working

Toby Frazier: That was Joe working on it.

Bill Jones: Let me tell you something, Charles, if they'll do it for me, for us without

lobbying. God knows what legislators they're doing it for.

Lisa Williamson: Oh, absolutely. Back to the scenario about him asking Tobywhy wewent through this situation to explain how the loop is, John is physically in a position thathe can't tell you why. The very entity that controls the datathat being MIShas noaccess to the reporting that happened.

Bill Jones: The bottom line is John's personality is not suitable for the job.

Lisa Williamson: An avoidance strategy is not a good

Bill Jones: His personality is not suitable for the job. And he's been in town a long time.He came on when we didn't have 100 percent board. He was real timid about everythinghe did. We hired all you guys, and things are moving in the right direction. John is just,bless his heart, is a weak he's seeking retirement down the road. And when he getsback in, I want y'all to tell us what y'all think the solution is. Bear in mind, no Boardmember wants the Department to get a black eye. No Board member wants to go onand tell the superintendent

Charlie Evers: We don't either.

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Bill Jones: My two cents worth: I could honestly look at John and say, John, go aheadand resign. Resign right now, because you're not doing your job. I don't want to do that.I would like for him to take a deep breath and go ahead and kick a little butt before heleaves.

Note: John Gilbertleft MDE in December 2012. Current leadership of the Office of EducationalAccountability is unclear.

Bill Jones (continued): We know we're looking at hiring a new director of EducationAccountability, and that's got to be one mean son of a bitch if I have anything to do withit.

Toby Frazier: I hope he's an attorney or something this time.

Bill Jones:Burnham is a really slick dude.

Charlie Evers: You're telling me.

Bill Jones:He's slicker than I gave him credit for. I do like working with him asopposed to Hank Bounds. Hank Bounds [unclear]. Burnham knows how to smooth

things. He knows how to work these superintendents.

Charlie Evers: Let me tell you how good Burnham is and Gilbert, too. Burnham hasGilbert eating right out of his hands. That's an obvious statement. On Friday there was adelivery of what Dr. House's suggestions were for the new plan in the accountabilitymodel, which even enhanced Ken Thompson's role. OK? John sent it to Toby and to Joeto look at it. We all talked about it over the weekend and just said, My God, how can

you not see this? How can you be where John is and not get what's happening here? OnTuesday John goes in and has a meeting with the fellows I'm overI'm out of townandhas a meeting with Joe and Tobyand what I told him on Monday morning, I said, I'mpraying for you. You cannot assert these numbers this year. You've already not done whatthe Board has told you to do. You've already taken one whole year. John, a year haslapsed. He said, Well what do you think I should do?

Bill Jones: What do you think I should do? He didn't know?

Charlie Evers: I'm sorry. And I said, Are you going to assert those numbers? He said,I can't assert those numbers, I haven't even seen those numbers. I looked at him and

said, Can you resign? You need to go to the house. And he said, That's the rationalebehind that.


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Charlie Evers: Or worse. We've had 24 months of corruption. And I'm going to call aspade a spade. That's what it is.

Bill Jones: Well, our Accountability Model might in theory be a good model, if we

knew what the model was. But without anybody knowing what the model is, it's

subject to, one, deception and manipulation and paying for political favors. TheBoard doesn't have any authority. You have a superintendent that acts like he's afraid ofdamn Ken Thompson. And we've got the head of Education Accountability that won't doanything.

Charlie Evers: Right.

Lisa Williamson:You've got model, process, and result issues. Those three incombination.

Charlie Evers: And you can't

Bill Jones:Let me ask you something. This came up a year or so ago. I hadsuperintendents throughout the state saying, We don't understand this model. I'm

mad about it. Ken Thompson will not explain this model. We don't what to do. If we

have a short coming, we don't know how to work within the model. So Thompson

hit the road and had meetings. And he did a pretty good job. He assuaged the

feelings of many of the superintendents. I don't think they know a damn bit more

about it than they already did before. But he shut them up.

Lisa Williamson: But you want to know how he shut them up is? He sent in his friendRuss in to say, I'll fix your problem. So here is Russ. It's a triangle. And this goes past

Bill Jones: Well how much does it cost to participate in Accountability Analyzer? I thinkit's $20,000

Toby Frazier: I wouldn't be surprised.

Bill Jones: Or 25.

Charlie Evers: Jesus.

Bill Jones: [Unclear.] I think he said 2,500.

Charlie Evers: I bet that's 2,500 times X.

Toby Frazier: My concernmy real feeling is that this is criminal.

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Toby Frazier: What Russ and

Charlie Evers: [Unclear.]

Toby Frazier: [Unclear.]

Bill Jones:Well let me ask this: What specificif we could prove that they aregetting our data [unclear]. What statutes have been violated?

Toby Frazier: There is a statute about intellectual properties.


Toby Frazier: And then there's a state law. I gave that to Charlie, didn't I?

Lisa Williamson: Actually two for the state and then one for the FCC.

Bill Jones: What's the FCC?

Lisa Williamson:Federal Communication Commission.

Bill Jones: I thought that's what it meant, but I didn't know there was more than

one. Why would they have jurisdiction over this?

Lisa Williamson: Oh, absolutely. They have jurisdiction over cyber security. Theyhave jurisdiction over all kinds of things. Interestingly enoughso not only are your

state laws violated. You've got several things. First is, state laws. Second is

from your federal laws as it relates to what the FCC oversees. It's a Mississippian

that heads this part of the FCC. He's a retired Rear Admiral James Barnett.He's overcyber security, and 60 percent of cyber security issues come internally, which

certainly, this falls into that. But there are all kinds of regulations that are violated.

Because the Department of Education has not only accepted federal funds for just

normal things, because the Department of Education accepted ARRA funds

American (Recovery and Reinvestment) Actthere was a new transparency

commitment that had to happen. OK? So not only do you risk just the funding that

comes from these, think of all the dollars that are ARRA dollars that are within the

Department of Education. So it's massive when you look at not having these

accountabilities [unclear].

Note: James Barnett is the former Chief of the Public Safety & Homeland Security Bureau forthe FCC and is now partner and co-chair of Telecommunications Group in Washington, D.C.

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Bill Jones: Let me ask you a question. Let's suppose for purposes of planning a way

out of this mess, Hebbler and Thompson died tomorrow, what would this Board do?

Lisa Williamson: This Board would

Toby Frazier: You would have to hire some peoplesome sort of person to come into begin to reconstruct what's going on, you know, dig through hopefully everything.

You know Ken has moved everything to a new computer. He bought a new computer

last year. It was kind of anI warned John many times about buying that computer,

but nobodyin fact, it finally got to the point I had to prove it, because Lynn House

started pressuring to get the computer. So

Bill Jones:You knew what he was going to do with it.

Toby Frazier: I didn't know for a fact, but I knew it was dangerous, because I saw

Bill Jones: Are you talking about a desk top?

Toby Frazier:This is a large-scale Apple desk top with terabytes worth of data on it.Six processors in it. A machine that costs $13,000 and the number of terabytes

means that he can hold the entire MSIS database on that personal computer.

Charles McLelland: He knew the way he wanted to do it.

Toby Frazier: Oh, yeah, he knew, because we put the server thing down, that's what

he needed so he morphed it to a new And he basically uses one of our people outtheback door

Charlie Evers: [Unclear] getting password access to the server.

Toby Frazier: And getting passwords to things.

Bill Jones: Still?

Toby Frazier and Charlie Evers: Still.

Bill Jones: Who in the Department is in charge of auditing misused passwords?

Toby Frazier:See, we don't have a strong policy. And I had a policy written.Actually, I paid a consultant $25,000 to come in and write us a data security policy,

which we didn't have. I took it to IT steering committee, put it out. And Lynn House

is the chairman of the committee. She just threw cold water all over it.

Charlie Evers: She shit all over it.

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Toby Frazier:We're going to have to have all the managers discuss it ... In otherwords, We're not going to adopt the industry standard security policy. We have

none. If anybody was going to look at passwords, it would probably be a request to

us at MIS, but we don't have any established policies and procedures because I can't

get them done. I'm blocked.

Lisa Williamson: So if you were Ken, then you would discredit MIS as to their blockingso you could build support to yourself. You've gone and you've built all theserelationships. And a superintendent would do anything to understand what they'rebeing measured on. I don't mean that in a lack of integrity, it's just, tell me what I haveto do? And if you're the person who can tell me, it's a what are you telling me to do?kind of thing.

Charlie Evers: Let me run one thing real quick, jus

Bill Jones: From Burnham's standpoint, Thompson knows where all the skeletons areburied.

Charlie Evers: Oh, absolutely.

Bill Jones: They're actually Burnham's. The buck stops with Burnham.

Charlie Evers:Let's just talk about Russ Davis and Ken Thompson for just asecond. First of all, I've got an e-mail back here, this is from Russ Davis to Ken

Thompson

Bill Jones: Does he know you have access to these e-mails?

Lisa Williamson: No, this is based on the investigation that Charles (McLelland)

said do.

Charlie Evers: And based on the fact that you have no privacy as far as the state is

concerned. He (Toby) is the CIO, he owns it

Toby Frazier: I basically took it upon myself to do that.

Bill Jones: But he don't know that we have these e-mails?

Toby Frazier and Charlie Evers: No.

Bill Jones: Does John know it?

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Toby Frazier: John does not know. There are a lot of things I have not told John this

year.

Charlie Evers: There would be no way for us

Charles McLelland: And rightfully so.

Charlie Evers: There would be no way for us to carry


Note: See story, Private Service Using MS Public School Students' Datahttp://biggerpieforum.org/blog/private-service-using-ms-public-school-students%E2%80%99-data

Charlie Evers: OK, here's the deal. This is from Russ Davis to Ken Thompson: Thanks

for the heads up, I'm going to compare it--this is the Senior Snapshot, OK?-- compare itagainst mine and tweak as needed and make sure it mirrors yours exactly. This is RussDavis, now.


Charlie Evers: Damn right. Hopefully, they'll go ahead and start uploading theirdocumentation to be stores to the package, so when it rolls up we can just go ahead andprint. Now listen to this


Charlie Evers: He sayslet me go down to the bottom--Your peeps are needing

you. This is from Ken Thompson to Russ.

Toby Frazier: You need to go down further. Ken is getting a complaint from

Louisville.


Charlie Evers: I am James Brooks the principal of Eiland Middle School in

Louisville Municipal School District. I have been perplexed by our Algebra I results

on the AccountabilityAnalyzer. It says we had eight out of 10 students that did not

meet growth. This appears to be either a mistake or an injustice. I am enclosing the

results. Please help me understand this process. This poor soul

Lisa Williamson: Is paying Russ.

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Charlie Evers: Is paying Russ. And he turns around and says the Accountabilthis

is from Ken to James, to the principal. He says, The Accountability Analyzer is not

a product of the Department of Education. You need to contact the company that

sold it to you. I'm not familiar with the product. This was August 25 th of 2011.

Toby Frazier: I don't even think John's seen that.


Lisa Williamson: It's one swallow, one bite at a time. Bill said, how do we fix this? Wecan't go to the solution until we really diagnose all of the problem. OK? So how doyou fix that? What do you do? You do some simple steps. Some simple steps are: Get

that IT policy passed. Boom. IT? Got to happen. The only that Toby said. We needa security You've got to build all these walls.

Bill Jones: I agree.

Lisa Williamson: OK? Right?

Bill Jones: I'm with you.

Lisa Williamson: Because it really comes back toyou want to ram this through

and say, this is justpardon mebullshit, and you got to fix this. Then you've got

to go back and say, you don't know if it's a Tylenol pain or a Demerol pain. You

don't knowshould there be 12 schools on there? Should there really be one?

Should there be 100 schools? You know that it's way out of kilter from the statistics.

Anybody with a blind eye can look at that. Until you tear it downso you do not

want to discredit everything that the Department of Education stands for in doing

this. You can take some small stepsfastsmall steps.

Number one, you've got two different things: You've got policy and procedures that

follows these different things. But then, number two, you've got potential criminal.

And when you get to thatand I was saying to you about the FCC? In a cyber

security situation, it's not only, Gosh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that. Whether

it was your intention or not. If you did do that, then it is truly, then, a crime.

Bill Jones: The first thing I would kind of like to see is a list of potential criminal

see if anything was violated regulations. Because at some point Somebody to

give us an opinion on it.

Lisa Williamson: There's a question, you have to

Bill Jones: I don't want to do it Report to me about stuff all the time, but I'm not theperson to [unclear].

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Lisa Williamson:[Unclear.] One of the things we were talking about when youwalked out was, the tendency is to want to rush to the solution. But you've got a lot

of investigation that you've got to do before you can get a plan. You do not want to

discredit the entire Department of Education. You can't do it. Because the business

of education has to continue within that. OK? What you have to do, actually, is toopen up your investigation more than what it is. One simple thing:Toby says wedon't have an IT security policy. That ought to be something that can be done

immediately. We don't have this. We don't have that. You begin to cut off theirroutes to deception.You don't have to come out and say You cut out their sourceof information. And that way Accountability Analyzer can't operate. You go to,We've decided not to renew the contract for Steve Hebbler as a contract worker.

Boom.

Bill Jones: How much are we paying him?


Toby Frazier: He's running out of a couple of different areas. Federal programs

Charlie Evers: He's got in under several federal programs Under different area

contracts doing different things. It doesn't matter

Bill Jones: He's not showing up on the monthly report to the Department. We get a

monthly report of contract hired employees.

Charles McLelland: [Unclear] but we don't know their names.

Bill Jones: We approved it at one time.

Charlie Evers: I'm going to ask you a question, and I don't want you to take this

wrong. If these people are going to this magnitude to pull off what they're pulling,

Hebbler's name not showing up on a list of who they're doing business with?

Bill Jones: Piece of cake.

Charlie Evers:I mean, God almighty. That's nothing. Let me tell y'all something.Let me give you this, too. What we've told y'all this morning in an hour and 15

minutes is the tipit's the tip of the iceberg as to the magnitude and how deep this

goes. You've got general concepts. The illegalities that take place, much less the

ethical side of itbut, having the state's data base moved and put out into a file

sharing device and brought down

Lisa Williamson:In public.

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Charlie Evers:Public domain by two individuals that are employedThink aboutwhat Toby. He's CIO. The reason we've spent all this money is to make sure the data

that we have is held securely within the Department of Education.

Bill Jones: And they're giving it away.

Charlie Evers: And they're giving it away.

Lisa Williamson: For profit.

Charlie Evers: And they're profiting from it. And manipulating for profit. They're

manipulating it for profit to the point where, who is not to surmise that there aren't

errors that are being made . You can squint your eye just for a second and think

that a school that thinks it maybe should have done better


Bill Jones:How would the Department defend that lawsuit? What data would yougive them to show any

Charlie Evers: You don't have any.

Toby Frazier: You can't go to court and defend it if you haveSay, if you had a

principal that was dismissed based upon a rating

Charlie Evers: And you have.


Lisa Williamson: And pay raises or not.


Lisa Williamson:Just take the three students that were pulled from Pass Christianas an example. Did that affect someone's pay? If it did or didn't move them within a

category So then you come to, what are the results? You go back to, what can you

fix today? You've got a model that is impenetrable and checked by different

checkers and accountable. And the people who check it can't be a part of accounting

for it. Then you've got a process that is not with a triangle of three people. And

then you've got results that are totally transparent that says, I don't have to like

them

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Bill Jones: If this was doable. We want to know what these guys did that worked. See ifthis is truly doable.

Lisa Williamson: Here's where you could go into next week and you don't have todeclare, there's a rat and I'm smell it and it's deep. You could say, I believe [unclear] from

these results, statistically speaking, this is too far skewed from anything.

Bill Jones: A bridge too far.

Lisa Williamson: A bridge too far. I need an investigation and a detailed report beforewe can certify, OK?. Because you don't have to certify [unclear]. I need the document

Toby Frazier: Can you change the word investigation to review?

Lisa Williamson: A review. I need the documents that support this. And, oh, yeah, by theway, while we're doing that, I want us to have a complete review of this, this and this.

Pick out three things. Any three things. And then go through. And then you begin todiscover things about how did you do that, and who was involved in that?

Bill Jones: See, we don't know what questions to ask.

Lisa Williamson: We can script that. Easily. But it comes back to, where do y'allwant to start? How do you want to do it? And that goes back toyou immediately

want to go, This is crazy and rip the whole thing apart. I mean, that's not going to

serve anybody, because then, the press is going to be everywhere and the politics.

You can barn storm, or you can walk in the front door with a laser.

Toby Frazier: I just got a look at an e-mail that is passing back and forth between

that John sent me where they're discussing about the problem with the SPED

(special education) participation rates, where you know if you don't put your SPED

kids in and test them, then your QDI (Quality of Distribution Index) can go up.

There's a lot of problems there. There's a number of districts that have not been

testing.

Charles McLelland: They don't test them at all?

Toby Frazier: Kosciusko is zero. But

Bill Jones: Why do we let some districts pull SPED testing ...?

Charles McLelland: The districts hold the key to that.

Toby Frazier: There's a long e-mail that I just got forwarded, and I have to read

through and digest it, but it actually even comes with a

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Bill Jones: Is it like, look our ACT scores are [unclear], and we tested 100 percent.

And your ACT scores are higher than mine, but you only tested 12 kids?

Toby Frazier: Yeah.

Charles McLelland: Good scenario.

Toby Frazier: And this is an answer back to Paula (Vanderford) from Ken. Iagree that we need to talk about participation rates so we can be sure we have what

we need to have but I don't want to have more than we should have. I think we need

to address it so we can get the participation rates up, but I don't want to create a

press story and blow it out of proportion if we can help it.

Note: Paula Vanderford is now the Director of Accreditation at MDE. May be a relative of TomBurnham.

Charles McLelland: Who was that?

Toby Frazier: This is Ken writing back to Paula Vanderford.

Bill Jones:How do you have a system where a school can decide not to test yourSPED kids? Your QDI is illegitimate.

Charlie Evers: You don't have a system.

Lisa Williamson:You don't have a model, and you don't have a process.

Bill Jones: I want an asterisk. OK, we made QDI of 210, asterisk, but we didn't testany SPED kids. I want to see Petal, we have a QDI 222, and we tested all our SPED

kids. [Unclear.] If they wanted to make sure they were Star district every year

[unclear].

Toby Frazier: Well they got a list.

Charles McLelland: I agree with everything you said about having a review, but that'sgoing to be Ken Thompson, or whoever's presenting it at that tableif you're going tosay that this informationwe accepted what came from the district, and that's going to behis defense.

Lisa Williamson: But that's where you have to open it up.

Toby Frazier: Not all of that information comes from the districts. For example, thePearson testing scores. I never did see that.

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Bill Jones: They come from the Department to the districts.

Toby Frazier: The districtsit comes back to Ken Thompson. He is in control of all ofit.

Bill Jones: Everything.

Toby Frazier: The only thing they get out of initially is out of MSIS is they go in andprint the labels. That goes off Pearson. Pearson does all the work. Pearson puts the testout. They score it. Because of the problems they have with mismatches on tests, Ken hasto have all that data. Ken does not even release the testing data back to MIS until monthslater.

Charles McLelland: Until everything has been fixed.

Toby Frazier: We do not ever even get a copy of the original test results directly from

[Unclear. Noise on tape.] We're excluded from a lot of calculation. For example, thingslike the cohort graduation rate. Ken calculates that. We do not even have it in MIS. MIShas been slowly degraded over the years and knocked down by ORS and KenThompson's group maintaining control of certain key elements of information.


Bill Jones: Charles, if you don't mind, formulate five or six questions that are not inCPA-ease that a layperson would kind of understand and give them to Charles and he'llgive them to me. I might even get old Claude to ask one.Charlie Evers: We're going to have to have a time out for a second. Because y'all havegot hold of something that I don't get. And my position on

Bill Jones: Claude?

Charlie Evers: OK, now. Here's what I know. Here's what I know, because I'vewitnessed it, I've seen it and I've heard it. Claude, on numerous occasions, a dozen

or more, has persuaded John not to take items that we have written white papers on

I'm talking about huge items, like what's listed here, suggestions on how to make

improvements to Education Accountability, on how John is to report to you, on howJohn is toI mean, everything that we have been talking about this morning. Aboutfixes. This whole thing that we've been talking about this morning: Well how do we We can fix it. It's not a matter of can we fix it? Shit. Let us fix it is the deal. And ClaudeHartley has blocked and has persuaded John Gilbert to not take things to the

Board.

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Bill Jones: Well, see, what you described is a role that Claude Hartley, and it may bethrough that Accountability subcommittee, Claude Hartley is participating in that I'm notreally aware of. He talks to John all the time, but he talks to everybody all the time. He'salways pumped up about something. He's always pumped up about this. He's alwayspumped up about that. I have noticedwell, let me put it this way: Claude is not beyond

being manipulated himself. He doesn't need but a little nudge here and there sometimes,OK? I can handle Claude. I believe I can handle Claude. I don't know this deep-seededlet's don't let those white papers get to the Board involvement of Claude and John.John, if he's got a white paper that y'all gave him? Perhaps John ought to be the one

Charlie Evers: What I'm telling you, Bill, without a shadow a doubt, is that Claude

Hartley has been interceding and intercepting on behalf of the Board to John

Gilbert, blocking John Gilbert.Now I'm not making any excuses for John, so don't getme wrong, now.

Bill Jones: I'm wondering are you getting this version of what you're telling me from

John? You're not getting it from Claude.

Charles McLelland: You talking about those committee meetings?

Charlie Evers: Those committee meetings are a complete and total joke. OK, it was ajoke. It was a joke that Claude Hartley got put on accountability

Bill Jones: Back to what I'm asking you. Are you telling me from personal knowledge?You're having to assimilate this from somewhere. I'm guessing you're getting this fromJohn?

Charlie Evers: What I'm telling youthat's correctis both what John's told me andwhat I have heard Hartley tell Gilbert. That's what I'm telling you. So, when we sitaround this table and talk about a fix and how we're going to make it happen, if itincludes

Bill Jones: What if I askedJohn Gilbert, John, I want all the white papers regardingrecommendations made from your staff to you to give to the Board about [unclear]?

Charlie Evers: Over the last 24 months. Over the last 16 months.

Bill Jones: And then, I want to know how you ...

Charlie Evers: I think it's brilliant.

Lisa Williamson: What steps are you taking.

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Charlie Evers: And what you need to understand is that we'll give you what we puttogether and we'll see what he gives you.

Charles McLelland: Bill, you don't want to do anything that might give away whatwe're doing here. You might want to ask him that one on one.

Lisa Williamson: If you said, what steps have you taken? White papers are going to likeding, ding, ding, ding, ding. What steps have you taken

Bill Jones: secure those papers?

Lisa Williamson: They're never on site.

Charlie Evers: They're duplicated and stored, currently.

Lisa Williamson: Here's one thing along the lines of, we're going to have to take steps.

Even if we give you questions, you've got something you're going to face next week:Certify or not. There is a proposal from Lynn House to Dr. Burnham. Here's awritten copy that we were working on and some different things. But, basically,

what they're proposing is that Ken get more power, OK? That's an easy fix. You

control that, OK?

Bill Jones: Tell me what they're going to say.

Lisa Williamson: They're going to say, here are the things that we want to do: We wantto enhance the ability of the Office of Research and Statistics (ORS) to continue its goodwork with districts and schools. Well, that's sounds great. We want good work withschools. We want a review of the personnel needed in ORS and statistics because Kensays, I don't have enough people. No, we're not building ORS. In fact, maybe youcould say, you know what? This is the time we go back to the recommendations we havebefore. We're about abolishing ORS. It falls underneath right here. You know you've gotsomebody (reference to Toby Frazier) who is not going to be manipulated sitting rightthere.

Toby Frazier: Comment with talking with John, trying to convince John of the rightpath.

Bill Jones: This is what we used to call statistics. And we used to say it should belongin your department.

Lisa Williamson: Absolutely.

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Toby Frazier: Recently, Dr. Burnham has met with John during this last w

Mississippi Education Investigation

Documents

Transcript of Mississippi Education Investigation