As I noted in a comment earlier, this week’s revelations surrounding Newton Superintendent of Shools David Fleishman’s plagiarism is a conundrum for our community.
On the one hand, I think Fleishman is a terrific superintendent and I want him to continue leading our school department.
On the other hand, he’s a role model and the unattributed use of someone’s work is an offense our schools rightly take seriously.
More troubling to me is the near-month gap between when it became clear that this took place and when it became public. Fleishman’s disappointing non-apology acknowledgment doesn’t help.
I realize it’s very easy to suggest what someone should have done after the fact but (after biting my lip for past 24 hours) I’m going to do so anyway.
Imagine if on June 27 or a day or two after it became apparent what happened, David Fleishman sent to the following email to students or published this as a letter in the TAB..
Dear Class of 2014:
Once again I want to congratulate you on your high school graduation. etc, etc, etc.
It was my privilege to be your superintendent and an honor to speak to you on graduation night. However, I wanted to mention that there were several points in my speech to you where I neglected to credit a few of my comments. As you know, our schools value giving credit where credit is due and I wanted to make sure you knew that a recent speech by Gov. Deval Patrick directly inspired some of my comments.
I hope you have a chance to enjoy your summer and your achievement before your move onto the next phase of your life, etc. etc. etc.
All the best,
David Fleishman
Like I said, it’s easy to suggest this in hindsight. I hope I’m smart enough to remember my own advice the next time I mess something up.
Greg, if the letter included “…this is not the example I should display, I am sorry for my error…” I think this would have been sufficient and better than a lost week’s pay. The audience at the graduation and the governor are the injured parties in my mind.
As usual, the denial and apparent cover up has been worse than the actual event. Your email with Groot’s edit would have saved DF $5,000 and his reputation in my opinion. We all make mistakes; even Matt Hills according to his own words. It is the blatant lack of taking responsibility for one’s actions that makes this type of behavior by DF and the SC so egregious.
This is all kind of floridly gross. Strange and stupid behavior from someone who a) should have known better and b) owed students some original thoughts.
What could he have possibly done differently?
Howzabout:
1) the person paid almost $300k to run a school system could have written his own damn speech, or hired someone to write it, or at the very least done what most speakers do and put quotes around some Khalil Gibran or something and called it a day.
2) when it became apparent that he’d plagiarized, not sent out a passive-voiced bureaucrat ‘mistakes were made’ statement. In the spirit of his own words – “In my judgment, it is essential that public officials not only accept critical feedback but acknowledge when we have made mistakes.” (sidenote: see how easy quotes are! I learned them from NPS teachers!) – he could have just said, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake and set a terrible example.” Could have been an opportunity to talk about the care required to make sure that others’ words and ideas don’t work themselves into our brains so completely that they emerge, when tired and working quickly, as our own.
I don’t think this is going to lead to a rash of plagiarism copycat incidents – tho how delicious it would be! – but the incident and its non-resolution do feel like a collective “up yours” to NPS students and alums who did their homework and thought, apparently naively, that the folks running the school system were doing theirs.
Thanks Ben
And I have to disagree on one point – there will be many students testing the system come September.
If Newton’s health commissioner took on some charitable work to run a large public cookout and a constituent made record that the commissioner ignored basic standards on food prep, temperatures, etc…. Would a followup acknowledgement written like a newspaper correction be enough? I say no.
If ethical standards is what a trail of hired others do in the school administration (not what the head guy does) the Super should say that. Here I’ve broken the kind of rule I pay others to administer… If he wants to take ownership to standards, Greg’s paragraph isn’t doing it.
Joanne – And they can expect a big fat F if they do.
Jane–
The parent will be willing to dock the child a week of allowance for his transgression– what exactly is our community’s rationale for the child receiving an F, but Fleishman losing a week’s pay?
I miss you, Ben Miller. Finish college, come home and run for something.
The two are completely unrelated and it’s blog silliness to associate them. In my classroom, if you plagiarize you get an F for the paper. I then sit with the student and go over the whys and wherefores of the issue so that the student understands what plagiarism is and strategies for avoiding plagiarizing. i then model strategies to avoid plagiarism and offer/insist on extra help with the next assignment so that it doesn’t happen again. I reach out to the student in a positive way sometime in the next week or so, in order to establish a relationship based on trust.
Then we move on.
“The two are completely unrelated and it’s blog silliness to associate them.”
Wow. Nothing else to say if you believe that.
Jane- The student in your example isn’t getting paid $270K per year and isn’t an adult either. What a joke. This city is ridiculous.
Paul – Then nothing left to say. It’s probably best to leave it at that.
Newton Gal – The implied question over several posts was how I would deal with a student in my class who plagiarized. I answered the question as completely as possible. End of story.
@Greg: In your suggested email to students, Superintendent Fleishman would not be acknowledging that a student had confronted him with a plagiarism charge, and everybody would be saying that he was trying to hide information. Or, if he wrote that a student brought it to his attention, everybody would be saying that he didn’t do anything about it until he was confronted about it.
In his remarks, he used some of Patrick’s words that stuck in his head. Reasonable people can disagree about whether this is plagiarism. But no matter what, the people in Newton who like to find something to complain about were going to complain. That doesn’t mean that everybody who is disturbed by this is a perpetual complainer. But a lot of people on this blog who have bones to pick with the city or school administration are jumping on this. Not everybody thinks what Fleishman did was egregious.
@Gail: You are absolutely correct. There are some folks who don’t like our superintendent, or our school system, or our city administration and are using this incident to, shall we say, pile on. But there are many others in this city — and I suppose I fall into this camp — who have mixed feelings about this. For me, it’s not the lack of attribution, it’s the way this unfolded.
I don’t believe the fallout would be as severe if the first we heard about the incident was directly from David Fleishman and if the disclosure came shortly after graduation.
But we’ll never know.
Emily Costello pointed out on the Tab Blog, it was a student organized petition that forced the Mansfield Superintendent to resign after a very similar incident. The same might have happened here, if the School Committee hadn’t successfully pushed this into the summer season when lots of folks are out of town.
As troubled as I am by Fleishman’s indiscretion, I’m even more troubled by the School Committee’s coverup. Fleishman is getting off cheap, but at least it’s costing him five grand. Why should the School Committee get off scot free?
Mike – I looked at the petition – it seems to have been done by someone in Boston not Mansfield and they unlike us were made aware of it almost immediately. As you say – alot of people are away and this is not even on the radar. They rallied at SC meetings and also did the petition based on what is written.
And $5,000 for someone that has made 250,000 for the past 4 years is POCKET CHANGE.
Seems that Henry DeGroot got a worse punishment than the Superintendent.
And Jane – I hope that the first kid that plagiarizes and gets an F sues the the NPS and the SC. If the Superintendent can get away with it so cant they. That is the standard that we have now established in Newton.
Jane –
That seems like a very reasonable, moderate way to deal with – and deter future instances of – plagiarism. When will you be sitting down with the Superintendent? Especially considering his lukewarm non-apology, I would argue he could use a talk about the whys and wherefores of what he’s done and strategies to avoid it in the future.
Playing Saturday morning quarterback:
Rather than a monetary punishment, how about a personal letter of apology to the graduates that were addressed and, when school is in session this fall, a discussion at each High School(and Middle Schools?), led by the Superintendent, of all the issues involved.
It could be an interesting learning opportunity for all.
Does anyone on this blog really expect our elected officials to act any differently in this situation then they have in any of the other embarassing situations that they have found themselves in? It is all about damage control for them. It is not about what is right and wrong. There is a lot of greed and hubris in this regime and those are very bad qualities to have in elected officials. I am sure that they hate this blog because for once there is a well organized and open forum available for people to express their thoughts and to expose injustice. As this site continues to grow in popularity and readership I wouldn’t be surprised if the owner’s of it were not offered a large sum of money to shut if down. This blog must be the worst nightmare for those in power who like to keeps stories like this on the “down low” and limited to being covered in a weekly newspaper where the feedback is limited to a letter to the editor. This blog is a great equalizer.
It takes a lot to leave me speechless.
My initial reaction was to make a joke here in response to this Newton Gal’s comment, maybe even set up an EBay account and put Village 14 up for sale.
Instead I’ve decided to be insulted by the suggestion that the bloggers here can be paid off. Then again, I don’t share Newton Gal’s disdain for the men and women who sit on our elected boards or work in City Hall either. We’re all humans, we all make mistakes. But at the end of the day we all care about this city.
This is an unfortunate incident and the cover up/delayed response to it, makes it much worse. But I fully believe our School Committee members had the best interests of our school system in mind when they acted as they did. Good people can disagree with the decisions made but that doesn’t mean the decision makers are bad people.
Hills just keeps digging the hole deeper and deeper. Despite his comments to the contrary, it appears there was a deliberate attempt to subvert the open meeting law. Meetings were not posted in a timely fashion, and the subject matter was covered up. If people will tolerate this type of behavior from a public official, then we deserve what we get. Hills is caught in a lie and needs to resign.
I was at a public meeting at City Hall not too long ago and I was sitting behind a few of the elected officials and during the meeting I was watching as they played on their laptops and they kept circling around to the Village 14 website over and over and over again probably checking to see if their names appeared on it in the few minutes since they checked it prior.
Ok, I’m done being speechless. Newton Gal, thanks for publicizing that electing officials kept refreshing their screens to keep abreast of Village 14 posts. It’s nice to have someone else verify how much they care!
OMG Greg, you are so freaking naive. You’re suggesting the SC engaged in a deliberate deception of questionable legality because they thought it was in the “best interests of our school system”?
Nah. I’m suggesting that the SC decided that having Fleishman stay as superintendent was in the best interest of our school system and then fumbled in handling the situation from there.
I don’t have disdain for all elected officials or city employees. There are some very good and honest ones out there but in my opinion and experience there are a few bad apples that need to get weeded out and put out to pasture. I am sorry if I insulted you but I feel that is site is an extremely powerful and valuable tool. It is not unreasonable to speculate that someone would might want to purchase it in the future for a very large sum of money. No offense intended.
Gail- Yes they were very engrossed with the site. I was surprised at how much attention they were giving to it instead of the meeting and events at hand. That was actually how I found out about the site initially.
Greg, I am curious. Would you be willing to the post usage statistics for V14? Multiple people, including myself, have commented on the growth of this site and its popularity along with its value to the community. To us who actively visit the site, it seems like everyone in Newton is involved. Maybe the overall influence is not that big?
I would be interested to know how many different people (or user names) visit the site, how many actually comment, what is the typical usage pattern, etc. I personally would value knowing just how many SC members, BOA members and people on the mayor’s staff visit the site without commenting; however I do not expect you would reveal those numbers. I remember a blog where you introduced the key contributors; however I do not remember reading any usage statistics. Maybe, if the numbers do not match the current perception, it would be better for the potential sale value if you deem it not right at this time to disclose this information. I am good either way.
I do not think you would sell the V14 name just for it to be shut down; that is not in your nature. Maybe you should consider selling the website as long as you leave the opening for you and your fellow contributors to open a new site. You now have a track record of at least two blogging websites, where you were able to initiate and quickly grow the popularity / usage. The proceeds from the sale could be helpful when the college tuition bills start arriving. JMO.
@Patrick: I haven’t looked at the analytics in many months but I suppose I could some time and report back. Maybe one of the other V14 bloggers will get to it before me.
The reason I haven’t looked in a long time is that lots of traffic isn’t really important here. (at the TAB I cared a lot because traffic equaled ad revenue because that was how we paid the bills.) Providing a forum for our community is my only goal here.
Antidotally I know that this site is very well read by virtually all of our electeds as well as by many city/school employees, although I’m sure that, like the rest of us, we’ve learned which participants are worth reading and who’s worth skipping.
Just for the heck of it (and because of the law), the SC should post the minutes to the three meetings such that constituents can see that the mtgs started properly in open session, notations who was present and who was absent, that the meeting times were enforced, and the proper description of the reason for exec session was noted for historical record. Thanks
Your us of the word “fumbled” is a bit generous, don’t cha think? A fumble is a mistake. A coverup is on purpose. This was a deliberate deception of the public by the School Committee.
@Mike: the truth is we don’t know if it was a fumble or a deliberate cover up. Maybe some enterprising journalist, student or other person will one day find evidence that proves intent. Or maybe someone with direct knowledge of the proceedings will one day share details or documents. But until then we have no way of knowing.
Greg, Congratulations. You’ve gone at least 24 hours and no one has brought attention to your “Superintendent of Shools” typo. I tried to find out why that one is not on spellcheck, and apparently shooling means a shoveling action, like to cover up with soil. Well done indeed.
@Greg–
Hills misstated the purpose of one meeting = Possible Fumble.
Hills misstates the purpose of 2nd meeting = Possible Fumble.
Hills “forgets” to add Mayor’s name to letter = Possible Fumble.
Hills fails to go public with Fleishman news for 30 days = COVERUP!
Greg, since that is the reason you have not kept current with the statistics, then please do not look them up. I would not want you adding advertisements to this website. Even though that would be another good way to pay those nasty college tuition bills hovering around your mailbox IMO.
Antidotally?
Yeah. No.
Mike Striar — Why is this definition from Webster’s dictionary not accurate? Or is it?
“Definition of DAMAGE CONTROL: measures taken to offset or minimize damage to reputation, credibility, or public image caused by a controversial act, remark, or revelation “
Hoss– Both terms [“coverup” and “damage control”] are accurate, especially when used together in this sentence… The School Committee engaged in a coverup to perform damage control.
The questions here concern whether that’s proper behavior for elected officials to engage in. Should the SC protect a school department employee who had committed an egregious act? Should they lie and mislead the public in order to protect that employee?
And what to make of SC member Steve Siegel, who was on this blog pitching folks on the SC’s Zervas plan, all the while withholding his knowledge about what had transpired with the Superintendent. Would his opinion about Zervas have carried the same weight, if the public had that knowledge and good cause to question his decision making capability?
Mike Striar — Well, we do agree on damage control – that’s phrase is not a bad phrase and many reputable, very ethical businesses do damage control for all sorts of things on a regular basis. (Example, a terrible disaster occurs, a respected insurer denies claims, the board discusses how to describe that dead people didn’t buy the right insurance and not seem like jerks…)
I see why you’re using cover-up. If I take everything as a whole, the ultimate act of cover-up was never allowed to play out because the story came out before the last mtg. (Assumption: this was actually a last mtg scheduled). The chief sin in my view was the SC did not act fast enough. Why one month and various mtgs for one issue? Maybe we’ll see in the published minutes that this was because of disagreement. I don’t know — but, this one was important enough for people to take time and meet three or four nights in a row, if possible.
Lastly, I’ve witnessed too much true cover-up in Massachusetts, and find it hard to get outraged in mistakes around this type of damage control. So I ask this: in fairness to Newton’s SC, do they have the kind of procedural counsel our BoA has where if the chairman makes an error in procedure, there’s a couple non-elected people to whisper in their ear to correct it? If not, they should.
Hoss– I value your opinion and thank you for sounding the voice of reason. Here’s where I think we differ. I was questioning the School Committee’s judgment BEFORE this story broke. The way they handled the Fleishman incident simply proved that I was right to do so. Here’s what I wrote in response to a fellow blogger on another thread, shortly BEFORE the Fleishman story posted on V14…
“This School Committee has lost my confidence. The fact that they’ve been able to turn a previously vocal supporter into one of their most bitter critics should be alarming to you…”
I was questioning the SC’s judgement, principally for failing to adequately address [or even acknowledge] the issue of systemic student stress, despite three suicides of high school students this year. With their judgement now in question by others, perhaps more people will open their eyes to this SC’s failure to address student stress. I’m aware that some may think I’m obsessed with this issue, and the urgent need to bring some relief to our high school students. But I’m willing to risk any credibility I might have, because the well being of our children is a far more important issue than Fleishman’s indiscretion.
Maybe this blog could do an “open-blog” night where anyone can outline what they think is important at the moment (Newton-centric). The current format is restricted to subject matter and if we have someone needing to sound out without an outlet the format gets messy.
@Hoss, we did add a link to send comments to those of us posting items. This was in part to allow others an outlet for starting new discussions. If anyone wants to start a topic, please send it to the comments and one of us will post it.
Please post instructions on how a person can upload a profile photo on here? Greg suggested that we do this in one of his postings but I need instructions please.
Here’s the link with instructions for uploading a profile photo.
Groot, your “add a link” does not appear to be working. I get the message “404: page not found”.
People have made good comments about what should have been done. Looking forward, one thing that I would like to see David Fleishman do is to take a break from giving graduation speeches for at least a year. If he wants to do the middle and elementary school circuit next year, fine. My eldest child will be graduating from the NPS in 2015. I really don’t want his graduation ceremony to be marred by commencement speaker Fleishman’s awkward intro that he is “citing all his sources this time” to the response of uncomfortable, upset laughter or jeers or worse, some ingenuous downer contrition speech about a fall from grace and finding redemption . The class of 2015 and their families don’t deserve to be put in that uncomfortable situation, and nothing should divert attention from the achievement of the students. Matt Hills might want to imagine that we are all moving on/done deal/get over it, but based on the international and national news coverage, it’s far from done. This is bigger than the cost of Newton North or our disproportionately high number of pervy personnel. It’s July. We have time to line up keynote speakers. My vote is to get Deval to modify his B.U. speech for a high school audience and deliver the real deal to the class of 2015. Or for someone with real credibility and moral authority to deliver an inspiring speech about the genuine importance of ethical behavior as graduates go out in the world.
*disingenuous*