Comments on: HELP! HELP! They’ve Fallen into the GAAP and they Can’t Get Up

By: anniemil

anniemil — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:04:00 +0000

No kidding! There are so many ways to skew the data collection process. Such craziness.

By: jonpelto

jonpelto — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:54:00 +0000

Now that is a funny line! In need to find a way to quote that – data doesn’t lie. The other great thing, if course, is that data doesn’t tell the truth either,,,,

Sent from my BlackBerry please excuss typos

By: anniemil

anniemil — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:48:00 +0000

From my personal experience, all “instruction” in CT public schools has morphed into data-driven. There’s no other way. To quote a former director, “Data doesn’t lie.”

By: jonpelto

jonpelto — Fri, 11 May 2012 02:32:00 +0000

Teaching?

Don’t tell me you’re another one of those teach a person to fish types – if we teaxh everyone to fish – who will make our plastic widgets .
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By: guest

guest — Fri, 11 May 2012 00:15:00 +0000

Well, it is not totally accurate, but try the Windham public schools website, here is a link to the most recent BoE meeting agenda, complete with powerpoint (I notice that these are very similar to his meetings in Hartford as Superintendent–he is a very standardized guy, leading standardized meetings with standardized power points promoting standardized teaching with standardized test prep):
http://www.windham.k12.ct.us/twiki/pub/Main/BOEAgendasAndMinutes/BoEPacket_May92012Rev.pdf
If you can slog throught this–better than sitting through the live presentation, which can last over 2 hours–it says something about assessments as a strategy.
Note also the idea of having a permanent fundraising group, which, Adamowski said, was not going to contribute money for resurfacing the High School track or anything “neutral” like that, but would raise money in order to hold the BoE’s “feet to the fire” to make sure they comply with “school reform”. I guess we can say that money talks in Windham.
Where are the hedge fund philanthropists?
As for TFA and gap closing, I’m working on getting my hands on that! Any folks out there who want to pose as a “fresh out of college” elite school grad wishing to make a difference in the lives of the poor children they never noticed before?

By: Hookandhackle

Hookandhackle — Fri, 11 May 2012 00:10:00 +0000

And that’s exactly the issue. By using the GAAP method creative accounting disappears and the reality of a much larger deficit will set in. They don’t have to pay 1 billion for implementation. They have to pay off all the bills that creative accounting has created over the years.

By: savage

savage — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:26:00 +0000

I was trying to understand this as well. Reading the article linked in an earlier post by Jon helped me a lot. Take a look at this article, if you haven’t already:

http://www.ctmirror.org/story/8536/conversion-gaap-means-kicking-bad-fiscal-habits .

By: Magister

Magister — Thu, 10 May 2012 21:11:00 +0000

Any links? I am curious about the situation there.

By: Guest

Guest — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:20:00 +0000

Unless they began to implement gaap when auditing this year and found a bigger financial hole than using older practices.

By: jonpelto

jonpelto — Thu, 10 May 2012 20:08:00 +0000

Its an excellent question. I need to find a link that explains why its so much. Think of it this way. Basic accounting requires that all your income and expenditures show up on the same sheet – and CT has spent or has bills of over a billion dollars but they don’t show up on our balance sheet – when you bring everything onto the same “year” you have this massive hole – so over the next 17 years we “pay-down” that massive hole. When it is paid off we can then show everything together…. Even re-reading what I wrote it doesn’t make sense. I’ll find a better description or maybe someone else can articulate the problem in a more sensible way. Sent from my BlackBerry please excuss typos