Days after board members laughed at the exchange, the Washington County Board of Education called the comments “shocking,” saying “no explanation can justify that.”
There isn’t a single right answer to that and I’m not going to suggest there is.
How any organisation operates, be that public or private, is down to the culture of the organisation, and culture comes from people, process, motivation, legislation, and a whole bunch of factors.
If an organisation has a clear mission, is held organisationally accountable in appropriate ways to that mission and makes people feel professionally enriched and valuable, it will attract competent people. And importantly, an organisation full of competent and principled individuals will attract other competent individuals.
On the flip side, if an organisation is subject to decades of mismanagement, has very poor oversight, doesn’t reward people for being good at their jobs and in fact rewards the wrong behaviours then exactly the opposite will happen. People who are competent at what they do will either leave or be crushed down, while those who know how to play the bootlicking game will be raised up, and this type of organisation again becomes self-perpetuating.
None of this happens overnight, in either direction. Failure can take years or decades, and so can the reverse.
The issue is that it’s self-referential. The org itself gets to define what is good management or bad. Outsides parties, have no say.
And that’s how local school boars work. They are local politics and they have very little external oversight, if any at all. Sort of criminal acts, like a board member embezzling school funds, that violate state law, there isn’t really much criteria over which they can be held accountable, other than winning votes from their local voters.
I live in Boston. I can harp all I want about a local school board in TN, but the only power I have is over my own local school board here, where I can vote. And man the candidates we have… are usually a mix of nutbags and slightly less nutbags. School board elections tend to attract weirdos more than sensible people, IME.
I hear schools are pretty good at giving people these funny things called “tests” to assess an individual’s knowledge on a certain subject. Not only are schools good at testing, I hear there is a WHOLE INDUSTRY built on creating and running them.
You know, they could give those to other people too I’ll bet! In fact, I’ll bet you can use them to qualify doctors, lawyers, barbers, auto mechanics and all sorts of people!
Oh wait, these are politicians. We shouldn’t do that to them. I don’t know why, but it just feels wrong. Never mind.
Absolutely! It’s just a complete coincidence that the people who the school system is failing are barred from fixing it because in order to pass the test you have to have done well in school. It makes perfect sense.
It’s not like the US has a history of refusing to educate people, and then refusing to let them participate in civic matters by gating that access behind tests. The US certainly has never, say, made passing a test a requirement to vote to disenfranchise people.
And we all know that, of course, that any test would be super effective at preventing the abuse the above article is about. You just put the question “are you sexually attracted to children,” on the test. That way you’d keep out creeps. And no one would ever lie on a test. That’d be ridiculous.
I don’t know why people are disagreeing. It’s a perfect system!
there is no test to run for, or be on a school board.
what would this test be, exactly? are you saying school board members should have to pass a civil service type of test before they can run, or after they are elected?
In typical fediverse fashion, the users responding to you have no answer so they get stuck on semantics and counter arguing your question rather than the intent.
I genuinely would like a well thought out response to this too. Would merit be someone with many years of teaching experience? Maybe school administration?
Do those things make that person capable of performing board responsibilities? Do those things preclude them from making creepy remarks (I highly suspect they don’t)
For the record, the dude here has been on the board for 12 years, which should be more than enough time to learn the necessary skill set to do the job. Doesn’t make him less creepy though.
it can’t be judged without well-defined critical, no.
That’s a partial answer at best , a nice deflection though.
So your argument is that there is no possible criteria by which competence/ability can be judged for a school board position so popularity is the best option ?
seriously, what is the qualification or criteria for being a good school board member? tell me. I’d like to know because as far as I am aware, there absolutely is none.
Once you answer the original question or the newly revised version above i can give you some idea on this.
anyone can run for school board.
Who can run for a school board and how a school board member is evaluated for the position are unrelated.
My local school board anyone can run. The only requirement is you are a resident of the district you represent, and you are over 18, and you are a registered voter. That’s literally it. There are no other requirements, qualifications, or criteria for running for school board.
That seems definitive, good to have a rock solid source.
My local school board anyone can run. The only requirement is you are a resident of the district you represent, and you are over 18, and you are a registered voter. That’s literally it. There are no other requirements, qualifications, or criteria for running for school board.
Useful information , eligibility to run is still not the full criteria for how someone is evaluated for a position though.
Technically, i suppose it could be considered an initial screening, so you’re not entirely incorrect, just incorrect that it’s the only evaluation mechanism.
If it were , there’d be no need for votes, first person to apply and be eligible would automatically get the job.
I have no idea what you are saying now. You’re saying, you should dictatorially be given the power to appoint school board members, and you’d do so solely on a first come, first given, basis?
OK, so you are saying you want to be a dictator of school board members, because you are the one who should have sole authority in this area. And you would not judge people based on qualifications or merit?
Seriously, do you even vote in your local school board elections? I do. If so, what criteria do you use? I vote according to the educational platform they propose.
None of that has anything to do with merit of qualifications that are hypothetically being raised as criteria for evaluating a school board member’s performance or competency.
It’s not demanding answers, it’s pointing out the typical lemmy/reddit hypocracy of sitting on a illusory high horse, getting outraged, and refusing to actually deal with the problem on your local level where you do have the ability to make a difference.
or if you want to be really extreme, you could move to this district in TN and run for school board yourself.
I dont think you can follow up with “seriously” after that.
You have already diminished the seriousness and effectiveness of this conversation to practically none, so this then becomes a conversation for fun… Which I dont find you to be.
That’s not even required (though it would most likely be more accurate ) , there are some easy , low-hanging fruit answers to this question that don’t need expertise.
I’m just interested in seeing if they really think popularity is the best option here.
Dude, I am gonna ask that you look at your actions here cause… Let’s be honest the frog is not a reasonable person.
Do you expect to find a nuanced new way to handle elections of the school board?
Or perhaps, do you honestly expect this troll to say something that changes the whole context of this conversation or make you feel that they have changed in some dramatic way?
I say if you look at it, you are legitimizing a pointless conversation where they weaponize apathy and make it look valuable by comparison to complex issues on a topic you aren’t knowledgeable enough in to argue against, “no u!”
They never expected an authority figure on it and wouldnt accept one either. They just want your rage and your attention. They aren’t fun enough to play with for you to give either.
meh, i was hoping it might be a bit more fun later on but it’s been lacklustre so far.
You can’t reason someone out of a position they’ve not reasoned themselves in to but it’s sometimes interesting to see if they genuinely believe the positions they tout and hear how they got there.
Do you expect to find a nuanced new way to handle elections of the school board?
There are easily understood ways of measuring fitness for a position, an easy answer to the actual question of how evaluations could be possible is to use the criteria for what would be considered a successful run as a school board member, historically and ideally.
Use those criteria to evaluate who has a track record of achieving these things, or the potential/skills to go on to achieve these things during the allotted time.
Does this happen? rarely. Could it potentially work, absolutely.
Personal likeability/popularity is probably a part of those criteria (as with any position involving any politics) but it’s not the only one.
Or perhaps, do you honestly expect this troll to say something that changes the whole context of this conversation or make you feel that they have changed in some dramatic way?
Not at all, there’s nothing to indicate any kind of space for an adjustment in their view, if they even have an actual perspective beyond trolling.
I say if you look at it, you are legitimizing a pointless conversation where they weaponize apathy and make it look valuable by comparison to complex issues on a topic you aren’t knowledgeable enough in to argue against, “no u!”
I’m not sure random internet replies legitimise clear bad-faith troll takes.
As i said, my point here wasn’t really to change minds it was more interest in the mindset and reasoning skills of someone who’d post something like that, think of it as internet anthropology.
They never expected an authority figure on it and wouldnt accept one either. They just want your rage and your attention. They aren’t fun enough to play with for you to give either.
I don’t really have any rage, it’s like being angry at a chihuahua for barking.
I’m not expecting good-faith or well reasoned arguments, so I’m not disappointed or angry when they don’t appear.
So your general point is a concern. Who can you trust to make the judgement. But that doesn’t mean you should just toss up your hands either. As was pointed out, tests of various sorts could be done and the results presented to the voters so that they have more to go on than the number of lawn signd they have seen for a person. The write ups in the guides are nearly pointless. They can say anything they want in there.
For a person running for reelection, their voting record would be nice to give voters easy access to.
There are lots of ways to present the voters with objective information so that they can choose based on thier preferences. But none of that happens today.
the judgement is the judgement voters of that district.
do you vote in your own local school board elections? I do, and yeah you vote based on the person’s policy stated positions. however, just because I do that, doesn’t mean lots of candidates I don’t vote for, don’t get elected and push policies I don’t agree with… because they get more votes than the candidates I vote for did.
Also, why do you assume that the voters in this school district, don’t want this guy? He may very well be who they think is best for the job. If you don’t live in this district… you don’t get to vote for the school board there.
how else are you suppose to select school board members? should they be appointed by the town/county or something?
In a sane world, by ability and competence
As defined by our able and competent political leaders? Ha ha ha.
How do you assess that exactly? What are the qualifications or objective measurements of competence as a school board member?
And furthermore, according to whom? your personal assessment in particular?
Better that people vote for metrics than candidates I would suggest, and measure against those. If we gotta vote for questions too, so be it.
There isn’t a single right answer to that and I’m not going to suggest there is.
How any organisation operates, be that public or private, is down to the culture of the organisation, and culture comes from people, process, motivation, legislation, and a whole bunch of factors.
If an organisation has a clear mission, is held organisationally accountable in appropriate ways to that mission and makes people feel professionally enriched and valuable, it will attract competent people. And importantly, an organisation full of competent and principled individuals will attract other competent individuals.
On the flip side, if an organisation is subject to decades of mismanagement, has very poor oversight, doesn’t reward people for being good at their jobs and in fact rewards the wrong behaviours then exactly the opposite will happen. People who are competent at what they do will either leave or be crushed down, while those who know how to play the bootlicking game will be raised up, and this type of organisation again becomes self-perpetuating.
None of this happens overnight, in either direction. Failure can take years or decades, and so can the reverse.
The issue is that it’s self-referential. The org itself gets to define what is good management or bad. Outsides parties, have no say.
And that’s how local school boars work. They are local politics and they have very little external oversight, if any at all. Sort of criminal acts, like a board member embezzling school funds, that violate state law, there isn’t really much criteria over which they can be held accountable, other than winning votes from their local voters.
I live in Boston. I can harp all I want about a local school board in TN, but the only power I have is over my own local school board here, where I can vote. And man the candidates we have… are usually a mix of nutbags and slightly less nutbags. School board elections tend to attract weirdos more than sensible people, IME.
By merit??
who judges that merit? how is it defined?
I hear schools are pretty good at giving people these funny things called “tests” to assess an individual’s knowledge on a certain subject. Not only are schools good at testing, I hear there is a WHOLE INDUSTRY built on creating and running them.
You know, they could give those to other people too I’ll bet! In fact, I’ll bet you can use them to qualify doctors, lawyers, barbers, auto mechanics and all sorts of people!
Oh wait, these are politicians. We shouldn’t do that to them. I don’t know why, but it just feels wrong. Never mind.
Absolutely! It’s just a complete coincidence that the people who the school system is failing are barred from fixing it because in order to pass the test you have to have done well in school. It makes perfect sense.
It’s not like the US has a history of refusing to educate people, and then refusing to let them participate in civic matters by gating that access behind tests. The US certainly has never, say, made passing a test a requirement to vote to disenfranchise people.
And we all know that, of course, that any test would be super effective at preventing the abuse the above article is about. You just put the question “are you sexually attracted to children,” on the test. That way you’d keep out creeps. And no one would ever lie on a test. That’d be ridiculous.
I don’t know why people are disagreeing. It’s a perfect system!
deleted by creator
there is no test to run for, or be on a school board.
what would this test be, exactly? are you saying school board members should have to pass a civil service type of test before they can run, or after they are elected?
Shhhh, don’t overload them with reason, it’s rare to see this kind of naivete in it’s natural form.
Oh come on, but it’s fun!
Yes, but you have to go slowly or it’ll overwhelm them.
In typical fediverse fashion, the users responding to you have no answer so they get stuck on semantics and counter arguing your question rather than the intent.
I genuinely would like a well thought out response to this too. Would merit be someone with many years of teaching experience? Maybe school administration?
Do those things make that person capable of performing board responsibilities? Do those things preclude them from making creepy remarks (I highly suspect they don’t)
For the record, the dude here has been on the board for 12 years, which should be more than enough time to learn the necessary skill set to do the job. Doesn’t make him less creepy though.
Do you know what a bad faith argument is?
Yes, and it’s not this. I’m not making an argument either. I’m asking you a clear and obvious question.
Pretending you don’t know what merit is is a bad faith argument
Just to be clear, you’re arguing that merit/competence can’t be accurately judged and therefore should be ignored in favour of popularity ?
it can’t be judged without well-defined criteria, no.
seriously, what is the qualification or criteria for being a good school board member? tell me. I’d like to know.
because as far as I am aware, there absolutely is none. anyone can run for school board.
That’s a partial answer at best , a nice deflection though.
So your argument is that there is no possible criteria by which competence/ability can be judged for a school board position so popularity is the best option ?
Once you answer the original question or the newly revised version above i can give you some idea on this.
Who can run for a school board and how a school board member is evaluated for the position are unrelated.
It’s not an argument. It’s a fact.
My local school board anyone can run. The only requirement is you are a resident of the district you represent, and you are over 18, and you are a registered voter. That’s literally it. There are no other requirements, qualifications, or criteria for running for school board.
That seems definitive, good to have a rock solid source.
Useful information , eligibility to run is still not the full criteria for how someone is evaluated for a position though.
Technically, i suppose it could be considered an initial screening, so you’re not entirely incorrect, just incorrect that it’s the only evaluation mechanism.
If it were , there’d be no need for votes, first person to apply and be eligible would automatically get the job.
I have no idea what you are saying now. You’re saying, you should dictatorially be given the power to appoint school board members, and you’d do so solely on a first come, first given, basis?
OK, so you are saying you want to be a dictator of school board members, because you are the one who should have sole authority in this area. And you would not judge people based on qualifications or merit?
OK.
You should ask people in a professional setting that work with schools this instead of demanding the answers from the black box of the internet.
No u!
Seriously, do you even vote in your local school board elections? I do. If so, what criteria do you use? I vote according to the educational platform they propose.
None of that has anything to do with merit of qualifications that are hypothetically being raised as criteria for evaluating a school board member’s performance or competency.
It’s not demanding answers, it’s pointing out the typical lemmy/reddit hypocracy of sitting on a illusory high horse, getting outraged, and refusing to actually deal with the problem on your local level where you do have the ability to make a difference.
or if you want to be really extreme, you could move to this district in TN and run for school board yourself.
I dont think you can follow up with “seriously” after that.
You have already diminished the seriousness and effectiveness of this conversation to practically none, so this then becomes a conversation for fun… Which I dont find you to be.
You do nothing but try to find things to get offended about.
That’s not even required (though it would most likely be more accurate ) , there are some easy , low-hanging fruit answers to this question that don’t need expertise.
I’m just interested in seeing if they really think popularity is the best option here.
Dude, I am gonna ask that you look at your actions here cause… Let’s be honest the frog is not a reasonable person.
Do you expect to find a nuanced new way to handle elections of the school board?
Or perhaps, do you honestly expect this troll to say something that changes the whole context of this conversation or make you feel that they have changed in some dramatic way?
I say if you look at it, you are legitimizing a pointless conversation where they weaponize apathy and make it look valuable by comparison to complex issues on a topic you aren’t knowledgeable enough in to argue against, “no u!”
They never expected an authority figure on it and wouldnt accept one either. They just want your rage and your attention. They aren’t fun enough to play with for you to give either.
meh, i was hoping it might be a bit more fun later on but it’s been lacklustre so far.
You can’t reason someone out of a position they’ve not reasoned themselves in to but it’s sometimes interesting to see if they genuinely believe the positions they tout and hear how they got there.
There are easily understood ways of measuring fitness for a position, an easy answer to the actual question of how evaluations could be possible is to use the criteria for what would be considered a successful run as a school board member, historically and ideally.
Use those criteria to evaluate who has a track record of achieving these things, or the potential/skills to go on to achieve these things during the allotted time.
Does this happen? rarely. Could it potentially work, absolutely.
Personal likeability/popularity is probably a part of those criteria (as with any position involving any politics) but it’s not the only one.
Not at all, there’s nothing to indicate any kind of space for an adjustment in their view, if they even have an actual perspective beyond trolling.
I’m not sure random internet replies legitimise clear bad-faith troll takes.
As i said, my point here wasn’t really to change minds it was more interest in the mindset and reasoning skills of someone who’d post something like that, think of it as internet anthropology.
I don’t really have any rage, it’s like being angry at a chihuahua for barking.
I’m not expecting good-faith or well reasoned arguments, so I’m not disappointed or angry when they don’t appear.
any elected position is a popularity contest.
popularity as the only criteria or as one of many criteria ?
So your general point is a concern. Who can you trust to make the judgement. But that doesn’t mean you should just toss up your hands either. As was pointed out, tests of various sorts could be done and the results presented to the voters so that they have more to go on than the number of lawn signd they have seen for a person. The write ups in the guides are nearly pointless. They can say anything they want in there. For a person running for reelection, their voting record would be nice to give voters easy access to. There are lots of ways to present the voters with objective information so that they can choose based on thier preferences. But none of that happens today.
it’s a democratically elected position.
the judgement is the judgement voters of that district.
do you vote in your own local school board elections? I do, and yeah you vote based on the person’s policy stated positions. however, just because I do that, doesn’t mean lots of candidates I don’t vote for, don’t get elected and push policies I don’t agree with… because they get more votes than the candidates I vote for did.
Also, why do you assume that the voters in this school district, don’t want this guy? He may very well be who they think is best for the job. If you don’t live in this district… you don’t get to vote for the school board there.