Why act on bad information?

Keeping in mind what has been said by various School Board members in the press, Board meetings and conversations with their constituents, the Citizens Calendar Committee e-mailed the following letter to all 12 Board members today. We refer in it to Dr. David Carleton's excellent analysis of the flaws of the phone survey which was conducted last December. Dr. Carleton is a professor of Political Science at MTSU.

Dear School Board member,

By now you should have received the packets we sent to each of you via FedEx last week. We hope that you have had time to look over those materials and have found this information useful.

After January's work session and regularly scheduled Board meeting, we were under the impression that Board members were well aware of the deep flaws of the phone survey that was conducted regarding the "balanced" calendar. However, last weekend a member of the Citizens Calendar Committee was in conversation with a School Board member who said that he/she would support converting "clusters" of schools in Williamson County to the balanced calendar. The Board member said that the phone survey shows that the parents in certain parts of the county support the calendar.

We emphasize again that no such conclusions about what parents want may reasonably be drawn from the phone survey. Attached is a copy of our second Newsletter which was distributed this week. In this Newsletter is a point-by-point analysis of why this survey was fatally flawed.

At January's Board meeting, Director Sharber admitted that the survey did not measure up to dissertation standards, but that it was still "useful." We would ask, first, why did the Central Office conduct a survey knowing in advance that it was so flawed? And second, just how is a fatally flawed survey "useful?" Remember - "garbage in, garbage out." Suppose the IRS audited your tax return, admitted that their audit was flawed and error-ridden, but said it was still "useful," so they would charge you with tax fraud anyway. Would you accept that?

The results of the December phone survey should be disregarded altogether. We urge you to do so.

We'll see!