Chalkboard's "Open Book$ Project" Slouches Towards Irrelevance

I actually had some hope that the Chalkboard Project would offer up something useful. I was particularly hoping that their "Open Book$ Project" would be good -- it promised to clarify just where all the money goes in K-12 education, educating us through one of my favorite things in public policy, "transparent budgeting."

The term "transparency" has vanished, as has my hope that the Open Book$ Project would be useful -- or that it would be anything other than another exercise in defending the status quo by hiding the relevant facts.

How can you tell that the Open Book$ Project is another union-driven scam? Two items: personnel and approach.

Personnel - the Open Book$ Project is being run by my friend and sometime sparring partner Steve Novick, a mere tool of the unions and big government. Steve excels at cherry-picking his facts to support his preconceived results.

Approach - the Open Book$ Project isn't using Activity Based Costing. For example, look at the accounting for buildings. Rather than allocate buildings to their functions -- i.e. the cost of an administration building should be grouped with other administration expenses -- Steve and friends have a "Buildings" category separate from both administration and actual instruction.

What does that mean? It means that when Portland Public Schools have 16 more schools open than the number of students would support, and a Taj Mahal administrative palace, all sucking scarce dollars away from the schools' instructional mission, you can't tell it from Steve's chosen method of organizing and presenting the data.

Instead, the great goal of the Open Book$ Project is now to be "snazzy." Not scrupulously accurate, not fastidiously clear, not painfully precise, and clearly not transparent.

So Steve Novick is using the Chalkboard Project to give what voters and taxpayers and parents do not need -- more smoke and mirrors.