Chatham County school system does not have the money to pay for a faulty survey

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In: 27312, Education, Pittsboro
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Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:09:37 -0500 (EST)
From: Daniel & Rhonda Sundberg
Subject: Budget survey

Everyone, I received this response from K12 Insight, (the company that made the survey on the school budget), regarding what I considered to be the flawed nature of the survey. The survey is now proven to be flawed. K12 Insight wrote that the items should rotate items throughout the survey. They do not! The BOE and administration

did not catch the flaw. We need you to be involved. This is a very small example of the money being wasted by the administration not making sure they have gotten what they paid for. Why should they care? it’s not their money, it’s yours! Take a M onday a month or a M onday a year to show up. It is very important.
Mia and I and a few other people have been called in an e-mail “the usual bunch”. They disregard us. We need fresh faces. Only 62 % of the people in the Chatham County School system actually teach, (the teachers and TAs).  The dispa rity of funds spent is even bigger. Please come to the meetings. Please!!!

This is the response I sent regarding the letter from K12 Insight:
Dear Mr. Shultze, I have just received the letter from Dr. Russell Clement, Senior Director of Research at K12 Insight. I wish to let you know that at least one statement is not true.
It is:

“Randomization. The items to be ranked are randomized to prevent a systematic bias towards any one item. The Central Office item can appear in the first position, the last position or any position on the list. The order is different for every survey participant.”

I personally have opened the survey at least a hundred times to see if the items would rotate throughout the survey. They do not. They will rotate on the same page so that Central office will always need to be chosen from among 8 categories but it will not go to the page containing the 13 items. the same is true of the page containing 13

items. If it was the design intent to have every item rotate randomly throughout the survey so that :” Central Office item can appear in the first position, the last position or any position on the list “, it is not functioning. Therefore as I stated in my letter any item on the page containing 8 items, (including central office” has a 48.5% higher chance

of being ranked in the top 6 items from the 2 pages.

This is unacceptable. It is not a fair or accurate survey and I will be speaking on Monday night to insist that the survey be withdrawn and a complete refund given.

I still have a problem with the enhanced description of central office but it is now dwarfed by the flaw in the survey regarding “randomization”.

Please make sure this letter gets to Mr. Clement so your company can avoid this flaw with other school systems. I look forward to your reply and rescinding of this survey. Our school system does not have funds available to pay for a faulty survey.

Sincerely, Daniel W. Sundberg