How the state of Louisiana deals with its best and brightest

You could put this one in the “no good deed goes unpunished” file, or simply roll your eyes, sigh and mutter “Louisiana” on the exhale. If you read my last post, you know my brother in law, Folwell Dunbar, is a public-interest hero. While working at the Louisiana state agency that regulates charter schools, Folwell reported being offered a $20,000 bribe by someone apparently connected to Abramson Science and Technology Charter School in New Orleans, which he was in the process of auditing. Folwell turned down the bribe and did exactly what a good public servant should do — he wrote a report documenting the offer, and he reported the attempted bribe to the police. During the audit, he found the school had been grossly mismanaged and recommended that the state board of education take away its charter.

The state did nothing for a year, but then the New Orleans Times-Picayune dug up Folwell’s report via a public records request and wrote a story about it. Suddenly, the state decided it was time to suspend the school and investigate its performance.

But because this is Louisiana, Folwell did not receive the award or promotion he deserved for doing his job well and ethically and bringing a problem to light in the proper way, so it could be dealt with. Instead, a few days after the original Times-Picayne report (which, by the way, Folwell had no role in inspiring), he was fired with no real explanation. Here’s how the Times-Picayne put it:

Folwell Dunbar, a state education official who warned of problems at Abramson Science and Technology Charter School more than a year ago, confirmed Thursday that he was fired this week along with his boss at the department, Jacob Landry. The two were let go amid a new state investigation at Abramson prompted by fresh revelations about what Dunbar and other experts found during an audit of the school carried out in April and May of 2010. State records show Dunbar let his colleagues know last year that someone associated with the school tried to offer him money during the audit, an incident that brings to light the connections that Abramson apparently shares with Turkish-run businesses and charter schools in other states. He concluding [sic] that Abramson was at the very least “terribly mismanaged” and recommended that the state board of education take away its charter. … [Acting state Superintendent Ollie] Tyler provided few details behind her decision to fire two department officials this week. She did not mention their names and only cited a need for “new direction and leadership” at the department’s charter school office.

Although what I’ve described looks bad enough, there is more here than meets the eye. This Abramson outfit  seems to be part of an odd operation in which a number of apparently connected Turkish groups have gotten approval to run charter schools across America, some 120 of them. The New York Times has been investigating this remarkable indication of the international superiority of Turkish educational practices. I have heard indications that the FBI is investigating, as well, and if it isn’t, it should be.

Folwell Dunbar is a highly educated, deeply experienced, enormously dedicated educator and exactly the kind of person America needs in the trenches as it attempts to retool its educational systems to serve the country in an age of technological flux and international competition. In responding to this inappropriate and senseless firing, he has been his usual classy self, issuing a polite statement that says he is “terribly shocked and disappointed” by the way he’s been treated but proud of the post-Katrina education reform efforts he’d helped institute in Louisiana. He also called on the state to improve oversight of charter schools in a number of specific ways, all of which are desperately needed.

What’s happened here is an outrage, and I’d be saying so even if Folwell weren’t a brother-in-law and friend. But what’s an outraged person to do? Well, this post could be passed all around the social media web, so more people learn of the outrage, so more brains can think about good ways to respond. Also, as of this writing, the comments section under the Times-Picayune story on the firing is still open, and although I hate to attack messengers, the paper has not done its job well in reporting this grotesque firing, failing to push state officials (all the way up to Gov. Bobby Jindal) hard enough for an explanation and then failing to quote any kind of a good-government expert or group as to their thoughts about this obviously unethical retaliation. Of course, an outraged person and his friends might also fill up the email in-boxes and voicemail caches of Gov. Jindal — who keeps riding a reputation of being some kind of Mr. Clean in the swamp — with complaints about the hypocrisy of an administration that claims a reform agenda but cynically punishes the best and brightest of those who are trying to make reform a reality.

But I’m sure you can think of a response that’s even more effective than any of these. You’re smart. You read my blog. Thanks for your help on this.