Dear Colleagues, You might have missed it if you did not take the time to read the superintendents Thursday email carefully, but somewhere near the middle of it was the following regarding our recently hired equity consultant, Edwin Javius: Mr. Javius has confirmed with us that he does not possess a doctorate, and is updating information on his website to reflect this. After some digging CHSTA has learned that while Mr. Javius purported himself to the district and its teachers to have a doctorate in Urban School Leadership from USC, he in fact does not. Lest you think this was just a typo on the part of the district or Mr. Javius, it turns out this isnt the first time he has been caught in this particular lie. Two years ago at Pomona Unified School District of southern California he was caught in the same deception and Mr. Javius claimed in a six page apology letter that he would no longer claim to have a doctorate. However, he never stopped claiming to have a doctorate and has continued to misrepresent himself up until he was caught at the start of this school year. One can only assume that after his dealings with CUHSD are concluded he will go back to his false claims. It has also been uncovered that Mr. Javious is currently being sued in Kentucky for copyright infringement. One would think that the district would cut its losses and sever all ties with him and his company. However, they currently have no plans to cease their partnership and have actually increased the number of trainings he will give in our schools. The problem is that given that Mr.Javius lied about having a doctorate, as well as the allegations of plagiarism, all of his research that he will present to us is suspect and raises serious questions. Did he actually conduct any research? Is what he will be teaching us backed up by legitimate research and experience, or just made up? Is he presenting us with someone elses research that he may or may not fully understand? If he lied about having a doctorate, he may have lied about the research behind his methods. If we do not have the confidence that his theories and practices are research based, then the efforts may be pointless or counterproductive. Additionally, what message do we send to our students if we condone such unethical behavior? This seems a great risk to take with an initiative as important as equity as well as with respect to the ethical model that we need to present to our students. There is also the reputation of our district to keep in mind and how it may be called in to question from our community. If we cooperate with someone who we know is a fraud, then we will be seen as complicit. Since Mr. Javius will use his association with us as a selling point to peddle his wares to other districts, our credibility will be used to sell possibly fraudulent material. People will look at CUHSD and wonder why we were too foolish not to dump someone who we knew had misrepresented himself and his product. Considering that the plan is to keep him and his company under contract for three years and to spend $180,000 in doing so this seems far too great a risk to take given his egregious, and very intentionally repeated, ethical lapses and the resulting lack of credibility. If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me at cta.sgomez@gmail or the CUHSD Board of Trustees at the contacts listed below. Thank you, Santiago Gomez CHSTA President Matthew Dean at [email protected] or by phone at (408) 374-3164 Wendy Plew at [email protected] or by phone at (408) 628-0561 Kalen Gallagher at [email protected] or on his cell phone at (408) 761-2361 Linda Goytia at [email protected] or by phone at (408) 230-7414. Pam Parker at (408) 348-0695 or [email protected]
Posted on: Wed, 17 Sep 2014 22:44:45 +0000
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