A HAZARD TO EDUCATION REFORM

Dr. Willliam R. Hazard, an alleged educational expert, who, for substantial financial rewards, testified on the behalf of school districts all over the country, made a statement at the Horwitz dismissal hearing that motivated us to create this web site.

Horwitz was charged with unprofessionalism and insubordination. She was fired in spite of her excellent rapport with children and parents. He was being questioned about the possibility that principals or superintendents could be the initiators and perpetuators of harmful relationships with teachers rather than the teacher being the cause, i.e. teacher abuse, which could lead to what appeared to be unprofessional behavior as well as unprofessionalism.

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His response was, "Absolutely. Occasionally they will have a flaw in their interaction. I just don't see it happen where a principal or a superintendent says by God, I am going to go out and get that person. Those are war stories you can never track down."

When questioned whether he could say it never happens, he responded, "Anything can happen. Cows can fly. Or is it horses?"

NAPTA believes that his theory that these stories can never be tracked down is based on what administrators do to assure that they can't be tracked down including pay people like Hazard to speak the party line. Administrators create enough terror, that silence is guaranteed.

We have pointed out how state boards, even state governments, unions and universities conspire to maintain our schools status quo, all being part of the system. Educational experts, who make a living describing the state of affairs in education, are another element that can help to perpetuate teacher abuse. It is a profitable thing to do.

On November 29, 2001, the WIlmette Life reported a Wm R Hazard, who worked as a consultant, received $8422.63 from Avoca School District. This was their fiscal expenditures for the year ending June 2001, and he had written a report for the Horwitz hearing and submitted it in July of 2000. Even if he earned some of that money on other consulting endeavers, it sure seems like there's a conflict of interest when a person earns money to give answers that please the party that hired them. Saying what they want to hear, keeps him in business.

Avoca School District #37 v. Horwitz, 2139-2140
At Horwitz's tenure dismissal hearing. William R. Hazard, was being questioned:

Dr. Hazard, based upon your experience, your training, your teaching, your professional studies and endeavors, do you have an opinion as to the effect of publishing a claim in the community by a teacher that a superintendent psychologically raped her by the way he has treated her?

A    Yes, I have an opinion.

Q   What is that opinion?

A   I think it's outrageous. It shouldn't be tolerated. It's one thing you might think that, but when you start publishing that, as far as I am concerned, that's a cowardly way to deal with the problem. Because I don't -- please don't do that because it smears with a single tarring brush innocent people, people that are not fully guilty, the whole range. I can sum it up by saying that's just outrageous behavior.

Hazard is offended by what appears to be smearing administrators, but has no concern for a teacher being smeared? You will see his pattern of knowing that administrators are the good guys while assuming teachers are trouble makers, prone to unethical behavior. Then note his use of the word "fully." So if they are only partial abusers, it isn't right to make public statements about them?

Q   I take it you have not conducted any studies of the Avoca school system to measure what the results were, intended or not, of Mrs. Horwitz' behavior?

A   No, I did not. I was not asked to make a study of the impact on the community. I have enough experience I believe to see organizational behavior translated into harm and in my judgment this pattern that we see here from the record that I read is clearly inexplicable.

You could argue perhaps that I have a right to believe this, but when you start blowing it publicly and when you continually try to obstruct legitimate administrative decisions on whatever theory, you are wrong. Is it any wonder that teachers do not speak out about abuse. Districts will pay someone to say they are wrong without any investigation to determine if they were right. He says Horwitz may have a right to believe she was psychologically rape, but does not have a right to say it publicly and cause trouble. There is no regard for whether it is true or not. Furthermore, Horwitz filed a federal lawsuit and was protected by federal rights to do so. Every teachers' lounge has a sign from the federal government guaranteeing the right to file a discrimination law suit, yet an expert says she is wrong to make it a public issue, thus the law is wrong.

2125 Like it or not, schools are set up on a bureaucratic model. We do that in Illinois in order to get accountability from the school people back to the citizens through the board.

Someone should have told him that there is no accountability in our schools, so that must not be a good plan. Also, someone should have told future teachers they are joining a system similar to the military and that decision making it top down. Why is it that university educators always spoke of teaching as a decision making profession, rather than a bureaucracy of order takers? There was one game when trying to squelch a teacher, and another game when trying to attract teachers into the profession. Bait and switch is illegal in business, but there are no limits to what educators can do.

In that kind of a structure, there can only be one superintendent, there can only be one principal.

The board has the responsibility to organize and operate the schools as efficiently, as effectively as possible. To do that they employ administrators, superintendent, principals, other administrators, and they employ teachers.

Generally, the boundaries of the responsibilities of each of those separate groups of people are fairly clear. As a teacher, I may think the superintendent doesn't know his butt from third base, but I am still the teacher and I am responsible to him through the principal.

There may be some areas, and I don't know how important this is for our discussion, where the teachers and the administrators will collaborate to make some decisions. There are some where the superintendent and the community will collaborate and the board.

Generally there is some pretty firm boundaries about who should do what when. And when push comes to shove, in my judgment the superintendent and the principal have to call the administrative shots, and as a teacher I may not like it. I may think it's unwise, I can voice my belief that this is not wise, but when I have said my piece, then I have two choices. I can either do what I am told to do or I should resign.

Q   Why is that?

A   Because to stick around and continually fight with the administration serves no useful purpose. It may serve my ego needs, but it will [create problems]

2188
Q   You said that confrontation of the kind of thing we are talking about would have a negative impact on the school board, I believe you said, and their effort to make Avoca education what they want it to be.

A   Sure.

Q   So that's an effect on the school board itself?

A   Well, it's an effect on their decision making capacity. If they have to make decisions in a setting wherein they are pretty sure they are going to catch flack from one or more teachers, they are probably going to be reluctant to make some decisions they ought to make.

Q   Why?

A   I don't know, I guess it's human nature. I am going to start looking over my shoulder after a while if I have continual hassle with a few teachers. Now, if I am going to try to solve the problem, I sure as heck will not persist in living with it for very long. I will try to cut my losses and get that teacher, if I can, out of the picture because it's not helping the organization one bit. Obviously I have to try to respect that teacher's rights, but the teacher has no right to be a cancer cell in the school.

Q   Now you said that unprofessional and insubordinate conduct continuing over a significant period of time is bad. Can you tell us more definitely what a significant period of time would be?

A   As I remember, this was over -- well over a year and a half time.

Q   You think that's significant?

A   I surely do,

Hazard points out that this disagreement with the district had gone on for one and one half years. In July of 1997, Horwitz filed and EEOC age discrimination charge against the district. In 1998, she filed an EEOC retaliation charge agains the district for harassing her for filing the age charge. In October of 1998, she filed a federal lawsuit with charges of age discrimination, retaliation, civil rights violations, defamation, and FMLA.

They had harassed her for speaking out publicly in fall of 1997 about issues at the school that were harming children. She was terminated in April of 1999. This one and one half year period was directly related to the lawsuit. She had worked for the district for four years previously, and he ignored the fact that the tensions were occurring during this period in which the legal issues occurred.

It seems incredible that he could testify that she had no right to have problems that affected the district, when a lawsuit by nature affects a district. (Later he admits that administrators would only naturally become tired of dealing with an annoying teacher and go after them. So basically he is saying, teachers cannot file lawsuits; teachers do not have rights like other citizens.) Furthermore, he ignores the fact that the district poured oil on the fire, to create reasons to fire Horwitz, making the legal issues a bigger problem than they needed to be. Once again he opines that schools are above the law. Why don't they take those signs down in the lounges if they know they don't need to obey them?

Over time, if the board members make dumb decisions, the community will replace them with other board members. If the superintendent makes a whole series of dumb decisions, he or she will be replaced, and the same is true for principals or other administrative folks been opportunities provided alerting the teacher to stop doing this and she continues.

Here Hazard is saying that teachers do not have the right to create problems with lawsuits since the "dumb" things these schools do, will be taken care of during elections. First of all, that isn't true since the administrators use propaganda to control the elections. Secondly, even if this did happen, the law is the law. Teachers have rights to file lawsuits and they cannot be denied these rights because it causes problems in the community.

A   Sure. If I wanted to solicit some favorable comment, I would suggest to parents directly or indirectly that it would be really helpful if you would send a note to the principal saying what a great job I have done with your child. And that can be manipulated somewhat. I am assuming that very few administrators scan the rolls to see who they can talk into writing negative notes about the teacher. I am not aware that that goes on. Maybe it does, but I am not aware of it.

Again he is assuming that the teacher would manipulate positive letters, but that the administrators would not manipulate negative letters. Even if the Blases had done research proving the existence of teacher abuse, and even if so many teachers hadn't come forth to confirm that it is commonplace, why does he assume principals would not do such a thing, but teachers might? What is the basis for him to think principals, who earn more than twice what teachers earn, are of stellar character and teachers cannot be trusted. Throughout his testimony, he displays disdain for the character of teachers that would be outlawed if it were racial prejudice, but is accepted in the field of teaching. Why? Minimally, he should state that neither would do such a thing. Or there is no way of knowing if either would do this. But he believes teachers have a tendency to manipulate. Interesting? Logic would suggest that the people willing to work for less money, are less ambitious, competitive and would have less of a tendency to manipulate a situation for their personal gain, yet his vote is for principals as the more trustworthy of the two. Is he exhibiting deep seated prejudice or a deep seated love for the consequence of saying what they want him to say - MONEY.

2176 That's going to hurt the morale certainly of the two people, and that kind of word undoubtedly spreads among the faculty. I don't know if it would be done by Mrs. Horwitz or I can't believe it would be done by the principal, but that kind of setting can't help the organization. It can only hurt it.

Once again, he doesn't know if Horwitz would spread rumors, but he can't believe it would be done by the principal. For him to bring this prejudice to the issues at hand suggests a deep seated bias about teachers as inferior beings, which may be the basis upon which teacher abuse is justified by these people, or may be his reaction to a group of people who accept this abuse and remain silent. Either way, the resemblance to attitudes about slaves is way too close for comfort. Their alleged inferiority warrant their under class position in life, and it appears teachers carry the same judgments.

2127 Q   Suppose a situation were reversed that instead of the teacher being the harassing one, the administrator is the harassing one. Wouldn't that also make a colleague worried about her place in the school?

A   Sure. Harassment of any kind is not advisable.

He knows harassment is bad, but doesn't make any effort to investigate or track down those horror stories. Why not?

2196 - 2197 Q   The same thing can be said of supervisors, too?

A   Absolutely. Occasionally they will have a flaw in their interaction. I just don't see it happen where a principal or a superintendent says by God, I am going to go out and get that person. Those are war stories you can never track down.

Q   But you can't say it never happens?
A   Anything can happen. Cows can fly. Or is it horses?

Here he says that these stories couldn't be proven. But he knew that an administrator would never go after a teacher without a reason, while earlier he stated that teachers might do it for their ego, another biased assumption. The logic here is that principals do not operate from ego, where teachers might. Let's think about that. Teachers, on the bottom of the totem pole, earning low salaries are ego observed, while principals, earning twice as much, are closer to purity of ethics. This logic fails us unless you figure that people who are into money are the pillars of virtue in our society, while those who are not focused on money are the ones we must watch. Somehow logic is turned inside out in every aspect of education, and this is simply another area where "expert opinion" seems to be twisted to work for organized crime, for a price.

Q   What about parents' complaints to the school board, are they equally important?

A   That's a political issue.

Q   Solely political, not educational?

A   I don't think so because the parents aren't going to do any education. Largely they are going to be involved in the political life of the school and if you get a great many complaints from parents to the school, over time that will have a political impact.

We know that teachers do not have educational impact on schools as they are order taking robots, so is he saying that if teachers could voice their complaints, they would have a political impact on schools? This thought certainly would follow. Therefore, teacher abuse wipes out any chance of any political impact. Following Hazard's thinking gives one great insight to the strategies in place to make sure our schools do not operate as a democracy in any way.

Q   You have a vast experience with a number of school districts, Dr. Hazard. Have you ever run across a school district where there was any concerted effort on the part of any administrator to harass or to get rid of a teacher?

A   I have heard that charge from teachers, I have not experienced it. And I have represented teachers. I have also represented the administrators. I think that's a vastly overrated allegation. It serves no administrator's purpose to try to harass me because usually it is so patent that it's very hard to camouflage that. Usually when people say "I am being harassed," they are being asked to do what they are already being paid to do, but they choose not to do it for whatever reason.

This statement wins the prize for twisted thinking. It can't be camouflaged? It serves no purpose? We beg to differ with this. Once again, those lazy teachers are making all this up because they don't want to work. Weren't slaves considered lazy too and that is why they had to be beaten? Or maybe he means they were being paid to lie to parents and they don't want to do it. Or maybe he means that they don't want to violate the laws they are being paid to violate. Whatever, it is disgraceful to be part of an operation that pays to twist logic and spin facts. If only professors had researched this area earlier, the hazards of the world couldn't earn a living destroying teachers. Thanks to Jo and Joseph Blase, and thanks to NAPTA, it will be a lot more difficult to do this in the future.

Horwitz had no expert witness to defend her at her trial since the union allegedly couldn't find anyone who knew about teacher abuse. Considering that the Blases were hard at work on their research on exposing teacher abuse at the time, and at least two educational leaders validated their work in the foreward of their book, it points out they didn't look too far to defend Horwitz. As you read through this site, you will see documentation that proves, beyond a doubt, a pattern of political tactics to pretend teacher abuse didn't exist, to maintain business as usual, and all of this aided by our unions. There is no way Hazard didn't know the truth; there is no way the union didn't know of education experts who would speak the truth. NAPTA will be collecting names of honest educators for future teachers ganged up on by their districts. At the same time, we will keep the names of HAZARD and his kind on our RIDE THE GRAVY TRAIN page, since it sure seems that his word was not coming from integrity, but from love of the green, and we don't mean nature.

Keep reading the teacher stories. Watch the patterns. Disappearing court records, long waits for records, teachers speaking out and then being crucified, "experts" making a handsome living off of testifying propaganda to keep the system intact. Controlled board elections. and administrators breaking laws from workmen compensation to federal civil rights. Why do we bother to teach history if we do not learn from it? The Salem witch trials are happening in our schools, and these educators are counting on the greed of our society to keep this going. Good money can be made spinning reality and for those not at all involved in this harmony of thieves, it is too much bother to get involved. NAPTA intends to change this because we know there are good people out there, they just needed some insight.

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