This should be a fun one to watch at trial:
The company behind a controversial math curriculum being used in Wake County public schools has filed a lawsuit against a Cary parent, accusing him of "libel and slander" and "tortious interference with business relations" after he criticized the program.
An attorney for the Utah-based Mathematics Vision Project, or MVP,
said the company decided to sue parent Blain Dillard after he made
"false statements" about the company. Dillard says he is "innocent of
all allegations and can defend each and every point made in the
summons"...
The lawsuit
claims Dillard "commenced a crusade against MVP" and “acted with
reckless disregard” as he knowingly made false and defamatory statements
with the intent to harm MVP's reputation. The company wants a jury
trial and is seeking damages for Dillard’s "defamatory statements" and
"intentional interference" with the company’s business.
I admit to knowing no specifics at all, but on its face this seems like Goliath trying to stomp David.
In an email Tuesday, Dillard said MVP's lawsuit "is an attempt at
intimidation and bullying to silence my and other parents' free speech
advocating for our children's education." Dillard's supporters have
created a GoFundMe page to raise money for his defense against MVP.
I've long believed that we should have
sort of a "loser pays" system in our courts. If you sue someone and lose, and the judge/jury finds your case so weak that the most logical conclusion is that you attempted to use your lawsuit and the court's time as merely a means to harass the respondent, then the judge/jury would have
the option of requiring you to pay the respondent's legal fees. I have to believe that such a Sword of Damocles would stop many unnecessary lawsuits. I don't know if this is one of those lawsuits or not--I hope to learn the outcome of this case.
8 comments:
Just to give some insight into this. Cary is a suburb of Raleigh and is one of the areas where the scientists who work at Research Triangle Park live.
It will indeed be interesting to watch.
Interesting to watch but has been awful to live through this experience. And now the lawsuit for speaking up?!
We just want our kids to be able to learn subjects without being part of some educational experiment. Just teach them math without circle time and common core 2.0.
I believe you.
We deal with CPM here and the teachers and admins just love it. If parents comment against it, we just don't know anything. There is no teaching going on. Kids are left to figure it out on their own. Really not much is learned. Takes them 3 years to get through what used to be taught in one year.
Most of the problem is state requires everyone pass up to Alg 2 to graduate. where as before only college prep went through "real" Alg 2. There is no separate track "general" math. So Alg2 is very watered down since "everyone" has to get through it.
My "favorite" story from CPM goes back to the early 2000's. California had the IIUSP (Immediate intervention, underperforming schools program), and if your school was put into IIUSP the first thing you had to do was spend *up to* $50,000 on an external evaluator to look at your school programs and help identify what's going wrong. Guess how much all the external evaluators charged. That's right, $50,000!
I was once subcontracted by an external evaluator to go through a huge box of homework and tests and determine what level math was being taught according to the state standards of the time (the 1997 math standards, of which I am a *huge* fan). The school being evaluated was using CPM.
Keep in mind that the 1997 CA Math standards had Algebra 1 as an 8th grade standard, and if I remember correctly, these were 9th grade students in a CPM Algebra 1 class. MAYBE they were 8th graders.
Anyway, I would look at the problems being done and match them up to specific state standards. Hundreds of assignments, maybe a thousand papers, and 10s of thousands of problems, all spread over a couple months of assignments (so you can't say this was just from the 1st week of school). What I found was that most of the problems were 5th/6th grade level, some from 7th grade, and very few from Algebra 1. And this from the "highly touted" CPM.
I can't stand that program. I despise it.
This action by MVP should be speaking volumes about this company!
Not if the respondent's statements about the company are completely untrue--then I would *expect* the company to respond this way. I can't judge either way, not knowing anything about this particular company, it's math program, or what the respondent has said about them.
Darren - the guy being sued is extremely smart and can back up everything he said with documentation. I think MVP figured he would fold after being sued but instead he said bring it. A lot of US cities are in the same math mess but few have been organized enough to fight it. Weird thing is no coverage of this story in Utah. You'd think they would want media support in their state. NC has covered it a lot. Or maybe now the MVP ppl are laying low wondering if suit was such a good idea. I know if I was them I would be having second thoughts.
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