District hires Election Consultant, guy really just a pollster...

So it has been revelaed that the district has hired Bruce Merrill from ASU to analyze the election results. I am not really sure why they are hiring a pollster instaed of an election consultant. The guy has not done any school related election consulting of note since the mid-80s. I guess the district will tell him how they want to poll to turn out and he will make the results fit their outcome. At least it will look more professional than those SurveyMonkey surveys that the district is so fond of. It should be for $15K.

We were at the board meeting were they approved hiring this consultant and it was quite revealing. The administration used terms like 'high efficacy voters', 'packaging' , 'public perceptions', and 'marketing' when trying to sell the need of an analysis to the board. It is clear that the district is more interested in manipulating the voters than it is in improving the district's slipping academic achievement. This is a district with declining TerraNova scores, it underperforms its surrounding schools, and where 7 out of 10 students taking the AP Science test are falling. Let's start worrying about that and not buildings, more laptops, and more Smartboards.