Did the president of the school board plagiarize?

Did the president of the school board, Josephine Posti, plagiarize in her public writing about school issues on her blog, Center Court?

Her critics at the Lebo Citizens blog, which first reported the alleged plagiarism, sure think so. But others, such as David Brown, who wrote to Blog-Lebo about the issue, think the accusations boil down to deceitful “context switching” to make a hard-working volunteer look bad. Mrs. Posti, herself, explained it as an “oversight” where she “had neglected to cite sources” a few times. Which brings us to an important observation.

Whether you believe Mrs. Posti did anything wrong is going to depend not only on the evidence but also on what you already believe about Mrs. Posti. Her strongest supporters, for example, are unlikely to conclude that she did anything wrong, regardless of the evidence. Her most-vocal detractors, in contrast, probably don’t need more than a change in the wind to condemn her and, as always, ask for her resignation – loudly.

That’s why, in situations like these, if you want to understand what happened, you can’t go by what people tell you. You have to look at the evidence yourself.

So that’s what I did.


Looking at the evidence

Is there evidence of plagiarism?

First, let’s be clear about what plagiarism is. It’s the act of presenting someone else’s work in a way that gives people the false impression that it’s your own. Even if you have permission to use the work, and even if you don’t mean to give anybody the false impression that it’s yours, you can still plagiarize by not taking the expected care not to plagiarize. It’s like speeding: you can do it willfully or just by not paying enough attention; both ways will earn you a ticket.

To look for evidence of plagiarism, I examined the articles on Mrs. Posti’s blog, looking for text that matched other documents on the Internet. Then I reviewed the matches and kept only those that showed substantial, unexplained duplication.

Here’s what I found: Blog-Lebo analysis of suspected plagiarism, August 2011.

First, the findings make it hard to believe that Mrs. Posti just forgot to cite a few sources. My search found not three cases of apparent plagiarism, as originally reported on the Lebo Citizens blog, but eleven. Second, in some cases, the duplicated material seems to have been edited in ways that would reinforce a reader’s impression that the work was Mrs. Posti’s own.

So, looking at the evidence, it’s hard to believe that there’s nothing wrong here.


Does it matter?

I asked a number of people that question. Their answers ranged from, “It happens so often it’s not worth worrying about” to “I have a serious problem with this.”

My take is that it is a problem. If we want our children to believe that plagiarism is worth avoiding – and we do try to teach them that in Mt. Lebanon – we can’t expect them to believe us if our actions demonstrate that we don’t believe it ourselves. When someone plagiarizes, and especially when students see that person as a respected authority, how that person handles it – and how we handle it – matter.

In this case, Mrs. Posti handled it by effectively denying it. On her blog post about the subject, “Corrections,” she explains it as an “oversight”:

Recently, a resident accused me of plagiarism as the result of information she received and published from an anonymous source. The anonymous source found three of my 435 blog posts where I had neglected to cite original sources that I had pulled information from. I apologize for that oversight and have made corrections to those posts.

I have a hard time squaring this explanation with the evidence. If it happened once or twice, I could believe the oversight explanation. But more than ten times? That’s not an oversight.

And now, in anticipation of those people who will say I’m out to get Mrs. Posti or that this is mere political mean-spiritedness, I have only this to say: Before you come after me, look at the evidence, and tell me there’s not a problem here. Because, once you understand that there is a problem here, you can understand why it can’t be ignored.

And one more thing: I have nothing against Mrs. Posti. I think she’s trying to serve her community in difficult times – and under a lot of scrutiny. On the plagiarism thing, it looks like she made a mistake in judgment and compounded it with another. We all make mistakes.

But judgment matters. And so does plagiarism.

So I do hope that Mrs. Posti will take care of it, herself. Because, if she doesn’t, I don’t think the rest of the school board will be able to let it pass. Not anymore.

Trib: Much ado about.... Mt. Lebanon board chief's blog

The Tribune-Review is now reporting about the alleged plagiarism of school-board president, Josephine Posti:

Mt. Lebanon School Board President Josephine Posti temporarily pulled her blog off the Internet and issued an apology after being accused of plagiarism this week – an accusation about which experts disagree when it involves speech online.

Elaine Gillen, a resident, former candidate for commissioner and frequent critic of the school board, said material on Posti's blog, "Center Court," was copied from other sources without attribution.

Read more:

• Much ado about....Mt. Lebanon board chief's blog (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

Letter: Posti Didn't Plagiarize

The following letter to the editors of Blog-Lebo comes from reader and frequent commenter David Brown. –Tom

The people who are fomenting the moral panic du jour and condemning Ms. Posti for supposed plagiarism are engaging in a form of deceit that I call context switching. Context switching occurs when someone discusses the morality of an action or truth of a statement in one context and continues discussing it in the same manner while silently changing the context and hoping no one will notice.

Plagiarism is obviously an egregious offense in the contexts of academia and journalism. In those contexts, the reader has an expectation of originality, and is justifiably outraged when that trust turns out to have been misplaced. In business, technical writing, and many other contexts, not so much -- the expectation of originality is much diminished if not entirely absent. In those contexts, there is much to be gained by both the writer and the reader by repeating passages verbatim. The emphasis is on communicating ideas clearly and accurately and not on the writer. In those contexts, gratuitously adding variations to the wording out of a misguided sense of integrity just invites confusion and wastes the reader's time as they parse back and forth to see if the meaning is the same. Ms. Posti's critics are judging her by academic and journalistic standards when those contexts are only at most tangentially related to the context in which she wrote.

I view Ms. Posti's role on the school board as a business position. It's true that this is the business of schooling, but she is not a student, not a teacher, and not a researcher. Therefore, the context in which I read her writings is business communication. In that context, I care not a whit if she copied portions of her communication from other sources. She would not have used them if they did not reflect her views. So, in reading her writing, my expectation is upheld that what I am reading is her opinion. That's all I really care about. I don't view it as academic plagiarism at all.

Ms. Posti's critics also take great pains to point out that in her day job she is in public relations and deals with journalists on a regular basis. So what? First, her day job has nothing to do with our schools or her school blog. Second, I never had an expectation of originality when reading a press release. So, the relation of this issue to journalistic ethics is tenuous at best, and all the people a-hootin' an' a-hollerin' as if this is a direct hit on her integrity merely betray their inability to make subtle but very important distinctions.

Furthermore, on a limited scanning of the sources that were copied, I get the distinct impression that they were created specifically to share the information therein. They seem to have been placed on the web by advocates of certain positions as talking points for the very purpose of furthering those positions. I don't think those organizations would feel victimized at all, but rather gratified that their work is being put to the use they intended.

People would also do well to remember that Ms. Posti's blog is a voluntary action over and above her duties as a school board member. Anything she puts up there is a gift to all of us. It is a positive action for transparency. Yes, sources should have been cited, and yes, some of it was clearly copied en masse, so a "tut tut" is in order:

Tut, tut, Ms. Posti!

But that's all you'll get from me.

I would be willing to bet that Ms. Posti has less free time than anyone I know, and I for one am glad that she got the information out quickly so she could spend more time on all her other duties of a board member, professional, wife, and mother. I don't think she was trying to take credit for authorship. I think she was just trying to do her best to channel some important information she felt we needed to know and try not to have to stay up all night.

David Brown

Lebo Citizens Blog: School-board president Posti plagiarized (updated)

Update 2011-08-22 12:35: Mrs. Posti’s blog is back online and now contains a “Corrections” article that includes an apology for “neglecting to cite original sources.”

The Lebo Citizens Blog is reporting that the president of the Mt. Lebanon School Board, Josephine Posti, has been involved in “numerous instances” of plagiarism in her public writings about school issues:

There have been numerous instances over the last year of Mt. Lebanon School Board President Josephine Posti stealing information from websites and posting it on her blog as her own. In the three instances outlined below, I have copied word for word her blog post and indicated in yellow highlighted text where that information was sourced from and the original text of that source. Again, Mrs. Posti has never indicated that her sources were from anything but her own intelligence.

At the time of this writing, Mrs. Posti’s blog, Center Court, is no longer available to readers. Visitors to the blog are told that “This blog is open to invited readers only.”

Update: Mrs. Posti issues “corrections”

At around noon on Monday, August 22, 2011, Mrs. Posti’s blog was reopened to the public. Its most-recent posting, Corrections, includes an apology:

Recently, a resident accused me of plagiarism as the result of information she received and published from an anonymous source. The anonymous source found three of my 435 blog posts where I had neglected to cite original sources that I had pulled information from. I apologize for that oversight and have made corrections to those posts.

Read more:

• Where is President Posti’s Integrity? (Lebo Citizens Blog)

Act 25: a different perspective

Over on her blog, Josephine Posti, school-board president, writes about the recent passage of Senate Bill 330, now Act 25 of 2011.

The legislation, depending on who you ask, is either good or bad. The “good” view is that Act 25 closes loopholes in the “Taxpayer Relief Act” of 2006, loopholes which school districts have been exploiting to increase their spending beyond what is sustainable. The “bad” view is that Act 25 removes important safety valves that allow school districts to function while under financial pressures from sources they cannot control, such as unions and legislated mandates.

Unsurprisingly, Mrs. Posti subscribes to the view that Act 25 is bad, writing, “My immediate reaction concerning how this will effect [sic] education in the Commonwealth is: negatively.”

This view focuses on the short-term, direct effects of the legislation, without giving consideration to long-term, total effects. When you consider the bigger picture, the legislation appears both bad and good: bad at first, but good in the long run. In the short term, yes, it will force spending cuts on many school districts which are unprepared for them, and there will be collateral damage. Some students and parents are going to get hit. That’s bad. In the long term, though, it will force school districts to finally do something, however painful, to reduce their spending growth, which is probably unsustainable. That’s good. Pain now is better than collapse later.

So the question is, Are you willing to take some pain today to avoid disaster tomorrow? If you’re a school director or other elected representative, you have a strong incentive to answer No. That’s because, when things get painful for the community today, who’s going to suffer the public wrath? You are. Immediately and intensely. But years later, when things don’t go wrong, who’s going to remember to say thanks? Nobody. That’s because nobody notices when disasters they weren’t looking for don’t happen. It's perverse: if you do the right thing and then succeed at it, most people will think you made them suffer for nothing. So, if you're an elected representative, choosing the short-term pain for the long-term gain has a strongly negative payoff.

That’s why legislation like Act 25 is necessary. It’s virtually impossible for school directors, the community’s elected representatives, to do what is best for the community in the long term. If they force reform on the community, they’re going to get clobbered. But, if the community forces reform on them, which is what Act 25 makes possible, then reform might actually happen.

If those are the short- and long-term perspectives of the legislation, there are also narrow and wide perspectives. In another part of her post, Mrs. Posti writes the following:

Critics might claim that if local communities support education they’ll support construction, especially when student populations increase, buildings become inadequate, or program needs evolve. The reality is, they don’t... School referendums often fail because the majority of any electorate do not have school-aged children and, when given the choice between raising their taxes or not, they choose not.

That’s the narrow perspective, focusing on how the bill will block school construction because voters almost always say No at these referendums, for what Mrs. Posti suggests are the wrong reasons. The wider perspective, however, takes in that these referendums occur within a democratic society, and when voters reliably say No to something, that’s not a failure of the system: that’s a message from the people, a message that the government is supposed to hear and take seriously.

In this case, what that message is saying is that the way our government runs and pays for public education is something that the public increasingly finds unaffordable. What that message is saying is that it’s time for reform.

But that message, for reasons I’ve explained above, is one that school directors have difficulty acting upon. Further, the reform we need is bigger than Mt. Lebanon. That’s why I can sympathize with school directors who take the short and narrow view of the situation. It’s not like they can do much about the long, wide view, themselves.

But, thanks to Act 25, citizens can do something about it. They can say No at the voting booth and force reform to begin, however painful.

Toward the end of her article, Mrs. Posti issues a challenge:

[If] you can help me understand how these cuts and restrictions are good for education and help school districts prepare kids to compete in a global market, please share your thoughts with me.

It’s easy to meet this challenge: just think long term, just see the wider picture. It’s not about what’s happening to our schools right now; it’s about what’s going to happen to our entire public education system in the coming years. If we don’t find a way to make it affordable, we’re not going to have a public education system.

Act 25 certainly isn’t a solution to the bigger problem, and it certainly isn’t without problems of its own, but it is a step toward much-needed reform. And if our elected representatives have trouble taking the next step on their own, we’ll probably see more legislation like Act 25 to help them along.

Trib: Sibling rivalry possible on Mt. Lebanon board

Small-town government is notorious for its bickering. In Mt. Lebanon, a sibling rivalry could ratchet the drama to new highs -- or lows.

School board candidate James Cannon won his race in the primary Tuesday on a platform of change. His big sister, Josephine Posti, is the board president.

There's more:

-- He's a Republican. She's a Democrat.

-- He opposes the controversial renovation of the high school. She supports it.

Neither Posti nor Cannon would discuss their relationship, or even the last time they talked or saw each other.

Read the full article:

• www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_737885.html (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

Trib: Mt. Lebanon board chief pushes for commission collaboration

The president of the Mt. Lebanon Board of School Directors wants more regular meetings with the municipal commissioners, but was met with some indifference this week and calls for those meetings to be more open to the public.

School board President Josephine Posti wants to hold quarterly meetings of a "joint steering committee," consisting of commission and school board leaders, to discuss issues where the two bodies can work together.

Read the full article:

• www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/pittsburgh/s_717864.html (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review)

P-G: Mt. Lebanon School Board names Posti its new president

The Mt. Lebanon School Board elected Josephine Posti as president and Dale Ostergaard as vice president Monday night at its annual re-organization meeting.

Both were elected by a vote of 8-0. School director James Fraasch was absent.

Read more:

• www.post-gazette.com/pg/10341/1108890-55.stm?cmpid=localstate.xml (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)

Dirk Taylor Rebuts School Board’s Claims About High School Project

In a four-page letter to the School Board, Dirk A. Taylor, P.E., responds to the claims made by the School Board about the High School project and, in particular, by Director Josephine Posti in her blog post about Building C on April 20, 2010.

Mr. Taylor is a Mt. Lebanon resident, a graduate of Mt. Lebanon High School, and has served as an engineer to the school district on many projects at the High School. He also served on the Design Advisory Committee and Community Advisory Committee for the currently planned High School project.

In his letter, Mr. Taylor challenges the claims the School Board has made to justify its plan to demolish Building C: asbestos abatement, temporary classrooms, travel distance between classrooms, community input, and cost savings. He goes into details, makes clear arguments, and backs them with evidence.

Summarizing, he writes, “As I have said..., I am in full agreement with the [School] Board that Mt. Lebanon High School needs a major renovation. But my 30 years of experience in the building construction industry and 40-year knowledge of the High School tell me that your proposed reconstruction design is a gross misuse of our tax dollars that will leave us with a less functional building than the existing structure we already have.”

No matter where you stand on the High School project, you owe it to yourself to read Mr. Taylor’s letter. This project is important and, no matter how it turns out, will change our community. We ought to consider every piece of evidence about it, and Mr. Taylor’s letter offers a lot of evidence to consider.

Read more:

• Dirk A. Taylor’s letter to the School Board (printed with permission)
• School Board Director Josephine Posti’s blog post on Building C

Update 2010-05-28 15:58: Fixed typo: letter is four pages, not six.

Mt. Lebanon Community Gets Loud In The Blogosphere

Forget gossip over the back fence: These days in Mt. Lebanon, community bloggers are the town criers.

Commissioners Dan Miller and D. Raja have blogs. So do school members Josephine Posti and James Fraasch. The high school's technology director Christopher Stengel has his own blog, and residents Joe Polk, Tom Moertel, Kristen Linfante and Elaine Labalme also run blogs that discuss community developments and events.

Read more: www.post-gazette.com/pg/10063/1039995-55.stm

School Board Directors Get Their Messages Out

With the Act 34 hearing for the high-school renovation approaching, and with updated budget forecasts now available, school-board directors are trying to get their messages to the community.

On Friday, February 5, 2010, Josephine Posti updated her blog with a new article, “Bottom Line.” In the article, she discusses how the renovation will affect property taxes. Over the next few years, the project will cause taxes to increase by about 3.4 mills or 14 percent. To help residents understand how the increase works out for their own households, she links to a table of millage increases that shows the typical increase for various home assessments. For owners of homes assessed at around $200 thousand, the bill for the renovation works out to about $57 more per month ($675 per year). If the renovation comes in below the $113-million maximum, which Mrs. Posti expresses confidence that it will, the new taxes would be correspondingly lower.

On Saturday, February 6, 2010, James Fraasch posted “The Blitz Is On,” in part a response to Mrs. Posti’s article. He points out that any financial decision, while appearing sound on its own, may be unwise in light of the larger financial picture. He goes on to show that our school district’s financial picture, when considered as a whole, is concerning:

So when you see people say that the high school might mean a 14% increase in taxes ... and that’s the “Bottom Line”, it kind of misses the point entirely. The Bottom Line isn’t just a single expense. The Bottom Line is the forecast we received last Thursday. And that Bottom Line is ugly! From 2009–2010 to 2014–2015 the millage is projected/estimated to rise from 24.11 to 33.31, a 38.15% increase in taxes.

Neither of the directors’ blogs allows comments, so if you want to comment on either or both articles, feel free discuss them here on Blog-Lebo.

Learn Something New, Help Local Students

Over at her blog Center Court, Jo Posti has a great idea to help you learn something new this year: make a commitment. We make commitments to eat less, to go to the gym – so why not to learn something?

To help you follow through, Jo invites you to send her an email, telling her what you’re committing to learn. For each person who sends one, she will make a donation to the Mt. Lebanon Foundation for Education. Your email not only helps you learn something, but helps local students learn something, too. Pretty good deal.

I’ve already sent in my email. How about you? What are you going to learn this year?

School Board President Won't Allow Vote To Review Public Comment Policy

A discussion on First Amendment rights and free speech by the Mt. Lebanon school board was brought to an abrupt halt Monday night when board President Mark Hart refused to allow board members to be polled on the matter.

School director Josephine Posti had asked for the board to consider forming a subcommittee to review board meeting procedures, specifically the way in which speakers address the board.

Mrs. Posti said at in recent months speakers have presented inaccurate information, and some have attacked administrators and community volunteers from the podium.

Link: www.post-gazette.com/pg/08227/904083-55.stm

Update: At her personal blog, School Board Director Jo Posti notes:

While the discussion about how to improve public comments has ended, it is, in my opinion, an unresolved issue. Some districts provide information that corrects inaccurate information. Some broadcast public commentors on-camera vs. off. Some provide venues for comments that do not pertain to board business. Some publish public comments or identification of commentors in order to provide the same level of respect to the public as the public is asked to provide the board. While none of these concepts are my recommendation, they may have been points of discussion should a sub-committee have been appointed. My hope is that we can all work harder going forward to provide accurate information to the public and to reinforce the Golden Rule standard during public comments.

Another MTLSD Board Director Goes Online

Welcome to the blogosphere to Mt. Lebanon School Board member Josephine Posti, whose new blog is aptly titled, "Center Court." Like her colleague James Fraasch, Jo is using the blog to speak on her own behalf and not on behalf of the Board or the District. But the improvement in transparency is great. So far, she has posted about important but not always salient issues -- parking, playgrounds, and hot lunches among them.

Live Stream of Lebo's Channel 19

This information comes to the blog courtesy of former Blog-Lebo contributor (and current school board member) Jo Posti

For those of you interested in hometown programming, I wanted to share with you the latest feature on the Mt. Lebanon School District's web site. There is now a live feed of Mt. Lebanon's Channel 19 available at http://www.mtlsd.org/district/channelnineteen.asp. Now all of you non-Comcast subscribers and out-of-towners can get your fix of varsity soccer, orchestra concerts and yes, school board meetings - all from your desktop.

Link: www.mtlsd.org/district/channelnineteen.asp