I have received the following document from an anonymous source. Based on this easily verified information, do we want a school board director, the president – no less, of an “award winning” school district plagiarizing? President Posti majored in English. Her livelihood is public relations. As a professional, a parent, a graduate of Mt. Lebanon High School
Rampant Plagiarism by Mt. Lebanon School District
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.
There are very specific documents available on the District website that deal with plagiarism (see http://www.mtlsd.org/highschool/highschoolplagiarismlessons.asp
Grade 11 Plagiarism Tutorial):
Plagiarism (and avoiding it!)
If you intend to pursue a career or an education, you must not plagiarize.
Plagiarism is theft.
Plagiarism is stealing somebody’s idea or words without giving credit to that person. If you do not clearly tell your audience that you were not the person who came up with it, your audience will believe that the idea was yours. You are stealing credit for another’s work.
In the real world, people who plagiarize are punished. The same is true in high school and college. Do not risk your academic standing by not carefully and completely citing your sources. Please refer to the Student‐Parent Handbook for Mt. Lebanon School District
What follows are three of examples that were found after only a few minutes of searching.
Complete document is here.
Update: Direct links to Josephine Posti's blog.
Instance #1 direct link
Instance #2 direct link
Instance #3 direct link
More can be found on her blog just by searching key phrases on search engines such as Google.
Update 1:30 pm
I have been told that Josephine Posti has an accreditation in public relations. http://prsa-pgh.org/bio.php?n=150
From the website, http://www.prsa.org/Learning/Accreditation/
What is APR?
APR is a mark of distinction for public relations professionals who demonstrate their commitment to the profession and to its ethical practice, and who are selected based on broad knowledge, strategic perspective, and sound professional judgment.
I do not have a degree in English, journalism, or even fiction writing, but I was able to pass the plagiarism quiz on the District website.
Update 11:00 pm Screen shots of posts
Instance #1 Mergers and Aquisitions
Instance #2 Act 1 Exceptions
Instance #3 Single Prime Approved
Update August 22, 2011 Response from Josephine Posti, Mon. Aug 22, 2011 12:07 pm
Update 5:04 PM
Update: Direct links to Josephine Posti's blog.
Instance #1 direct link
Instance #2 direct link
Instance #3 direct link
More can be found on her blog just by searching key phrases on search engines such as Google.
Update 1:30 pm
I have been told that Josephine Posti has an accreditation in public relations. http://prsa-pgh.org/bio.php?n=150
From the website, http://www.prsa.org/Learning/Accreditation/
What is APR?
APR is a mark of distinction for public relations professionals who demonstrate their commitment to the profession and to its ethical practice, and who are selected based on broad knowledge, strategic perspective, and sound professional judgment.
I do not have a degree in English, journalism, or even fiction writing, but I was able to pass the plagiarism quiz on the District website.
Update 11:00 pm Screen shots of posts
Instance #1 Mergers and Aquisitions
Instance #2 Act 1 Exceptions
Instance #3 Single Prime Approved
Update August 22, 2011 Response from Josephine Posti, Mon. Aug 22, 2011 12:07 pm
Dear Mrs. Gillen, Thank you for bringing that to my attention. As your anonymous source may have noticed, I share information from a variety of sources and endeavor to attribute them and include links to original sources. I've made those corrections and provided additional information on my blog. Best regards, Josephine Posti President Mt. Lebanon School Board 412.667.1479 http://jposti.blogspot.com Mission: To provide the best education possible for each and every student
Update 12:33 PM
Josephine Posti has entered a new post on her Center Court blog. Corrections Update 5:04 PM
"While SB1 was originally targeted to families making under $29,000 in failing schools or school districts, as amended SB1 would offer vouchers to families earning up to $67,000, even if they live in top school districts and even if their children have never set foot in a public school."
"Where SB1 was originally targeted to families making under $29,000 in failing schools or school districts, as amended SB1 would offer vouchers to families earning up to $67,000, even if they live in the top school districts in the state and even if their children have never set foot in a public school."
21 comments:
Here we have what we consider to be the first in command of the Mt. Lebanon School District (contrary to Mt. Lebanon lore, the Superintendent reports to the Board, not the other way around) engaging in behavior that, if done by the very students she oversees, would result in their suspension. Mrs. Posti's excuse of course will be a plead of ignorance or innocence.
Is it possible that Mrs. Posti did not know what she did was wrong? We should all find that hard to believe. She was an English major in college and works as a Public Relations professional for a large company. Certainly she would not steal press releases of other companies and use them for Pennsylvania American Water. As the second longest serving member of the Board, she has had ample opportunity to review the District's very own guidelines on copying work done by others. She may even argue that some of the copied material was "political" speech or position statements and therefore she did not need permission to copy the work of authors of such material. However, I struggle to think of a single blog in Mt. Lebanon or otherwise that I have read where the owner of such blog has decided to rip off the work of others and post it as his own without acknowledging the fact that someone else had put the time and effort into the research done to come to conclusions on such position statements. I can only conclude that Mrs. Posti's intent was to have the reader believe that these works were here own. It takes but a minute to recognize the hard work of others. She chose not to do so. Would a teacher at Mt. Lebanon High School allow a student to turn a paper on Pennsylvania School District Mergers and Acquisitions that was copied and pasted from a quick Google search? According to the District's own policy, what would have happened to that student? Why should we hold elected members of the school board to a lesser standard that the very students under their administrative control? What if a teacher turned in a research paper for publication that was later found to be copied from a position statement done by a think tank? Would that teacher even have a job anymore? Ever?
Mrs. Posti has disgraced herself and the Board. At a time where the Board should be continuously trying to re-engage an already ostracized community, she goes and brings more bad press to a Board that is sorely in need of some positive press. I can think of no other remedy on her part than to give up the gavel as President of the Board and resign her seat immediately. We cannot accept this type of behavior on the part of the people who serve our taxpayers and oversee our students.
Will the rest of the Board members step up and demand the same?
Charlie Archer
Such conduct is consistent with the openly anti-intellectual, anti-diversity, and anti-democratic remarks of School Director Posti to our graduating seniors this June. In her commencement address, Posti actually told the graduating class that they should only surround themselves with people who completely agree with them. Such, of course, is exactly what the current school board, under her leadership, does. Curiously, they still cannot implement their program--perhaps because mindless sycophants are as ineffective as they are intellectually offensive? It is just one more reason why Josephine Posti would resign immediately if she had any intellectual integrity or sense of honor. Posti must resign, immediately!
Steve Diaz
While the APR Study Guide (c 2010, Universal Accreditation Board) does not appear to use the term plagiarism it its text, it does offer an interesting term and defintion on page 25 - "Slavish copying : This term is used for extensive word-for-word copying. One can use the ideas, but not the creative expression of the idea. For a violation, copying must be exact, word for word. Paraphrasing is not a violation, but without attribution, it does raise ethical concerns. Speeches quoting the ideas of another can lead to copyright violation."
Jo appears to be a "slavish copier" and must have missed the APR class when the subject was covered. I guess paraphrasing & attribution was too hard, and perhaps might even have caused brain-freeze if attempted.
She should, at a minimum, voluntarily resign her board presidency....if not, the 8 remaining board members should censure her and maybe even call for her resignation as a board member....just as they would had Mark Hart or James Fraasch committed this serious infraction, don't you know !
Bill Lewis
Ah another famous quote that some board members might want to "borrow!"
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." -- Groucho Marx
- Giffen Good
Bill,
According to the District website 11th grade tutorial (link provided in original post), Josephine Posti is plagiarizing.
These are also plagiarism:
Cutting and pasting to create a paper from several sources without citing those sources.
Quoting less than all the words copied.
Changing some words but copying whole phrases.
Paraphrasing without attribution
Summarizing without attribution
By the way, Bill, some paragraphs were copied word for word. Look throughout her blog. There are more than just three incidents.
President Posti, President Miller has commented on this blog. Maybe you will too.
Elaine Gillen
The plagiarism doesn't bother so much as the absolute nonsense that is issued on a regular basis.
From Ms. Posti's Center Court blog she wrote on the subject of roofs:
TUESDAY, JANUARY 13, 2009
Community Forum
"As for a roof, we have made several roof repairs over the last few years and this experience has shown me that unfortunately, there’s no such thing as a “10-year roof.” If we choose to replace the roof with a real roof, we are purchasing materials designed for a 20 to 30-year life, in essence, wasting half or more of this effort. We have spent money during the past three years on membranes that are much less expensive than a true roof replacement but only meant for a lifespan that will bring us to the point of renovation - now."
And that is all well and good, except that recently Mr. Celli and crew said that they revisited the roofs and that the repairs made are good for years and don't need replacement. Meaning either the money was well spent on the repairs or Mr. Celli is pulling the wool over the board's eyes to bring the project under the referendum number!
But not to worry Mt. Lebanon taxpayer. At least one board members got so excited about Mr. Celli's excitement that surely we would hear all the facts and evidence supporting the new design. Wait, did I miss the answers to Mr. Rothschild's concerns?
Its also curious to me that Mrs Cappucci, ardent supporter of the LEED initiative and energy efficiency sat closed mouth and let Mr. Rothschild question the rational of deleting industry standard energy saving elements in the project. We may be building a HS that is no more green than the current one.
And what about all that wonderful natural light that Mrs. Posti said was going to brighten the students day. Hun, forget about it, metal panels are now so chic!
I didn't think Mr. Diaz's suggestion they should all go had merit at first.
Now, I'm thinking the sooner the better before its really FUBAR.
Dick Saunders
Just got this message when going on Center Court blog.
"This blog is open to invited readers only
http://jposti.blogspot.com/
It doesn't look like you have been invited to read this blog. If you think this is a mistake, you might want to contact the blog author and request an invitation."
First, let me start off with the following. Do we have any evidence that the initial content creators did not release this information from copyright through a Creative Commons license, or by virtue of being public content from a government agency of some kind?
Now let me tackle what I found on each article, going source by source.
Regarding Source #1, I found this campaign literature from Raja which is unrelated, except that it also references Source #1 and expressly cites it in the footnotes (numbered page 6, page 7 of the pdf).
According to the first page of Source #1, the content was prepared by The Pennsylvania Economy League, Central Division for Team Pennsylvania Foundation, both of which look like independent policy organizations from just a cursory examination.
Source #2 is attributed to "Pennsylvania School Boards Association", but I couldn't find the original article on their website.
What is on their website, at the bottom of the Terms of Use page, is a pretty unambiguous copyright and fair use claim, which basically says you can't reproduce their content electronically without their consent.
Nonetheless, I imagine they frequently provide content to PA school boards for the purpose of constituent communications and such. Hard to say if this is that.
Article #3 cites a couple different sources.
#3a, The Allegheny Conference, actually has social media sharing links at the top of the article, although those are probably going to point back to the original.
#3b came from The AIA - Pennsylvania Chapter, which (along with the Allegheny Conference) seems to be a private organization and not directly government affiliated.
#3c, on the other hand, is the good ol' MtL SD itself... which more than likely is going to be totally ok with this use of the content.
The fact that public access to the website has been taken away is a bit coincidentally suspicious. In the meanwhile, the Google cache still has the original material available.
listing of June posts
Article #1
Article #2
Article #3
I would encourage Jo to come forward with any agreements on the reuse and/or republication of this material. Since a lot of it is advocacy reporting, I wouldn't be surprised if the intent is for the material to be shared. I'd be surprised if the original authors are ok with a lack of attribution, but that's entirely going to depend on their particular dispositions.
It is an error to conflate copyright questions - permission and fair use and all that - with the ethical questions that are that the heart of a plagiarism inquiry.
Even if permission to reproduce material were present (or if permission was not needed, because the material was in the public domain, or fair use applied), failure to cite relevant sources, and failure to use quotation marks where appropriate, might be good grounds for concluding that the material was plagiarized.
Mike Madison
Matt,
I think the claims here are about plagiarism, not copyright infringement. Even if you have license to use a work, you still have to let your readers know that it’s not actually yours.
It’s not mere courtesy: knowing where information came from is essential to judging its reliability.
Cheers,
Tom
Mike, your academic expertise on this matter is welcome. Tom, you also seem to understand the finer points of the subject.
Can you two address Mr. Brown's concerns over on Blog Lebo? I tried, but he doesn't respect my opinion.
Also, I haven't seen any volunteers come forward to address this on September 12.
David Huston
I sent this email to Josephine Posti and the rest of the board yesterday and cc'ed Dr. Steinhauer. I have not heard back from any of them.
Josephine Posti,
I am sure that you have seen this by now, http://lebocitizens.blogspot.com/2011/08/where-is-president-postis-integrity.html If you have not, I am inviting you to comment on this post. I think you need to step down. As stated on the District website, there are consequences in the real world when one plagiarizes. You know better, Jo. I don't think the students will appreciate the fact that you, the School Board President, have been caught doing something that they are not allowed to do.
Elaine Gillen
Right - I suppose I am conflating the two. I should know better than to leave bait out for intellectual property wonks ;)
What I was trying to get at, and I'm not sure I know the appropriate term for, is the concept of express waiver of any form of IP ownership or required attribution.
Specifically, I'm thinking of "talking points" and other pre-canned advocacy content that gets doled out all over the place these days. I'm not sure what the considerations are there.
If someone (a policy group, a think tank, a public relations officer, a ghost writer) is genuinely granting permission to a public official to spill content as though it was their own, are there any concerns anymore?
I wanted to make sure we consider that first before we all make with the crying havoc and the letting slip the dogs of war, etc. Nothing I came across struck me as suggesting that's clearly (or clearly not) the case.
On a final note - hey Mike! How ya been? :)
Matt,
What you're missing is that there is nothing a content-provider can give to a writer, no license, no agreement, that can waive the writer's responsibilities to the reader. When a writer presents information in such a way that the reader will believe it the writer's original work, when in fact it's not, the reader is being denied knowledge that is essential to evaluating the reliability of the work and the credibility of the writer.
Because this kind of deception is generally harmful to the public, we give it a name ("plagiarism") and teach our children not to do it. And, in adult society, when professionals do it, they are often fired for it or otherwise stripped of social rank.
The only time you don't need to make people aware of the provenance of the information you're giving them is when they already know where it's coming from. Actors don't need to tell us that somebody else wrote their own lines; the President doesn't need to inform us that speechwriters helped him write his State of the Union Address: we already know.
But when we don't already know, we deserve to be told.
Cheers,
Tom
Center Court is back online after system maintenance.
David Huston
Make sure you all see the latest on Center Court blog. The link is on my fifth update of this post.
So basically, Josephine Posti has been caught, apologized, and corrected her blog. Life is back to normal. Is that how it works in the real world? Love the dig about how she is" flattered that such a consistent critic of the District has taken the time to read my blog and learn more about important topics like Act 1, the Separations Act and the consolidation of municipalities and school districts."
I agree with pretty much everything that Tom said above (@12:18).
I'd add only the following points, which may be pretty obvious:
Notwithstanding what well-intentioned high schools and high school teachers may say, there are very few hand-and-fast rules regarding when source-and-citation information needs to be given. I generally stick to the following: If you quote from another source -- a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, or more -- then you should put that material in quotation marks, and indicate a source. And you should not represent material as your own creation when readers (listeners, viewers, etc.) are likely believe that it is, in fact, your own creation. The challenge here is that this is a field of ethical standards, and ethical standards are often easy to state -- and difficult to apply. "Plagiarism" and copyright infringement are distinct things, for example, but they do intersect. Fiction and nonfiction (and different genres of each) differ in their citation norms and in the extent to which quoting or borrowing is ever appropriate.
For example, do different rules apply to "talking points" in the political sphere, because "talking points" are meant to be parrotted by compliant politicians? Maybe. Politicians are often held to lesser standards of originality and independence than "mere" citizens. (I think that's wrong, but that's a different kettle of fish.) So, if I learn that my elected official is (allegedly) plagiarizing "talking points" supplied by the local committee, or the national party, or a lobbying group, then I'm not going to be disappointed on the ground that the politician "cheated" or "stole" those words. I will be disappointed, however, that the politician isn't thinking for himself or herself and therefore may, wittingly or not, be duping the public.
As to other things --
@D. Huston -- I have no interest in getting into the merits of David Brown's comments. Which is because, @M. Wilson, I have been fine and busy *not* blogging about Mt. Lebanon!
Mike Madison
Glad to hear it, Mike. :)
And to clarify my own position:
I completely agree with Mike and Tom on one point. Regardless of the dubiousness of the remarks vis a vis plagiarism, the significance of what has occurred is a vital consideration.
It's disappointing to realize that what seemed like original and critical thinking was in fact not the former, and possibly not the latter either.
I would still like to know what, if any, attribution or republication restrictions the original content creators have on these works. I don't necessarily agree with the practice of unattributed "talking points." But it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find that this sort of thing is so commonplace as to be functionally "normal" among certain political circles.
Matt: I'm no lawyer but to attempt to answer your question ("I would still like to know what, if any, attribution or republication restrictions the original content creators have on these works.")
I would think the best they could achieve since Mrs. Posti didn't profit from the "use" would be to get her to take it down or name them as the source.
As I said earlier while I find the plagiarism disconcerting, the bigger issue for me is her choice "posts" which seem to skew to one side. But hey its a free country and she may post whatever she wishes.
WHat really bothers me is that when James Fraasch made "his" case and presented documentation publically there was a large clamoring for his head that neither Mrs. Posti or fellow board members showed much backbone in subdueing.
Dick Saunders
Well, one has to ask the question...
If this was a student who had done this with an assignment, what would the repercussions be?
You can argue that this is an "unofficial blog" and what the school board president does with her own time is her own time. But, it is intellectually dishonest to take the work of others and present it as your own - no matter what the legal license is on that work.
Teachers are fired for Facebook postings that occur on their own time. Does a school board member deserve to be removed from office for intellectual dishonesty on a blog that they manage in their own time? The voters will probably have to wait until 2013 to do that.
Jack, we wouldn't have to wait until 2013 for some sort of action whether it be censure, impeachment or ouster from the board if the remaining board members had any ethos!
Dick Saunders
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