I am a music teacher at FCPS. This site is mentioned on one of the pro-meals tax sites, and has also been discussed internally at FCPS.
I had the misfortune of attending one of Eric Jensen's so-called poverty workshops.
In it, he advanced his theory of the "emotional keyboard" which states, in brief, that more emotions are better than fewer emotions. He extended this to music, and claimed that more notes were better than fewer notes.
I challenged him on this. I asked if he thought that the 12 note chromatic scale (C-C#/Db-D-D#/Eb-E-F-F#/Gb-G-G#-A-A#/Bb-B-C) is somehow superior to the 8 note diatonic scale (C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C) and the five note penatonic scale (C-D-E-G-A-C).
I asked him if he thought that a serial composition (where each of the 12 notes in the chromatic scale) is somehow superior to a diatonic composition (based on the 8 note scale) or a pentatonic composition. I advised him that the pentatonic scale is based on acoustic principles, and is found in the musics of most of the world's cultures.
Jensen seemed flummoxed by this. He could not name a single serial composition, and was utterly unfamiliar with the nature-and ubiquity-of the pentatonic scale.
His arguments about "more is better" just did not hold water.
As a result, I started looking into Jensen. Since I know that FCPS does not like dissent, I had a friend do some FOIA requests. I have attached some of the documents.
You'll see the response from the FCPS FOIA office. Jensen got $17,000 for a 2 day training and $26,000 for a three day training. This is probably where the $9,000/day figure comes from. He does not do this year round, but he does come to Fairfax regularly.
Then there are the sole source justifications. The first one, dated July 22, 2011 (Jensen has been "with us" for a while, and, as you can see, his current contract runs through August 2016) makes valid statements about the need for such training, but falls rather flat (sorry for the musical pun) when it comes to justifying Jensen, especially since most of his "research" seems to consist of material from non-scholarly sources and his own theories, such as the emotional keyboard.
The second one states that competition for certain types of training is not practical. It goes on to extol Jensen's expertise in poverty. As is well documented, Jensen has a bachelor's degree in English, a master's degree in organizational development and a Ph.D. in human development. The two graduate degrees were awarded by the Fielding Graduate Institute of California. While accredited, the school is not without controversy.
It seems to me that someone with an extensive background in the study of poverty would have conducted fieldwork in an impoverished environment. If you examine Fielding's website, it is not clear that either degree would include such fieldwork. Intrigued by this, I had the same friend who did the FOIA contact Jensen and ask about his qualifications in this area. The friend, who is from the UK, asked Jensen what he thought about Paul Harrison's Inside the Inner City, a seminal work on poverty based on fieldwork in London. Jensen had never heard of it, and was, in fact, not interested in learning about it or Harrison's work.
The same friend asked Jensen about his neuroscience credentials. Jensen mentioned his Ph.D. degree. Once again, a visit to the Fielding website is instructive. There is no neuroscience coursework in the human development curriculum. Since Fielding is a nonresidential school, it is not clear how they could provide laboratory instruction in the field.
From my perspective as a musician and music teacher, Jensen has no idea what he is talking about. His music/poverty theory seems fundamentally flawed. I question the relevance of his credentials to his supposed areas of expertise. I also question the uniqueness of his qualifications, as well as the amount that he is paid.
I found his training to be worse than useless. Yes, I know poverty is an issue in education, but I knew that before his training. I failed to see how any of his platitudes could be used in a classroom context. I questioned how emphasizing the chromatic scale could be beneficial, especially when many common songs (e.g., Old Maconald Had A Farm, Auld Lang Syne) and popular songs (e.g., Stairway to Heaven) use the pentatonic scale.
No, I did not forget, here are the documents (sorry they are so light but that's how they came):
Attachments: