Local blogger scams Richardson readers with a fake story that implied that Richardson High School had been declared “academically unacceptable” by the TEA Conclusion A local blogger posted a story that implied that Richardson High School had been deemed "academically unacceptable" by the Texas Education Agency. Not only is this not true, but the evidence from his website is that he knew that this was not true. On April Fools Day, this sort of behavior might be tolerated, but for the rest of the year, it looks like the blogger first blundered, then tried to mislead the public in the hopes of being able to say "gotcha!" when he revealed his deceit. This whole episode is further proof that nothing that this blogger posts should be taken seriously. The Story On Monday, December 12, 2011, a local anti-Richardson blogger posted a story in which he said "The big news today for the RISD is RHS has made it to the bottom of the list, the only RISD school to do so. Time for "No Pass-No Play Sports" at RHS?" He based this story on a report from the Texas Education Agency which listed all the schools state-wide that had been rated “academically unacceptable” – see the report at the TEA website. The relevant section of the report can be seen here: Within a few hours, readers of his blog posted comments pointing out that the report referred to "Richards ISD", not "Richardson ISD", Richards, Texas, being a small town between Bryan and Huntsville. Residents in Richardson naturally read "RISD" as a reference to the Richardson Independent School District, as did RumorCheck. After 18 hours had passed and several readers pointed out this error with no obvious response from the blogger, RumorCheck issued a "breaking news item" to warn Richardson residents that the story implying that Richardson High School was academically unacceptable was not true. But the story does not stop there. Was the deception deliberate? More than 24 hours after the initial posting by the blogger, he removed the story altogether, supporting the thought that he now realized that the story was not true. However, another Richardson blogger, the sharp-eyed Mark Steger, noticed that the original blogger never actually used the word "Richardson" in his posting. Mr. Steger wondered in an email to RumorCheck if the original blogger knew all along that "RICHARDS ISD" referred to the school district in Richards, Texas. Armed with that thought, RumorCheck went to work again. Although the original blog entry had been taken down by the original anti-Richardson blogger, RumorCheck found two cached entries via Google. The first cached entry dated from Monday, December 12, 2011, at 22:24:49 GMT (4:24 p.m. Richardson time) - the original posting Note that there are no hypertext links for "RISD" in the first paragraph. But Google has another cached entry for this page, dated Tuesday, December 13, 2011, at 15:07:21 GMT (9:07 a.m. Richardson time). This time, the two references to "RISD" in the first paragraph have hypertext links. Here is the actual paragraph with hypertext links: “The big news today for the RISD is RHS has made it to the bottom of the list, the only RISD school to do so. Time for "No Pass-No Play Sports" at RHS?” If you look at the hypertext link for the two references to "RISD", you will see that the hypertext link is actually to the Richards ISD website (www.richardsisd.net), not to the RISD website (www.risd.org). His original posting did not have any hypertext links, yet they were subsequently added. How can we explain this? The simplest explanation is the most likely. At 4:24 p.m. Monday afternoon, the blogger made the original post, believing that the TEA report referred to Richardson High School. At 5:15 p.m. Monday afternoon, an anonymous poster responded (likely the blogger himself) making negative references to RISD's previous superintendent and the Catholic Church. At 8:50 p.m. Monday evening, an anonymous poster pointed out that the TEA report referred to Richards ISD, not Richardson. At 7:58 a.m. Tuesday morning, an anonymous poster suggested that the blogger might want to remove the post altogether. At 8:09 a.m. Tuesday morning, an anonymous poster wrote "cleaver[sic]. i too thought this was referencing the richardson school district until i clicked on the risd link." Sometime before 9:07 a.m., Tuesday morning, the anti-Richardson blogger modified his original posting to add the links to the two phrases "RISD" in the first paragraph, to point to Richards ISD, as well as several other changes (see below). It seems likely that the comment made at 8:09 a.m. was made by the blogger himself, shortly after he realized his error and therefore added the hypertext links to the two RISD phrases in the first paragraph. After adding the links, he needed to draw attention to them (since the earlier posters would not have seen them). Why would he have made this change? The most likely explanation is that he wanted to cover up the fact that he misread the original report as "Richardson", and by putting in the links to Richards ISD, he could claim that this is what he meant all along - and that everyone else misread it. But thanks to Google's archive, we know the truth - that there were no links for "RISD" when he initially made the post, and that he surreptitiously added the links later to cover up his mistake. And why would he add the links instead of just removing the erroneous article (which he eventually did sometime between late Tuesday night and early Wednesday morning)? The most likely possibility is that he wanted to be able to say "gotcha" when people (and RumorCheck) "corrected" him by pointing out that he identified the wrong school. He could came back and say "gotcha" because he never said the word "Richardson", and having added the links to the correct school website, he could claim that he meant Richards ISD all along... (Note that adding the hypertext links were not the only changes that the blogger made; he corrected two typos and added a new sentence at the end. This is why we are confident that there were no hypertext links in the initial posting but the links were added later after he realized his mistake.) Last Laugh on the Blogger But the last laugh is actually on the blogger…because "RISD" does not refer to "Richards ISD" and "RHS" does not refer to "Richards High School". Go ahead and look at the Richards ISD website – the website never refers to Richards High School as "RHS" and the website always refers to the school district as "Richards ISD". The only exception is found in a letter from two years ago by the principal who happens to make a passing reference to the "entire RISD staff". Otherwise, every reference on the website is to "Richards ISD" or "Richards Independent School District". Compare this to the Richardson Independent School District website where the phrase "RISD" is used literally thousands of times. Even in Richards, Texas, "RISD" doesn’t mean the Richards ISD, and the blogger was wrong to imply that it does. Thanks to Google, we now know that the blogger made the initial mistake, then tried to cover it up, and eventually decided to delete the entire posting anyway. Fortunately for the residents of Richardson, RumorCheck, with help from blogger Mark Steger, has dug out the truth. Summary The blogger, for reasons that escape any sane explanation other than simple blundering, decided to post a reference on his blog that implied that Richardson High School had been deemed "academically unacceptable" by the Texas Education Agency. Even if he did not realize at first that this was not true, it appears that he eventually realized that the TEA report actually referred to the high school in Richards, Texas, between Bryan and Huntsville, and he tried to cover his tracks by adding hypertext links to the right school district. We cannot think of a good reason why he would have added the links other than a desire to say "gotcha!" when he would have explained that he never referred to Richardson in his story, and that everyone misread what he said. However, the fact is that he did deceive the public because the Richards ISD does not use "RISD" as an abbreviation for the school system, and does not use "RHS" as an abbreviation for the high school. Therefore, readers were right to read "RISD" as "Richardson Independent School District", which is just what the blogger intended. Other than on April Fools Day, there is no good reason for any blogger to engage in this nonsense. Through a combination of his own error and subsequent cover-up, the blogger deliberately tried to mislead the public and "diss" the Richardson Independent School District at the same time…thus wasting everyone's time. Readers should remember this on any future occasions when they might be inclined to take seriously anything he says.   William J. 'Bill' McCalpin Richardson, Texas ***Postscript December 14, 2011*** A typo was corrected in the second paragraph of "Conclusion" (the changed word is underlined).