Was “Global Citizen” really chosen by the community?
Did you participate in or even know about the ThoughtExchange? If you’re like most Big Spring taxpayers, the answer is probably no. In fact, many people didn’t even realize that Global Citizen was part of the education conversation until recently. The majority of participants were teachers and students, with input guided primarily by instructors. Very few actual taxpayers were involved in the ThoughtExchange process.
The ThoughtExchange
So, what exactly was the ThoughtExchange, and what were its results? The ThoughtExchange was essentially a social media-style platform where participants could post ideas and vote on others’ submissions. But here’s the issue: most of the community had no idea it was happening or that it was important.
Results
The results were as follows: 4,449 thoughts were shared by 1,891 participants. The top-ranked idea, according to the algorithm had 16 participants and, was “Life skills like money management, budgeting, how to think critically, and other basic real-life skills.” Interestingly, Global Citizen was never mentioned in this top-ranking submission. In fact, it only appeared once in the entire exchange, with just 9 participants engaging with it, and it ranked a low 111th place.
Issues Found
Now, this raises a red flag. How could a submission that only garnered 16 participants be the top ranking one? It doesn’t add up. Upon further inspection, I discovered that Life Skills had multiple posts across the platform. Each post with a similar theme had its own group of participants and its own ranking. When you total all of those individual submissions about Life Skills, the number of participants adds up to approximately 1,111. Meanwhile, Global Citizen, which only appeared once, had only 9 participants.
Global Citizen was not the top choice
So here’s the crux of the issue: Global Citizen barely registered in the ThoughtExchange, ranking near the very bottom in terms of participants, yet it was prominently featured at the top of the “Profile of a Graduate.” Why did this happen? Why was the community misled by a group and the previous administration?
Life Skills
In short, the community didn’t choose Global Citizen — they overwhelmingly chose Life Skills. The data doesn’t lie.