If you live in California and watch television at all, you’ve likely seen Meg Whitman’s current campaign ad. The 33 second video is entitled, “The Facts: Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown.” In this day and age of so much hyperbole and distortion, a political candidate putting together an ad based on facts would be something truly rare. So, does Meg Whitman deserve some accolades? The answer really depends on her “facts?”

Whitman’s “Fact” number one: “Brown promised to improve schools, but the dropout rate increased 50% and the State had to take over the schools.”

The numbers behind this “fact” aren’t given, but according to the California Department of Education’s Ed-Data website, the number of dropouts in Oakland Unified School District for the year Brown took office (98-99) was 846. During his last full year as mayor (05-06) the number had climbed by 11% to 941. But the following year (06-07), one in which Brown left office halfway through, dropouts did shoot up to 1384 — a whopping 64% jump. That’s a staggering leap for a single year. Well . . . as it turns out, it was also the first year that districts throughout the State were required to use Statewide Student Identifiers (SSID) for their reports. The Ed-Data site states that prior to 2007, dropout numbers were mere estimates, and that “trend data is not meaningful.”

Could Whitman’s campaign have just overlooked the warning about dropout data? That’s possible, but when you also consider that the Academic Performance Index (API) scores for the district climbed every year from inception through the end of Brown’s term: 2003: 596; 2004: 605; 2005: 634; 2006: 653; 2007: 658, you might conclude that the distortion is intentional. If you also evaluate the second part of Whitman’s claim, taking into consideration that the State take-over was in response to the $82 million debt incurred by the independent government body that presided over the district, completely outside of Brown’s control, you would likely remove all doubt.

Whitman’s “Fact” number two: “The city controller found employees paid for 22,000 hours they never worked.”

This time, at least the source of the figure is known. It comes from a wrongful termination lawsuit filed by Larae Brown, the former Oakland city controller, in 2008. There is a trial pending. But according to City Auditor Courtney Ruby, an independent audit performed in 2007 showed no such finding. Likewise, officials in the city administrator’s office said, “We have no data to support that claim.”

Obviously, in the Whitman world an unsubstantiated accusation foisted by a former employee with a grudge sufficiently constitutes a “fact.” This is actually valuable information for anyone interested in evaluating the facts regarding Meg Whitman’s character.

Whitman’s “Fact” number three: “Brown promised to cut crime, but murders doubled making Oakland the fourth most dangerous city in America.”

Oddly enough, this is Whitman’s most veracious claim — and it’s a half-truth. The number of murders did escalate during Brown’s tenure, from 72 in 1998 to 145 in 2006. But the murder rate is only one factor to be considered in determining the relative danger or safety associated with a city. The rest of the story, the part Meg Whitman doesn’t want to mention about Oakland, is that overall crime dropped by 13% while Brown was in office. There were nearly 5,000 fewer crimes reported in 2006 than in 1998, and amongst those that dropped were several other of the violent variety, like rape and assault.

So, what about those accolades? The Whitman ad isn’t completely devoid of factual data, but to present it as an assemblage of facts is a distortion of the highest degree. The ad is a patent perversion of the truth that mostly twists questionable “facts” into outrageously false assertions. In the end, the only fact about Whitman’s ad that rings true is that it can safely be considered 99% fact-free.

A book could be written about what Meg Whitman doesn’t know about government, the public sector in general and most specifically, public education. But the fact is that she wants the governor’s office and is willing to buy, lie and pander to get it. Unfortunately for Ms. Whitman, the price seems to keep rising. Maybe it’s pressure from Jerry Brown, or perhaps just a desire to overwhelm Californians with media blitz, but whatever the case, billionaire Whitman upped the ante on Friday by adding another $13 million in personal funds to her campaign chest.

Whitman, who has said that she’s willing to spend up to $150 million to buy the top seat in California’s government, has invested $104 million to date. Still $5.2 million short of the self-funding record set by Michael Bloomberg, she is outspending her Democratic opponent at a dramatic rate. Although Jerry Brown has accumulated $24 million in campaign funds, his spending to date is a miserly $700,000.

Some in the Brown camp are concerned about his frugal ways, and believe that he should jump center ring and grapple in the Whitman-financed mud wrestling. Many Brown supporters are concerned that Whitman’s continuous half-truth and distortion based assault may cause irreversible damage. They cite instances like her present illegitimate attempt to associate Brown’s record as Oakland’s mayor with the pension and pay scandals in Bell, CA as evidence that she must be rebutted. They argue that Brown needs to respond to Whitman’s blatant distortions, like her treating as fact, claims made by a fired city controller that City of Oakland employees were paid for thousands of hours that were not worked.

Other Brown supporters find comfort in the fact that even Whitman’s own consultants know that, despite all the money they’re spending, she’s not making any real progress. They contend that there’s plenty of time to explain that crime did not increase in Oakland under Brown, or how the tax increases she blames on Brown were actually approved by 70% of voters. They argue that she may have oversaturated the media with her abundant ads, and that the prudent tack may well be to let her continue the negative campaigning. So, for now, the Brown campaign is waiting and watching Whitman spend her millions, all the while revealing herself as the out-of-touch, mudslinging, wealthy panderer she is.

But just who Meg Whitman is may be a bit difficult to determine. She’s flip-flopped back and forth on offshore drilling, so her position likely depends on when it’s rendered. Her position on immigration is even more ephemeral, seeming to be tailored to whatever she thinks the current audience wants to hear: when interviewed on American Morning News this past July 28, Whitman stated that Arizona’s SB1070 should stand, but her Spanish language media ads that ran earlier said that she was opposed to the Arizona law.

The truth of the matter is that anyone who doesn’t question Whitman’s character must be either ignorant, in denial or as unscrupulous as she. And one does not have to look far for answers. Even at eBay, Whitman’s record was tarnished with claims of dishonesty, where she resigned her post there under charges of insider trading brought by her own shareholders. She denies the allegations, but admits to making money from “spinning” – an activity since rendered explicitly illegal by the SEC. The suit brought by eBay shareholders was settled and along with the others charged, Whitman paid $3 million.

Meg Whitman has a plan for California, but voters need to beware that Meg does what benefits Meg. In large part, she stands for what California stands against and vice versa. She is strongly against Prop-19; she’s neutral on Prop-23, which is sponsored by two Texas Oil giants, but she supports a suspension of AB32, which would have a similar effect in lifting pollution standards. While at Goldman Sachs, she was even a big supporter of the huge bonuses for which Wall Street is now infamous.

In the final analysis, Meg Whitman is a billionaire, and she’s not likely to change her mega-wealthy patterns of behavior —  like hiding profits in the Cayman Islands — just because she becomes Governor of California. She’s used to getting what she wants, and she wants to run this state. The trouble is that from the perspective of an average Californian, she’s likely to run it straight into the ground.

Like her or not, there is one good thing about Meg Whitman – she always has a plan, and she’s not afraid to share it. Of course, having a plan is only one element of sound leadership. There is also the persnickety little issue of plan quality. And though the Whitman plan for jobs and spending cuts is largely based on failed assumptions, her plan to fix education is at best rooted in complete ignorance.

This is not to say that the Whitman plan is completely without substance, because it’s not. She does support efforts to simplify the ridiculously complex structure of categorical funding, which currently includes more than 50 separate buckets, that collectively place a significant accounting burden on educational agencies. Whitman doesn’t offer much detail on what the new structure would look like, but streamlining the model would without doubt reduce administrative overhead.

Whitman also advocates for meritorious compensation for teachers, a commendable reform embraced by many, including President Obama. But even as she advances the benefit of such a program, she shows her naïveté regarding education by concurrently criticizing the overhead expenditures that would include the systems required to administer merit pay and the personnel needed to make it effective.

As so many others outside of education are so prone to do, Meg Whitman fails to understand what it takes to provide high quality education. If she wants merit pay for teachers, then she damn well better ensure adequate staffing of competent administrators to evaluate performance and oversee operations. If she wants to see test scores climb, then she better figure out that it takes much more than teachers to make a school system shine.

Meg Whitman is a classic business type who thinks that a production mentality will increase the efficiency of schools, and while this is true in certain support areas, when it comes to the delivery of instruction, less production and more individual customization is the answer. Whitman ridicules California public schools for having only 60% of spending reach the classroom, but as with most of the Red Queen’s critiques, she only tells part of the story. In fact, the most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) show the national average to be less than 1% higher at 60.9%.

It is this type of half-truth that weaves throughout all of Whitman’s press that should beg for questioning of not only her proposals but here motivations as well. As evidenced by the lies that pollute her campaign ads maligning the political record of Jerry Brown, Ms. Whitman really seems to have difficulty dealing with truthfulness.

Whitman champions charter schools as part of her plan to “fix education.” She does this as if they were some magic key to improved learning, yet the most definitive study yet on the matter, completed in 2009 by Stanford University, showed otherwise. Charters are often less expensive than their normal public school counterparts, which I’m sure pleases Whitman, but when it comes to learning results, the study identified only 17% of  charters in the 15 states studied showed improved results. Compare that with the 37% where results were, “significantly worse than their student would have realized had they remained in traditional public schools.”

Is this the type of “fix” education in California needs?

The Whitman plan also advances a system of school grading to be used so that, “parents can easily understand how well their children’s school is performing.” Her argument for the need is based on better test scores in the State of Florida, who pioneered the system. Of course California’s scores have improved recently at an even faster rate, and then there’s that little matter of Florida spending nearly $900 more per pupil in regionally adjusted dollars.

Queen Meg has solutions for underperforming schools too, like “school closures and staff replacement.” Oh yes, Whitman has lots of ideas, but what she really needs is a clue! And she might start with looking at the impact of location on school performance, or the demographics of the parents and community. She might want to consider that most of the best teachers don’t want to work where they’re needed most, and then she could work toward some real solutions, on devising real plans to address real issues.

The final installment on Meg Whitman to follow shortly.