I was saddened to learn earlier this month that Douglas Reeves, the well-known author and education consultant, has been charged with felony indecent assault stemming from an alleged 2006 incident. Patch.com reports that Reeves
is alleged to have touched a private area of the child [a 9-year-old girl] in 2006, according to the court file. The incident was alleged to have happened while the girl and her family stayed at the Reeves home on a trip...
While Reeves is well-known in the education world, I have found only two brief local news stories (here and here) on the case, which will be sealed to protect the identity of the victim. Reeves had a pretrial hearing earlier today, but I’ve been unable to find any details online.
It’s hard to overstate the impact Reeves had on education in the US. His work on accountability (even the “90/90/90 schools” research which I’ve previously criticized) sharpened educators’ focus on measuring the right things and holding ourselves accountable for the results we achieve with students. With his bowtie and sharp, data-rich presentations, Reeves was a fixture at national education conferences.
I’m speaking in the past tense because it appears that Reeves will be stepping out of his public role at the Leadership and Learning Center, which he founded. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has owned the Leadership and Learning Center since early 2011, and it appears that Reeves has been fired from his role as CEO as a result of the charges he currently faces. He is conspicuously absent from the Center’s lists of staff and consultants, though no press releases on the firing or information about his successor seem to be available.
It’s hard to know what to hope for in a case like this, other than that it’s not true. While the allegations are some six years old, they apparently have enough credibility to warrant criminal prosecution and the end of Reeves’ public career. I normally wouldn’t write about a non-education issue like these charges, but since the case has received so little coverage, and because Reeves’ work has been so influential, I thought it was important to note why he is more or less disappearing from the public scene. Please let me know if you have more information.