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Key L.A. Unified staff positions are funded privately

Ohanian Comment: The LA Times introduces the article below with this statement: Getting the Broad Foundation to pay for executives is a financial boon to the district but poses issues of transparency and the donors' stances on reform.

There are a whole lot of issues posed here. Read on.

Birds of a Feather. . .



• Matt Hill, who spent 3.5 years in Oakland as a Broad resident, has his own page at the Center for American Progress, where a paper he co-authored is posted.
  
  I'll forgo my usual rant about the Center for American Progress. Is it enough to note that it is headed by John Podesta? Just put 'American Progress' into a search on this site if you're in the mood for a rant or two. . . or 95. Just remember, they wrote Senator Obama's first speech on education (2005), where he laid out plans for more rigorous testing, merit pay, and so on. And for those who are interested in tax forms, take a look at the Broad Foundation contributions to the Center for American Progress. . . oops, this is starting to look like a rant.



• from Philanthropy Today:
  

  
  Mr. Broad, who has taken a leading role in L.A. education-overhaul efforts, pays the salary of Matt Hill, a product of a Broad-paid training academy for school administrators who manages a high-profile program to turn over new and underperforming schools to other organizations.
  




• from Flypaper--Thomas Fordham Foundation Gadfly team, lead by Chester Finn
  

  
  by Stafford Palmeri, Dec. 17. 2009
  . . .a number of high-level LAUSD positions are being privately funded. Yes, that means the city saves the money that would otherwise be going towards their salaries, some of which top $100,000 per annum (before benefits). But it also means that the funders have some say in the role those individuals play and on a bigger level, district policy as a whole. I don’t mean to imply that this influence is a negative thing; to the contrary, the dollars of Eli Broad, for example, which fund the salary of Matt Hill, whose job it is to oversee LAUSD's school turnaround/outsourcing project, have propelled this particular worthy initiative.




• from Howard Blume's LA Times blog. Interesting to see what gets left out of the paper.
  

  
  Other L.A. Unified senior managers also went through Broad-funded training. Parker Hudnut is the recently hired executive director of the district’s innovation and charter division. Yumi Takahashi is the budget director. The district pays for these positions, which were filled through the normal hiring process.
  
  Like them, Hill is an alumnus of the Broad Residency in Urban Education, a two-year program that places recent master's degree graduates into managerial positions in urban school districts. During the residency, the foundation pays 50% of a participant’s salary the first year and 25% the second year.
  Residents also receive intensive training. . . .
  
  Current Broad residents occupy key positions with two local charter school management organizations, Green Dot Public Schools and ICEF Public Schools. A vigorous backer of charter schools, Broad also has provided grants totaling about $58 million to local charter schools and organizations that assist them. Charters are independently managed public schools that are free from some regulations that apply to traditional schools.
  
  There’s also a Broad stamp on the leadership of the nonprofit that manages 11 schools for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The mayor’s nonprofit, called the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, is headed by Chief Executive (and former Broad resident) Marshall Tuck. Its chief operating officer is current resident Mark Kleger-Heine. And the superintendent of instruction is Angela Bass, who attended the Broad Superintendents Academy, a 10-month program that trains working CEOs and other top executives from business, nonprofit, military, government and education backgrounds to lead urban school systems.
  
  Another graduate of the superintendent’s academy is former L.A. Unified official Kathi Littmann, who headed the district’s innovation division.





• According to the the LA Daily News, Hill's salary is $160,000.



• Don't miss the Broad Foundation Facebook page, where they issue an invitation to join them in DC for appetizers, drinks, and information--at the Bank of America Penthouse. It's called an Education Networking Event--and Jim Shelton, a member of U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's staff is the keynoter. You know, Jim Shelton, former Program Director, Education Division at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
  

  
  Come join us for appetizers, drinks and the chance to:
  • learn about career opportunities for professionals at education organizations, DC Public Schools, and charter schools
  • meet and network with like-minded mid-career professionals in your city
  • hear from Obama administration keynote Jim Shelton, Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education for Innovation and Improvement
  
  Date/Time: Thursday, January 14, 2010, 6:30 – 9:00 pm
  Location: Bank of America, 730 15th Street N.W. 10th Floor Penthouse Washington DC 20005
  
  Expected Participating Organizations: The Broad Residency (now accepting applications, also see BROAD RESIDENCY DESCRIPTION below), Net Impact, Teach For America, Education Pioneers, Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), DC Public Schools, New Leaders for New Schools, The New Teacher Project.
  



• Here's the career path of Jim Shelton currently Assistant Deputy Secretary of Education for Innovation and Improvement in Arne Duncan's US Department of Education. According to his bio at the DOE, this job involves "managing a portfolio that includes most of the Department's competitive teacher quality, school choice and learning technology programs, housed in the Office of Innovation and Improvement."
  

  
  

  B.S. degree in computer science in 1989 from Morehouse College

  
  

  Masters degrees in Business Administration and Education from Stanford

  
  

  1993-1998: senior management consultant McKinsey & Company

  
  

  Knowledge Universe

  
  

  co-founded LearnNow, acquired by Edison/li>
  

  Launched consulting division of Edison Schools

  
  

  NewSchools Venture Fund's East Coast Partner.

  
  


Ken Libby provided more info on Shelton over at Schools Matter. We have to keep reminding ourselves of this crap so that when we see the names in so-called news accounts, we can bring a little reality to the tale. Admittedly, Shelton's name doesn't even appear in the account below, but his career path helps us understand the fact that there aren't even two degrees of separation between the U. S. Department of Education and the privatization of Los Angeles schools. . . and Chicago. . . and New Orleans. . . and Detroit. . . and New York City. YOU may be next.


By Howard Blume

Private money is paying for key senior staff positions in the Los Angeles Unified School District -- providing needed expertise at a bargain rate, but also raising questions about transparency and the direction of reforms in the nation's second-largest school system.

The highest-level outside-funded position belongs to Matt Hill, whose salary is covered by the foundation of billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad. Hill is overseeing the district's high-profile effort through which groups inside or outside L.A. Unified could take over new and low-performing schools.

The pay of more than a dozen others is funded by a nearly $4.4-million grant from the Wasserman Foundation, a $1.2-million grant from the Walton Family Foundation and smaller amounts from the Hewlett and the Ford foundations.

These employees and consultants are developing a new system to evaluate teachers and administrators; streamlining district operations; and developing a more transparent budget and enhanced student data.

All are ultimately under the supervision of Supt. Ramon C. Cortines, who was unavailable for comment Tuesday but insisted recently that he's in full control of the newcomers and the agenda.

"It started with Supt. Cortines having a conversation with Mr. Broad," said Hill, who began working for L.A. Unified nearly a year ago. "The superintendent said, 'This is everything I want to do in the district.' And Mr. Broad said, 'You need help.' "

Cortines and Broad have a longstanding relationship: Cortines helped Broad develop an academy to train school district leaders, and both have supported local arts-related causes. But Broad has recently questioned whether Cortines, now one year into the top job, has moved with sufficient boldness at L.A. Unified, both say.

Cortines has been hampered by a budget crisis that shrank his staff and limited new hires.

Broad offered to pay for Hill, a Broad academy graduate who had helped manage school reforms in Oakland. It's common for the foundation to match people it has trained with districts, and initially to help pay for it, said Dan Katzir, the foundation's managing director. Hill's salary is $160,000; the district funds his benefits.

Cortines also approached other foundations, Hill said. "If there was not funding, it would fall on existing staff taking on day-to-day operations and trying to transform the district at the same time," he said. "It would move a lot slower."

Hill oversees the school-control project that the Board of Education approved in August. The bidders for the 30 campuses include charter schools, and Broad's foundation has provided millions locally to spur such schools' growth. But the district, Hill and Broad's foundation insist there's a firewall between the funding for Hill and his work.

To former Principal Judith Perez, hiring top-level officials with outside money suggests a distrust of internal talent and an undervaluing of institutional memory. The president of Associated Administrators of Los Angeles, she also voiced concern about the Wal-Mart-endowed Walton Family Foundation, which has supported publicly funded scholarships for low-income children to attend private schools.

Most of the Walton money that L.A. Unified receives pays for research to help develop a data system to determine which schools and programs and, possibly, which teachers are most effective.

The foundation sees its support of reform in L.A. Unified as giving "more power and choice to parents who have been forced to send their children to low-performing schools," said Jim Blew, Walton's director for K-12 education reform.

The Wasserman Foundation, headed by entertainment/sports entrepreneur Casey Wasserman, pays for instructional officer Geno Flores ($150,000), teacher-effectiveness advisor Drew Furedi ($128,000) and other posts related to finding cost savings and developing a new budgeting system.

The closest past parallel might be the influx, in the late 1990s, of pro bono advisors from the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. who secretly advised then-Supt. Ruben Zacarias. They also had ties to former Mayor Richard Riordan and other district critics, who eventually became disenchanted with Zacarias. Riordan helped elect a new school-board majority, which quickly replaced the veteran educator.

The consultants were "very positive, very helpful," Zacarias said Tuesday. "At the same time I understood that the mayor had referred them to me. I was aware they were a conduit of information for other people."

He added: "Any time you bring in people funded from the outside you have to be aware that they have allegiance to the outside interest. It's up to Cortines to be aware of the perspectives."

— Howard Blume
Los Angeles Times
2009-12-16
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lausd16-2009dec16,0,298804.story

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