How many times have we heard that the a Chicago Public Schools are broke? Isn’t that why CPS laid off thousands of teachers and closed 50 elementary schools?
But wait: this week, CPS gave a $20 million no-bid contract to a for-profit corporation called Supes Academy to train principals.
CPS Superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett worked for Supes Academy until April 2012.
“The size and the circumstances surrounding the contract have raised eyebrows among some outside observers. The contract with Wilmette-based Supes Academy is by far the largest no-bid contract awarded in at least the past three years, according to a Catalyst Chicago analysis of board documents. In addition, CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett worked for the company as a coach up until the time she came on board at CPS as a consultant.
“There’s also conflicting information about Byrd-Bennett’s involvement with another company owned by the same individuals who run the Supes Academy.
“Andy Shaw, president and CEO of the Better Government Association, says that a large, no-bid contract such as this one deserves scrutiny.”
Scrutiny? I’ll say. Chicago has several excellent institutions of higher education that could have done the same job for far less money. Was this a necessary expenditure at a time when the schools don’t have enough teachers and at being closed, allegedly to save money?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
it seems A. Weiner hasn’t learned because there is no concept of “shame” in his vocabulary but neither has the Governor of VA who thinks that a Rolex watch is worth foregoing his options for being a presdential candidate Sorry folks but this
“psychometric fudge” pulled by Bennet and his wife’s job with charters is just
“blowing my mind” to use the vernacular (is that jive talk? or macho? I don’t know). I have been keeping a 20 year documentary on the Bulger Curve in Massachusetts. Some interesting parallels. But if you are going to steal public funds , why make it in the tens of thousands when you could fathom so much more and convince the public you are “saving money” or “saving the schools for kids” while you feather your own nest.
I think it was on this blog I read “let me write your tests and it won’t matter who writes your lyrics, your sonnets, your poetry or plays.” (if anyone has that source I would like to write it down.
This superintendent’s actions are about AS TRANSPARENT AS YOU CAN GET! The biggest surprise is wondering WHY THERE IS NO MASSIVE OUTRAGE. At the SOS rally in DC a few years ago, the mantra being shouted as teachers held their signs against what was happening was, “This is what democracy looks like…” Have Americans lost sight of what democracy looks like? Where is the outrage by the Chicago public?
Supes Academy-A mini Broad Academy collecting 20 million from the education of Chicago’s students to train little Broadies. The cronyism and stealing of taxpayer funds meant for Education is sickening, how did we let it get this far?
For-profit schools are so controversial and discredited that they had to rename them, for marketing purposes. They now call them “private sector” schools. There have been at least 3 investigations into the industry in Congress. The US put in a new law in 2009 designed to regulate the for-profits more stringently. Unfortunately, the law was weakened at the “rule writing” stage, or in other words it was watered down when it reached Arne Duncan’s DOE.
All that, and reformers in Chicago are contracting with a for-profit.
This is what happened to the new regulations on for-profit colleges and “academies” after lobbyists for the industry got to Duncan:
For-profit colleges, which have spent millions fighting the Education Department’s proposed “gainful employment” regulations, have won some major concessions in the final rule, due out today.
The changes, which give colleges more time and ways to meet the rule’s benchmarks, are expected to significantly reduce the number of programs that would be penalized by the department.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said the extension was designed to give programs “every opportunity to reform themselves.”
“This was not about gotcha,” he told reporters in a conference call after the stock markets closed Wednesday. “This gives folks at the margins time to get their act together, but at the end of the day, does not let them off the hook.”
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Profit-Colleges-Win-Major/127744/
It completely lets them off the hook, BTW. They’re already gaming even this weak rule.
Well a douche bag IS a douche bag. I why don’t people GET this?
We keep hearing the word privatization, when the correct word should be profitization.
Some difference. After all, it’s not the public that’s profiting off these “reforms”, and the privatizers aren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts.
Dick Durbin has been a leader in investigating for-profit colleges and training programs. If someone is in Illinois, it might be worthwhile getting in touch with your Senator and asking him why a no-bid contract went out to a for-profit, when Illinois surely has many public colleges and training programs.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/blog/dick_durbin_vs_forprofit_colle.php
http://www.durbin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/videos?ID=fc62cf7a-57a4-4df4-95c1-7cbe67960be1
One of the Chicago bloggers (one of the Klonsky brothers, maybe?) reported that the sessions of this SUPES principal training have actually been really good. That’s because the presenters had no idea what they were doing, so the principals took it over and ran it themselves. Money well spent.
Dienne, if you have a link, I’d like to read about this. Thank you.
It doesn’t surprise me because when Babara Byrd-Bennett was in Detroit there was a similar type of no-bid contract given to Mifflin Houghton Harcourt for $40 million, and she used to work for that company. Its very appearant that BBB is out for the money.
Now I am a graduate of the SUPES Academy, in which BBB is on the board along with Dr. Timothy Quinn, who helped develop the curriculum for the Broad Superintendents Academy. Looking back now at a number of the Superintendent presenters were educators that had gone through the Broad Academy. I will say that I learned a great deal about the Superintendency, because a number of the Master Teachers were former or current superintwndents wirh long successful careers in education. This has caused me to wonder why would some of these rseasoned educators find it necessary to attend the un-accredited Broad Academy? But when I started to see the relationship and money trails I began to understand.
There is a Broad trained superintendent here in Michigan, who is a SUPES Academy Iinstructor and has a very questionable relationship with Dr. Tim Quinn. The story on this can be found at ‘Parents Across America’ or ‘Parents Across Utica’.
I also received information about the opportunity to do consultant work this summer in Chicago. That information came from the SUPES Academy. I applied, but never heard back from them. Actually I’m glad I didn’t, because I had no idea they received a $20 million no-bid contracy from BBB.
The principals are also “voting with their feet” as to the “Supes Academy.” And the corruptions of the Emanuel administration’s minions under Barbara Byrd Bennett are not limited to this one, although it’s nice that Catalyst’s Sarah Karp finally noticed one iteration of the massive corruption at the top here in Chicago today.
First, the “Supes” thingy….
Update: Most of the principals have been truant by the end of the sessions, according to our sources. Even for their (average) annual salary of $135,000 a year, Chicago’s principals are beginning to say they are fed up and won’t take it no more. (Some always said it, but sadly until this round of humiliations most just took whatever they were forced to take and then tried to foist all the nonsense on their teachers and other staff…).
In one “Supes” session we heard about from a reliable source, the number of principals attending dropped by more than half between the first and final day of the “Supes” training session. The principals simply cut, like a kid who know nobody is taking attendance in class, and there is no penalty for getting caught.
Barbara Byrd Bennett has no truant officers and almost no credibility among the front line administrators — i.e., the principals. She’s afraid in most cases to appear in public, communicating instead through emails and directives, or having her very very expensive “Communications Department” issue media advisories. She doesn’t have the credibility with real Chicago teachers and principals, nor does she have the power to force principals to waste their precious time on her expensive corruptions (this is only one, but it seems to have gotten public attention that others haven’t — despite the fact that some of us have been reporting them for months, or even years, so be it).
The need for principals to get back to their real world is especially true because it is now August. By this month’s end, these same principals are going to have to open schools under the union busting budgets foisted on them by Barbara Byrd Bennett and her out-of-town City Hall and Broad Foundation cronies, with the blessings of Rahm Emanuel.
As of this week, with the opening of the city’s real public schools less than a month away, most of the top administrators in Chicago today — the Byrd Bennett “cabinet” — have been hired from out of town. Many of them arrive with Broad Academy credentials and absolutely no credibility locally. The joke is that all of them are issued GOS systems so they don’t get lost trying to get around town.
But there is even more as Chicago’s corruption escalates. Not only does Chicago waste money on these six-figure mercenaries, but Chicago is also paying each of them a “relocation” expense (almost always, five figures) — and sometimes a “signing bonus.”
You can’t make this stuff up, and it’s been going on since Rahm became mayor and brought in Rochester’s own Jean-Claude Brizard as his first Chief Executive Officer for CPS.
Here in Chicago, it’s far from funny. Every crony out of town mercenary imported by Byrd Bennett costs the equivalent of two real teachers — or more in one or two cases.
Just to take one example, Jack Elsey. Elsey’s title is “Chief Officer for Innovation and Incubation.” Before December 2012, nobody knew that a school district needed a “Chief Officer for Innovation and Incubation,” but after a vote of the (Rahm appointed) Chicago Board of Education on December 19, we had one.
Elsey came to Chicago from Detroit less than eight months ago. His job didn’t exist before he was hired by the Board at its December 19 meeting — at an annual salary of $165,000 per year. Plus, the Board paid him a “relocation sign on and retention bonus” (that’s a quote from the Board Report) of $7,500.
Apparently, his experience in Detroit was so priceless that Chicago had to (a) hire him at a salary above that of any principal in the real world of Chicago’s schools (b) pay him extra to move here from Detroit, where he had last proved his value to public education, and (c) create a new department (honest, it’s called “Innovation and Incubation”) for him to chieftain at.
Of course, nobody knows why the seven members of the Board (Penny Pritzker was still on the Board for that one) voted to hire him and create that department, because the Board discussed the hiring in secret and then voted to keep all records of that (and many many others) secret, too.
This stuff was going on before one reporter noticed the “Supes Academy” and with a wink and a nod from the “Better Government Association” (don’t trust that guy, by the way) made it an issue so that bloggers could run with it. Even Chicago’s public radio station is paying attention to that story, even though they (and Catalyst) have ignored all the hirelings and all the “relocation” costs over the past two years.
Back to the “Supes Academy” (or whatever they’ll be calling it next week).
Another joke on the principals (and taxpayers) is that the presenters, supposedly there to “mentor” principals, don’t know enough about certain key realities (e.g., REACH) to teach those who face those realities anything. So the “mentors” just say, “We’ll skip that.”
I just don’t think that they are skipping collecting their paychecks.
Then there are the “materials” for which Chicago is going to ultimately pay $20 million. They make droll reading, but only if you aren’t facing the layoffs Rahm has foisted on Chicago’s schools, and your children don’t have to be in those schools (like my two sons do) soon.
But that’s another story for another time, since this is well long enough for today.
Have a good day everyone.
“Chicago’s principals are beginning to say they are fed up and won’t take it no more”
why then aren’t the principals allying themselves with their teachers to walkout en masse????
“Scrutiny? I’ll say. Chicago has several excellent institutions of higher education that could have done the same job for far less money.”
How do we know this is true?
University of Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola, DePaul, Uof I,… I’m sure I’m missing somebody, but I think those are the largest.
I mean how do we know what they’d charge for the same work, whatever it is. This statement has been pulled out of thin air. Anyone ask those institutions? Obviously not, that’s the nature of a no-bid contract.
“CPS Superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett worked for Supes Academy until April 2012.”
Really? A 20 million no bid contract to a former employer? That’s some fetid stuff.
When one has to choose between their principles and their family, I’m certain many pick their families. That’s where you get the go-along-to-get-along mentality and increases people’s tolerance to subject themselves to things that under ordinary (or even slightly unfavorable) circumstances they ordinarily wouldn’t.
There’s so much instability in our world at the moment extending to the principal level – and you either go-along with the program or risk getting black-balled – and try finding another 6 figure field that a principal can easily move into (assuming they don’t have educational consultant ties).
I can see why principals that know better, would still submit themselves to the SUPES academy even on the back of a 20 million dollar contract because it means ties to power brokers that can help ensure their stability and possibly even upward mobility.
The harder path is the moral one to providing a good education. It shouldn’t be that way.
edit: I meant to add that when you become a Broad superintendent, it means that you are therefore a “graduate” of their program, which means they have an obligation to protect you with Eli Broad’s money in order to protect themselves. The same will apply here to a lesser extent.
These are very twisted webs of power, influence, and money.
I can’t imagine what 20 million in training looks like.
How many people will that amount of money train? Lord, help us all! I don’t think that the superintendent of the public school system in my county plans on retiring in he near future…thank goodness for the sake of the students and their teachers.
Can someone explain how this impacts UIC’s Center for Urban Education Leadership program and New Leaders involvement? Last month the local PBS news station (http://chicagotonight.wttw.com/2013/07/01/training-school-principals) featured two of “several” CPS training the principal programs.
Just wondering about what you know about New Leaders as well. I have no idea what their reputation is.
Supes Academy sounds like one of those partnerships that administrators seem to join as “consultants” after retiring.
Any investigative reporters out here in the virtual world trying to find out who the owners and boards of trustees of each of these major “academy” public money suckers are? You can go back thirty plus years to find the architects of this. Ask how are they traced to each of the mayors, fed level depts. of interest (education, finance, etc.)? Try asking some of these questions and you will find yourself on a merry go round chase. This feels like one of the biggest Follow The Money stories of our time because it robs the public coffers, has roots to our financial institutions, has enticed and
brought to the darkside education administrators as co-conspirators for profit, sold the kids and families of America down the river, has a tinge of the belief that administrators around the country have bought the line/PR that our schools have failed so let’s throw everything at the wall until something sticks. Public money to train the future charter/private school systems CEO’s. There is nothing that appears to be for the common good and expansive education for the children or least only incidental to the profit that can be made. Too many on both inside education, government, and corporate are on the Greed train for the betterment of self, not child or country, on the taxpayers dime. If I am wrong then somebody prove it! Read this blog from the beginning and then recognize who and where the players are. Media get a professional spine and tell the story before it is too late for your children and grandchildren. Profitization should be coined as a new word. Follow the money!!!
What “investigative reporters”?
Since “All The President’s Men” (where that famous phrase “Follow the money” began), the number of reporters in newsrooms around the country has been cut by half or more. The same odious business model being forced on schools (that “bottom line” version of all reality) hits newspapers, and we are all suffering from the results. At this point, most reporters are so afraid they will be “next” that they will do almost anything their owners demand. Usually, covering one’s ass in a newsroom filled with empty desks means “reporting” as taking dictation from those in power. I’m having fun reporting these events when I cover Rahm Emanuel’s “Synthetic News” events every couple of weeks, but the real story is the sadness of what has become or reporters and reporting. And the longing in some people’s souls for a return to the (supposed glory) days of “All the President’s Men”.
We are in trouble as the amount of punditry and manipulation (the creation of Pseudo-News Events, such as Rahm Emanuel does daily) exceed the actual reporting by a scale beyond imagination. For every reporting job, there are a hundred (perhaps a thousand) bloggers and others waiting to pundit. This only adds to the problem, despite some good feelings I’m sure.
Of course, this problem has always been there. It’s just more accessible today because of the Internet.
The best fictional depiction of how that problem plays out in the real world is in the fifth season of “The Wire” with its wonderful reporting on the corruption in the newsroom of the Baltimore Sun (under the ownership of Chicago’s Tribune corporation). David Simon and his crew did us all a favor by ending the myth of “All the President’s Men”, but sadly “The Wire” is now being honored more and studied less.
The most recent example of this nonsense in the non-fiction “real” world came when Chicago’s Sun-Times (currently owned by a bunch of buddies of Rahm Emanuel) fired all 20 of its photojournalist reporters. Then they announced that the remaining print reporters could use their camera phones to take “pictures” to go with the “news” they were reporting.
Photo journalists are journalists. Anyone who believes a reporter can cover a story accurately and do the photo job is silly, inexperienced, or adding to the corruption.
Of course, this adding injury to insult to absurdity was protested by Chicago union people (CTU members joined the picket line).
But the Sun-Times owners still got away with it. Of course, their “product” is shrinking by the day, as they provide their dwindling number of readers with a dozen pundits and columnists for every reporter or two. Some of us have to read the daily papers as part of our jobs, but most people who grew of age expecting news in their newspapers are beginning to realize that propaganda, no matter how well written or illustrated, is still propaganda.
The biggest danger comes in the “news” columns, on a daily basis.
These realities are why I cringe when someone suggests that a “virtual” “investigative reporter” can do the job. It takes years to learn and lots of shoe leather to do reporting — including investigative reporting — well. Those of us who have done it usually had mentors, and learned that the first step is simple reporting: getting the facts straight.
The recent problems with the pack reporting of the Boston Marathon story is just one very very good example. I’ve shared last Sunday’s New York Times magazine story on that fiasco widely, and will share it more.
Learning this stuff is not really that difficult, but it takes time.
I just reported (at http://www.substancenews.net) that while Chicago was claiming that “billion dollar deficit” (and blaming it on teacher pensions), Chicago Public Schools was paying an extra million dollars to one outside law firm (Franczek Radelet) to do legal work for CPS.
But at the same time (October 2012 through July 2013), CPS was also hiring a bunch of young lawyers to the tune of more than a million dollars. These young lawyers are now working in the ever-expanding CPS “Law Department.” That department fills the entire seventh floor at the headquarters of Chicago Public Schools at 125 S. Clark St here in Chicago.
This is one of a dozen reasons why I wasn’t cheerleading when Chicago’s Catalyst magazine drew public attention to one interesting “corruption” story (the $20 million “SUPES academy”) among the dozens that emerge every few months focusing on the corruption in Chicago.
These corruptions go from City Hall to CPS and beyond. My interest is often in why one story gets “big” coverage while a dozen others are ignored.
Which brings us to the question of who is doing the corruption.
Catalyst spends most of its “reporting” time cheerleading for corporate school reform and has been amply rewarded for doing so for 30 years. The key story about Catalyst is that they get their money from the same foundations that are foisting privatization and the gospel of corporate “reform” on the public here.
At least some of us are focusing on the schools, thanks to CTU and our allies.
Meanwhile, sadly, nobody is paying attention to the parks, libraries, port and all the other places where corruption through privatization is ruining Chicago’s public services.
Until we figure out how to support investigative reporting (which is basically good reporting, done over usually longer periods of time) and restore news reporting, we are in for more and more real problems. A lot of famous reporters and writers (two who come to everyone’s mind are Kurt Vonnegut and Mike Royko) were trained in the brutal fact-based “boot camp” world of Chicago’s City News Bureau. Which went out of business and was never replaced. (The famous motto of City New was: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!”).
I’m sorry, but nobody can convince me that “virtual” investigative reporting is going to fill the void left. The tearing apart of the newsrooms at the Chicago area newspapers, from Gary Indiana to Waukeegan and beyond, leaves us all the worse off every day. We have all lost more than we can measure, and are likely to lose even more in the future.
Surprise, surprise. Supes Academy CEO Gary Solomon worked for the Princeton Review. As the Princeton Review’s newsletter (2007) announced :
“The Princeton Review (NASDAQ:REVU) has appointed Gary Solomon as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, announced John Katzman, CEO of The Princeton Review. In his new position, Solomon will oversee the strategy and execution of sales and marketing for the Company’s K-12 and Test Preparation divisions.
“We are so pleased to have Gary lead our sales and marketing teams. He is a uniquely talented educator, mentor, and businessperson, who understands both the opportunity and the company’s capabilities,” said Katzman.
Solomon rejoins The Princeton Review after two years as President and CEO of his own educational consulting firm, which also represented the Company in significant contracts for formative assessments, school improvement programs and intervention curriculum. During his four years with The Princeton Review, which he joined in 2001 as Associate Vice President, Sales and Business Development, Solomon was responsible for rebuilding the sales organization into a senior consultative team focused on selling custom solutions in the areas of assessment, professional development and intervention. He also won significant business in four of the top 25 urban districts in the country, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Denver, and exceeded 2002, 2003 & 2004 revenue goals by 150%.’
Let’s see . . . If Solomon increased revenue for the Princeton Review by “selling custom solutions” to schools through his consulting firm, should we expect data collection to figure prominently in his Supes Academy training? Why not, especially when it’s a key piece of the reform protocol offered by his companion company, Synesi. In fact, in a document Synesi submitted to the Michigan Dept. of Ed. in 2010, Solomon argued that teachers don’t know what to do with data they collect and, therefore, need outside consultants. He wrote, “Often Synesi finds in reviewing low-performing schools, and corresponding research reinforces that data is available in great amounts, but the key missing component is most likely in the area of assisting the classroom teacher in understanding the data and transferring the data into lesson plans that bring success to students.” (By the way, I’m available for hire as a writing consultant, should Synesi and Supes want to improve their communication).