I can’t vouch for any of the details in this comment but it is posted and now in the blogosphere. So I invite readers who are familiar with the details to write comments and, if needed, corrections. I offer the same invitation to any of those mentioned her, to set the record straight.
She writes:
”Was hoping someone on this thread could advise on a similar contract issue here in Oakland. During the 2016-2017 school year, our board, under the approval of Antwan Wilson, sole-sourced a contract with Blueprint Schools Network. Blueprint would provide Math Fellows, via Americorps, for tutoring in 5 middle schools here. How much? How does a cool $1M sound? (with the add-ons). You’d think for that kind of money, our high-needs students would get actual educators with master’s degrees. Nope, Americorps volunteers only had to have a high school diploma. Half of the original contract for $835,000 (!) went to administrators in Blueprint Schools. The actual Math Fellows, were paid a pittance of around $25,000 with health benefits for one year, plus a $5K bonus upon completion.
“BSN is headed up by Matthew Spengler. Who is he? Harvard ed-reformer who was principal of a small district high school here, Met West. He then went on to work as a Director at Harvard’s EduLabs figuring out all kinds of neat experiments he could use on our students. Then, he found some superintendents who were willing to farm out their students for Mr. Spengler’s ed experiments, including, you guessed it, Antwan Wilson and Denver Public Schools. Next, Antwan Wilson shows up in Oakland, with Mr. Spengler close behind, ready to peddle his “tutoring” Math Fellows to our highest-needs students. And, bingo, the Board approves a sole-source $1M contract, just like that.
“Blueprint Schools end game is really data-mining. OUSD pays a fortune for an unproven program from an organization whose mission is to apply charter reforms to public schools. BSN gets all the data they want; I’m sure the participants/parents have no idea.
”This sole source agreement for essentially low-paid, unskilled “teaching” labor for $1M just doesn’t pass the sniff test. I’m going out a limb and saying it’s both illegal and immoral, but here we are. Any advice?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hmm. Antwan Wilson. Meria Carstarphen. Members of Council of Distinguished Educators of Aspen Institute National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development.
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/team/national-commission-on-social-emotional-and-academic-development-council-of-distinguished-educators/
I notice John Deasy is part of the same group. He left the superintendent of LAUSD under a cloud after committing $1 Billion for iPads for all.
The deal fell through, for many reasons, including possible conflicts of interest. And Apple was unloading obsolete machines. Hundreds of millions were wasted, and Deasy left to work for Eli Broad, puppetmaster of corporate reform and privatization.
and the few, as always, made their profits
I posted this in California BATS to see if anyone there has any insights.
Thank you.
Karen, see my reply below. I also replied on FB, but shorter.
– Glenna
Don’t know the rules about posting contracts, but you can look it up. Here is the OUSD link: just type “Blueprint Schools” under the search; the number is 16-1601. Public info.
https://ousd.legistar.com/Legislation.aspx
Let’s see, there’s a word for this, what is it?… Oh yes: scam!
Oh boy, Antwan Wilson. Just left in disgrace in DC. It would be interesting to learn if he did the same in DC with BSN?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/local/dc-politics/dc-public-schools-leader-to-resign-after-skirting-school-assignment-rules/2018/02/20/9b372230-1662-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html
I spent a little time at the Blue Schools Network website. The idea seems to be this: Recruit anyone who might have an interest in tutoring students in math, in a school.Have them apply for a paid position, pass a math test, background check, some interviews (all steps seem to come from a TFA template). Give those accepted a couple of weeks of tips about tutoring, then find a school looking for the tutors who are called “fellows” and paid about $20,000-$25,000 to work daily with some students. The program explicitly says it is not designed as an entry into teaching, but will be a good way for those accepted to test their ability and interest in teaching. Like TFA, fellows who do well can become part of the same system of recruiting. Americore has a long history of recruiting “volunteers” for immunity services. But that is another story.
Sounds like a pyramid scheme….sorta like Amway!
We had a good policy where I worked. Any new adoption had to be supported by evidence. In too many districts, evidence, sense, and ethics have left the building. It is a free for all of hype, spin and endless marketing.
Not to sound tinfoil hat, but the Chief of Schools, Allen Smith, quit his job at OUSD as soon as the ink was dry on that contract, July 2016. By August, he was working in Denver Public Schools. In November the same year, Mr. Wilson had been nominated for the DC job so he had already been looking to leave around the same time.
The Broad Foundation owns Oakland, DC, Denver and quite a few other districts so musical chairs
and the amount of money spent buying out contracts: a shockingly profitable game for those who play
I knew Matt Spengler at Jefferson High School in South LA, where he was a social studies teacher. We were friends. He was a good person, who cared about his students and worked hard. He became interested in the idea behind Dennis Littkey’s (sp?) school in Providence, RI, called The Met, part of his Big Picture School experiment, with internships for students, most of whom fell into the “at-risk” category. He and another Jefferson teacher opened a Met in Oakland to try and replicate what Littkey was doing in Providence.
I don’t think that the person who attacks him knows him at all. One thing I know for sure is that Matt always had the best interests of students at heart, and was searching for ways to improve his own practice and the opportunities for at-risk students.
NB: Lulu Cafe is my online alias. For this one post I’ll unmask. My name is Glenna Dumey. I taught at Jefferson High School from 1985-2002, when I transferred to a small continuation campus. I am a twice certified National Board Certified teacher, and have been a mentor teacher. I was part of a program called Humanitas, which was interdisciplinary, and had been seeded by foundation money through the Los Angeles Educational Partnership.
I valued and respected Matt as a colleague. Matt was part of “Early College”, a designation given at Jefferson to the honors level classes, to give students in those classes a sense of community. Matt went to Oakland with his English teacher partner in Early College, whose name I do not remember. We were sorry to lose them, but opening a Met was a challenge Matt could not refuse. I have sent this post to others who knew him. I hope they also respond.
“In too many districts, evidence, sense, and ethics have left the building.”
FWIW…
In Y2K I tried to challenge the data-mining of students in “my” district, at a
board meeting. I asked the Supt.(also prez of the chamber of comm.) if
the district recieved any fed funding.
“Yes, what’s your point?”
FERPA law is my point, “Protects the privacy of students educational
records. Applies to all institutions that receive fed funding. Sets forth
strict limitations governing the release of information about students.
The data becomes restricted if it contains names, SS#, race, gender,
nationality, academic performance, or disciplinary records.
Data may be posted if it is accompanied by an identifier that is
unrecognizable by anyone other than the student.”
Supt.: “We don’t use fed funding for our record keeping. Perhaps our
system is not a good fit, for you. Next, the chair recognizes…”
In too many districts, evidence, sense, and ethics have left the building.
To Lulu Café:
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” The fact that you have addressed your comment about an “attack” of Mr. Spengler/BSN and not about the appropriate use of public funds is entirely my point about ignoring what is right in front of you. This discussion was not about Mr. Spengler’s good works at Met West or dedication to helping underprivileged youth. It is about a million dollars (!) of questionable/illegal spending by our district using cheap, unproven labor/methods to experiment on our kids. Methods that would never be used in Newton South High School, where Mr. Spengler attended. I checked the stats; looks like a very nice, well-resourced school in one of the wealthier towns of Massachusetts. As you know, this excessive spending by Mr. Wilson, with the board’s approval has left us in such bad financial shape that we are in danger of a state takeover again.
BSN and other organizations like it seem entrenched in the idea that Harvard pedigrees mean that they automatically know more than the educators who are doing the hard work every day teaching in the classroom. None of these programs (BSN) discuss the root causes of problems in urban districts-gentrification, poverty, and inequitable funding. You can’t simply take a program from one city to another and expect it to succeed. How to you even measure success anyway? Massachusetts has the best funding in the country; California, one of the worst. You also can’t expect real, honest, measurable change to happen in a single year. What Mr. Spengler and other ed reformer can’t or won’t acknowledge is that poor math performance is a symptom. The cure is much harder (ask a teacher, what a quaint idea), but if one has blinders on and won’t acknowledge the root causes of poor performance, you won’t get anywhere. We are tired of having our students treated like lab rats for ed reform groups to experiment on. The educators here can tell you exactly what the students need to succeed, but these outside top-down decision makers conveniently go deaf unless there is money to be made. To put it into context, that $400,000 that the district spent on BSN administration was the same amount cut from one of our high schools this year. Money the school needed for teachers, paper and pencils. But who needs those boring things when you can get data? Do you think the students really benefit from all that data? And do they know how it’s being collected and where it’s shared? For what purpose? Only the adults seem to know, and they aren’t telling. And the big bucks just keep rolling in. If Mr. Spengler really wants to make a difference in the life of underprivileged youth, tell him to buy some copy paper for one of the local district high schools. And maybe help clean up one of the school bathrooms-we are really short on custodians right now. Seriously.
Well-said!!
I absolutely had the same thought when I read what Lulu Cafe posted and I’m glad you replied.
The world is full of people who once did some good, saw that they could make a lot more money elsewhere, and chose to make that money and stop caring about whether the money they were earning by selling a not particularly worthwhile product might be better spent elsewhere. Why even think about such things?
It doesn’t make someone a bad person because he finds a better paying career selling a product. But it does mean that if we are using public money to buy that product, the fact that the person earning a lot of money selling it once did something more admirable is totally irrelevant.
And from what I am reading, this seems like a lot of public dollars going to a product that isn’t worth the cost.
Cliches don’t help. When you described Mr. Spengler’s past, you asked, “Who is he?” but failed to include his years as a teacher, leading some, perhaps, to think that he parachuted into Oakland as a principal who lacked actual teaching experience. I corrected that omission in order to give readers a more complete picture of the man you are criticizing.
Just so we are very clear here, I lost touch with him about three years into his tenure at the Met in Oakland, and it is quite possible that he has since involved himself with projects that I might also view as not the most advisable use of resources. You are not the only ones upon whom expensive and useless programs have been foisted. I did over a quarter century with LAUSD. And I swept my own classroom.
En B. Cee = Lulu Cafe
From a Colorado Open Records Act filed by a teacher in June 2015. (S)he was at a school that hired blueprint tutors. Person also said blueprint advertised on Craig’s list!!!
1) The first two records requests are related to District monies and expenditures, specifically in regard to the monies spent toward Blueprint, as a consulting agency (salaries, if possible), and also toward Blueprint, in regard to the math fellows program (as a whole); these are two separate requests.
Math Fellows
$388,917
Intensive Supports
$593,333
– The date that Dr. Mike Musick became employed under Blueprint and/or DPS;DPS answer: Dr. Musick is not an employee of DPS, so we are not able to provide this information.
The reviews of Blueprint Schools on both Glassdoor and Indeed were insightful. Low pay, stressful conditions, poor management. The recent review of the Oakland site on Indeed was a real eye-opener…
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Blueprint-Schools-Network/reviews
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Blueprint-Schools-Network-Reviews-E750680.htm
I guess my advice is to do better research, perhaps without seeking a pre-determined judgement from the get-go. I worked with Matt Spengler at Jefferson High School in South-Central Los Angeles several years ago, and he was/is the finest teacher I’ve run across in my 16 years in public education.
I also had the pleasure of visiting the public high school he founded in Oakland, Met West, and was so impressed (as were the fellow teachers, students, and parents who accompanied me) that we subsequently patterned our program’s instructional methodology after the model (“Big Picture”) that he and his staff were employing. Our school, serving an all Title 1 population in South L.A., became a multiple award-winning institution with a 100% graduation and college entrance rate, thanks in no small part to the generous advice of Spengler and his staff, parents, and student body.
You (and several other people who have chimed in, similarly uninformed, but smug and accusatory nonetheless) seem to dismiss his achievements as some sort of scam, but I can only conclude that you’ve never met him, nor corresponded with him, nor ever attempted to glean anything more than superficial knowledge of his and his colleagues’ work. Spengler has dedicated his entire professional life to opening pathways to a brighter future for kids and families who happen to live in under-served neighborhoods, and has consistently attempted to expand his knowledge and the size/scope of his and his colleagues’ work. If you, or anyone else, genuinely has questions regarding his intentions or his methodology, I suggest you reach out and ask him for details, which I’m sure he would be happy to provide.