Lynn Davenport is a parent activist in Texas. She wrote the following post to alert her fellow Texans about the invasion of Kitamba Consultants, who bring with them the so-called “portfolio model” of privatization.
She writes:
The LA teacher strike thwarted a concealed plot to use Kitamba consultants to reinvent LAUSD with a portfolio model of privatization. Kitamba has a contract with TEA right now for these districts, including RISD:
I just got a 228 page public information request from the Texas Education Agency and Region 13 service center in Austin for their MOU with Kitamba.
Texas is spending big bucks on the same Kitamba consultants exposed in the LAUSD strikes against philanthropist/private equity reformer and Supt Austin Beutner:
https://www.chalkbeat.org/posts/us/2019/04/09/los-angeles-consultants-recommendations-reimagine-kitamba-consultants/
“Created by the consulting firm Kitamba, the documents lay out an aggressive timeline for assigning schools to 32 support networks, giving principals more power, and cutting the central office by fall 2019.
The January strike appears to have derailed the plans. A spokesperson for Los Angeles Unified declined to comment.
During the January strike, United Teachers of Los Angeles criticized what it described as the district’s portfolio plan and its partnership with Kitamba. (A spokesperson at the time said Los Angeles Unified is not pursuing a portfolio approach.) Kitamba won a $765,000 contract for its work, paid by a slate of outside donors, including the Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation.
Details of Kitamba’s contract and scope of work were reported in February by the Los Angeles Times after school board member Scott Schmerelson criticized Beutner for not disclosing contracts with consultants, including Kitamba, or the work they had done for the district.”
Rajeev Bajaj is a Broadie:
I researched all of this during my System of Great Schools LinkedIn article in December, I just didn’t see the magnitude of the Kitamba contract at the time:
Please read my SGS Takeover article again:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/privatization-system-great-schools-takeover-lynn-davenport
Blogger Bekah McNeel found that, “In 2017 the Laura and John Arnold Foundation gave a two-year $85,000 grant to the TEA through Education Service Center Region XIII “to support the Texas Education Agency’s System of Great Schools Network, a program for districts interested in the portfolio model of school governance.”
http://bekahmcneel.com/in-becoming-a-system-of-great-schools-saisd-is-fighting-for-its-life/
Interesting that Dallas mayoral candidate Lynn McBee’s org was mentioned:
We need to stop this with the help of Texas AFT, parents, and trustees who see the harm of the portfolio model. We also need to loop in the California union to get their advice. I would like to hire Brett Shipp Media to help expose this. If we don’t stop it, our neighborhood schools, teachers, and elected boards will be eliminated in favor of a charter-like model of “autonomy”.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Have you commented on this? It doesn’t seem real! @GovHolcomb Please consider a #VETO of HB 1253 – the #ShootMyTeacher bill. You know darned well this is over the top simple disrespect for teachers piled on top of meager $ in the budget. SHAME on @INHouseGOP & @INSenateGOP Don’t be the #TeacherShooter Governor.
My monthly plug for Ed Reform satirical novel, “AYP,” which is set in Texas.
I think it’s sad when public schools pay consultants who are hostile to their very existence, and in ed reform it happens all the time.
Charter schools would never do this, yet public schools get all of their advice from people who work to privatize them. I think to a certain extent public school leaders have completely internalized the ed reform belief that “reformers” are superior to their own leaders and talent.
The working assumption is always that the ed reformers will be leading the dull, status-quo protecting folks in the trenches. I just wouldn’t accept the relationship, let alone pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars out of public school funding.
I think 20 years of deliberate public school bashing has done real damage to people who work in public schools, which is understandable, but unfortunate. They not only accept a subordinate role, they pay the self-appointed leaders to put one in.
We had a reformer come to our school because we were reorganizing it. The school hired him. After Hour Two of him spending the time he was supposed to be working on behalf of a public school spent promoting High Tech High I would have paid him for the two hours and sent him packing. Next!
It seems like public schools could find consultants to hire who actually value public schools and intend to improve them rather than replace them. If they can’t, maybe they should develop some in-house. Charter leaders are not actually our superiors. That they believe they are doesn’t mean we have to.
I just didn’t see the magnitude of the Kitamba contract at the time:”
It isn’t just the magnitude of the contract. It’s the uniformity of belief in so many of the consultants listed.
Why don’t public schools consider hiring some consultants who aren’t in this closed-off little club? Is it really necessary to hire people who all come out of the same ed reform pipeline and all advocate the same thing? You can get that free from the US Department of the Education or 25 state education boards.
If we must hire consultants, and I’m not sure we must, do they all have to be former employees of Michelle Rhee, or people who have been hopscotching from privatizing public schools in the public sector to privatizing public schools in the private sector their ENTIRE careers?
I think we know what they’re going to suggest. Not clear on why we need to spend half a million dollars to see it on a power point.
I cannot see any community benefiting from such an exploitative arrangement. This is not a movement. It is an invasion of profiteers that seek to extract from targeted cities. This whole process is about a massive movement of value from the working class into the pockets of the 1%. This is not going to improve education for communities with poor students. Quality public schools enhance the value of properties in an area. Charter managers are traveling grifters looking for targets to make easy money from a community. They are for profit carpetbaggers that are landing in targeted areas to move local money out of the community. I hope the people of Texas refuse to play along with this devious plot.
People just assume public education is a right, and they take it for granted. People must understand that public schools are a valuable public asset. These corporate con-artists are trying to rob your town and redefine your schools from being a public service in which you have local control to a for-profit scheme that will turn your young people into line items in rich people’s portfolio. They will accomplish their profit goal by providing the cheapest education possible, not the best. Do not accept this vandalism of the common good. Alarm bells should be ringing all over Texas.
Diane, I can’t thank you enough for publishing this. If the corporate-style portfolio plan is not good for California, it’s not good for Texas either. I just hope it isn’t too late for us.
I gave you a shout out at my school board meeting on Monday. At least they can’t say I didn’t warn them. 🙌🏼
Kitamba has received over $3.1 million from the Gates foundation to demolish local school boards preternding all the while to be supporting new networks for school improvement. Gates is determined to control education policy in every state. He should be banned from this activity and the people who take his money voted out of office.
Laura – Can you email me more info about this? ldaven@me.com
Thx!
I suspected all along that Kitamba was brought to Texas under a social impact investing or pay-for-success scheme where investors can turn a profit on student outcomes after massive amounts of student data are collected. Morath hired a Director of Social Impact Bonds at TEA. Midland ISD is part of a human experiment.
“As a social impact firm focused in the education space, we feel it is important to live our values, and be the change we seek,” said Bajaj. “We also hope to bring forth some of our experience on the ground to help align career training and support with real workforce and public policy needs.”
Launched in 2012, Kitamba is a social impact consulting and products firm dedicated to dramatically improving educational opportunities and outcomes for all children. We partner with leaders in government, philanthropy, nonprofits and the private sector and draw on our experience in the education space to solve complex problems facing public schools and communities. We are proud to have created solutions that stick for more than 15 cities and 3000 public schools and are deeply optimistic about the promise of a great public education for all children.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191022005352/en/
I know the parasite Rajeev Bajaj personally, before and after his being caught for fiscal corruption related to education “reform” in New York. He has no shame, he’s covered up his disgusting profiteering with erase of media articles that exposed it, and he prances around and peddles his scheme nationally, exactly as prior comments here indicate, feeding off of vulnerable, gullible communities. He’ll continue to pilfer from children and their families; he came off highly deluded and disturbed even before targeting education.
Personality-disordered types get worse in deviousness (aka, better at it) the longer they persist. Communities: Slow down and really study those who swoop-in to “help”; these types angle to help themselves, presenting as if their focus is helping kids. It’s sickening.