Colorado turned a school district over to a Florida-based management corporation.
Adams 14 officials have signed an $8.3 million, four-year contract with Florida-based MGT Consulting, officially becoming the first district in the state to hand over management to a company.
The state Board of Education in November ordered the Commerce City-based district of Adams 14 to hire an external manager for at least four-years, to handle much of the district’s operations in an attempt to improve the achievement of its approximately 7,000 students.
Count this as an admission of failure by the Colorado Department of Education, which clearly considers itsel incompetent to help the district.
What next? Outsourcing districts to China, Turkey, Chile?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
AWrenchintheGears.com extrapolates showing us the end game of private control. The ambitions are for dominion of society at large.
Appalling…
Trump is is flushing America down the drain…Keep on fighting.
I agree, Trump is a liar, a racist, and a grifter who put slimy, self-interested, religious fanatic DeVos in DoEd. However, the Governor of CO is Jared Polis, a Democrat, who is a loud cheerleader for privatizing public education.
Barf.
Most disgusting!
What could go wrong?
Are local communities going to quit on mostly minority communities and sign on to a “pay for success partnership” instead of doing the heavy lifting themselves? Outside management is less likely to understand the needs of students and the community. Mostly likely they will resort to training and then cracking the whip on the staff. However, in a community with so much widespread poverty, LeBron James has a more reasonable approach. He is providing outreach and wrap around support to students and families. External carrots and sticks do nothing to change the culture of a school districts. Meaningful change is a bottom up, not a top down envdeavor.
This is an all-purpose consultancy with turnaround specialists recruited from EdSurge.
Markets for services as listed:at the website: City & County, State & Federal, PreK-12 Education, Higher Education, International.
Here is a job posting for the Colorado turnaround project. The job description seems to assume that the teachers are ignorant and willing to conform to the ideas for the takeover. https://www.edsurge.com/jobs/school-turnaround-project-manager-job-at-mgt-consulting-group
I could find no records or listing of schools/districts as takeover clients or whether the company claimed excellence in their performance . BUT….
I did find this at the MGT website:
MGT was contracted by the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) to analyze the financial impact charter schools have on the Los Angeles Unified School District (LA USD). The client wanted to use this information to understand how charter schools impact operational budgets and develop a cost analysis model that could be used to make decisions regarding future charter schools.
Our analysis focused on program and financial issues by reviewing documents provided by LA USD and the California Department of Education. We also conducted structured interviews with LA USD staff, including school board members, senior staff, charter school division staff, and instructional staff (including curriculum, special education, English Language Learners, and Title I).
The team presented 12 findings at a regular board meeting. Findings addressed state-wide issues, district-based decisions, and a fiscal impact that stemmed from the contract with UTLA and the district.
This study appears to have been undertaken in 2016. The Daily Caller reports on Gordon Lafer’s work and then refers to “a 2016 study, by MGT consulting group estimated that the diversion of students to charter schools costs LAUSD$508 million a year— $4,957 per each student lost to a charter.”
In any case, MGT is all about cutting anything that does not produce results the client wants….and the client is not usually the teachers, school, or students, or parents. The client is the outfit that pays the bills.
ALWAYS and over and over and over in Colorado: “Here is a job posting for the Colorado turnaround project. The job description seems to assume that the teachers are ignorant and willing to conform to the ideas for the takeover. “
Check out Gary Indiana schools currently being managed by MGT.
What about Singapore where the schools have public canings for students that break the rules? By public, I mean the entire student body of a school is forced to go to the gym or theater of the school and watch the public canings take place on stage.
The Alt Right basket of deplorable Trump supporters would probably love doing that to children.
Caning is a form of corporal punishment consisting of a number of hits (known as “strokes” or “cuts”) with a single cane usually made of rattan, generally applied to the offender’s bare or clothed buttocks (see spanking) or hand(s) (on the palm).
Except, I propose we publicly cane Colorado’s Board of Education members instead of children. And Colorado’s Board of Education members should thank us because caning is more humane than a mob of angry citizens using a guillotine to get rid of there corrupt elected or appointed public vampires, oops, I meant servants.
Much ore here: https://www.sentinelcolorado.com/1gridhome/teachable-moment-for-profit-contractors-moving-in-to-save-defeated-public-schools/
Koch’s (ALEC) template law which was created so that inner city schools could be taken over and the local democracies of minorities would be dismantled is currently under scrutiny in Ohio. The law’s ugly aftermath is playing out in debate over Ohio’s HB 70 (passed in a 24 hr. without public comment).
Loraine County and Youngstown were both victimized under HB 70.
“Even if at first glance, that looks terrible, disruption is somewhat of a value. I actually don’t think it is such a terrible idea,” she said of external management.
The real message about “disruption” is about firing experienced teachers and hiring new people with rewritten the contracts.
But few people want to go into a profession that is being “disrupted” unless there’s an opportunity for great wealth (wealth that the few men-at-the-top of these EMCs’ skim off for themselves before anything goes into classrooms.) Yet another reason business should not be running public education- they have shallow with worse results.
There’s this misguided assumption that putting for-profit managers in-between the public money flow & the schools that this will “change everything!” Disruption is somewhat of a value, she says. Except the value goes in one direction.
Also, parents definitely do NOT want “disruption” when it comes to their child. They want predictable and reliable and already proven. This disruption myth is horses#!t and it needs to be tossed out.
Correction: Yet another reason business should not be running public education- they have shallow plans with worse results.
Everyone should take education into their own hands. The Education leaders have sold out public education which is a right to the white elite private sector. Where it is all about Wall Street making money off the backs of children, tell it like it is. We have become a class system and minorities need not apply for a great public school education because Wall Street made up of elites don’t want you to have a good life in this country.
Where are the union leaders working with politicians to stop this. I tell you they are in a corner hand wringing and thinking about their reelections and the beauty of public education for little white children.
Between the police killing minorities and the lack of good schools the inspiration of past leadership for minorities keeps us moving forward no matter how unfair this becomes, We will not be denied an education and Florida home of the racist better wake up there is a mighty educational war coming
A list of former TFA’ers hired by members of Congress to advise them about education law and policy would provide insight into why the 99% are being screwed by D.C. and state politicians. Knowing the funding source for the Center for American Progress, which is Gates, provides understanding about the same. CAP’s former VP of Education Policy was from TFA and, CAP currently has former Jeb Bush personnel on staff.
Linda, I agree with you. It would be a good idea to have a public list of all former TFA people that served their two years in a classroom so they could end up working for an elected representative in government where they would be in a position to influence those people.
I think it is safe to surmise that anyone that survived two years teaching through TFA that left teaching to take advantage of the promise of a position working for an elected representative was also programmed to think like TFA wants them to think.
Most of those TFA people that were placed in those political positions are probably narcissists and were easily corrupted by their greed for wealth and/or power.
and TFA connections deeply embedded in CO