Thomas Ultican took a close look at spending on education technology in North Carolina and was shocked by what he learned.
He begins:
A North Carolina cabal of school superintendents, politicians, consultants and technology companies has gone wild over the past seven years. In Chapel Hill, Education Elements obtained an illegitimate $767,000 contract. Chapel Hill-Carborro City Hills Schools (CHCCS) Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance, Jennifer Bennett, supposedly ignored school board policy and agreed to the contract in secret. It seems that when the state and local schools are spending on education technology, policies and law are being ignored.
After the Education Elements negotiations, Bennett sent a message to their Managing Partner, Jason Bedford, saying, “Need to get you guys to modify the [contract] if you can since if we include the whole potential payment value, then we have to take this to the Board since over our $90K threshold ….” This seems very damning, however, local citizens think they are being gas lighted. In the comments section on the school boards web site, several parents expressed the same opinion as parent Jeff Safir who wrote,
“I find it hard to believe that Jennifer Bennett acted alone and was the only person aware of the money being spent on the Education Elements engagement and I don’t understand why she is able to serve out the rest of her contract in an alternate capacity when the position is at-will ….”
Education Elements was created with funding from NewSchools Venture fund and a four other venture capital groups that invest in education startups. As noted in a previous article, “There are few districts in America that do not have a deeper bench when it comes to education theory, practical application and leadership talent than Education Elements.” In agreement with this point, parent Kavita Rajagopal wrote,
“There is zero information as to exactly what our taxpayer dollars even bought from EdElements. I have spoken to numerous (double digits) teachers and not a single one found the training to be novel or particularly eye opening. Why are there no teachers at the table?”
Particularly galling to CHCCS parents is the fact that 20 of 40 teaching assistants working in special education were let go at the same time this contract was consummated. Parent Payal Perera wrote, “I was appalled to learn that the EC support staff funding was cut, while $750K was available for these other things!”…
It is not just North Carolina school districts ignoring past practices, policies and laws concerning education technology spending. In 2018, Mark Johnson, the Republican Superintendent of Schools, led a group of three local politicians and two superintendents of schools on an all expense paid junket to Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California.
Seven months later, Johnson announced a $6.6 million I-pad contract to supply the devices to North Carolina public school students in kindergarten through third grade. It was a no-bid contract that bypassed the state Department of Information Technology.
Johnson has great connections but he is not qualified to lead schools. In 2016, 33-years-old Mark Johnson became North Carolina’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. He garnered 50.6% of the vote besting his opponents 49.4% tally.
The young lawyer vacated his position as corporate counsel at Inmar, an international technology company, where he had worked for three years to take the Superintendent’s position. His only training and experience in education was a two year temp teacher stint with Teach For America (TFA).
Although he clearly lacked the qualifications of Professor June Atkinson, the incumbent, several billionaires including Arthur Rock, Michael Bloomberg, Jonathan Sackler and Steuart Walton contributed heavily to his campaign.
In 2016, Johnson also received support from the Leadership for Education Equity (LEE) PAC. It supports TFA alumni running for office. The Silicon Valley billionaire, Arthur Rock, is a board member of LEE along with Michael Bloomberg’s daughter Emma.
There’s more, much more, and it’s all unsavory.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
This episode is a “reign of error.” Schools can make costly mistakes when faux educational leaders serve a district. Placing access to large sums of money in the hands of the wrong people can be a costly mistake or in this case a deliberate refusal to follow the board’s policy.
There is a reason legitimate educational leaders have degrees or at least certification in the field. They are trained differently from those in business schools. They learn how to work with communities, parents and staff. They study education law, management practices and evaluation that apply to education. Traditionally trained administrators also generally have started out as teachers so they have a much better understanding of child development, psychology and theories of learning. An imposter from TFA has none of this foundational course work. Communities should be careful about who leads their schools. There are many shills from TFA, Broad Academy and Relay that are imposter administrators without the training and expertise to lead a school district. In many cases their goals are to create chaos and instability to undermine the very schools the community values.
I hve not heard the word “imposter” used in this and similar contexts of obvious fraud, but it does the job. Money for tech in education was sloshing around before the virus. Now it there is a tidal wave of corruption.
I think it is time we stop giving so-called reformers any level of credibility. We wouldn’t even hire a electrician that barely knows how to complete a circuit. Districts should not hire an MBA or economist to lead schools. They come in to cause disruption. They will cut services they do not even understand, and they lack legitimate credentials.
“Reform” reminds me of Leonardo DiCaprio in “Catch Me If You Can.” where this young man poses as a Secret Service agent, a lawyer and doctor before being caught. At least he didn’t intentionally have any malice of aforethought, but the same cannot be said for most “reformers.”
As someone intimately familiar with the Chapel Hill-Carrboro situation, I can say that we were all less than pleased with the Education Elements contract. Fortunately, we are also an example of how real school governance works. Our BoE took decisive action to correct this situation, canning Bennett and making other changes (both to staff and procedure) to prevent this kind of thing in the future. Nor can the cuts to EC support staff be entirely attributed to this contract, since that also depends on how state funding is structured (since this is all subject to legislative action) and that funding had been cut back by our Republican-dominated legislature. Johnson suffered a similar fate of being reined in by the state BoE with a lot of his dubious moves as SPI. The whole flap over reading assessment, for instance, had his attempt to award a contract to his favored company cut off at the knees by the BoE, mostly because education professionals (especially teachers) hated it. So, while there certainly have been things done wrong here, NC isn’t quite the snake-pit of corruption that Ultican might have people believe. At least, the corruption we do have does not yet go unopposed or uncorrected.
same thing in ca and esp. LA
On Sun, Nov 15, 2020 at 6:01 AM Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> dianeravitch posted: ” Thomas Ultican took a close look at spending on > education technology in North Carolina and was shocked by what he learned. > He begins: A North Carolina cabal of school superintendents, politicians, > consultants and technology companies has gone wild” >
I think North Carolina was the first state (unless the 1st one was Arizona and NC was 2nd) that the Koch brother’s toxic empire conquered when the Tea Party movement took over NC’s legislature. What we see happening in NC is what will happen to every state the Koch Toxic Empire rules.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-164403/
The Phoenix Business Journal reported, “Why Arizona is ‘ground zero’ in Koch Brothers education fight and a conservative leader’s biggest disappointment in GOP”
https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2018/02/15/why-arizona-is-ground-zero-in-koch-brothers.html
You should talk to some actual people from NC. This post is unhinged. TIP isn’t anywhere close to invested in technology as this article implies. The article is certainly originally (and incorrectly) said that TIP runs NC Virtual Public School. He’s fixed this error, but now says that TIP creates classes for NCVPS, which I think is still incorrect. Regardless, the TIP content has nothing to do with the State Auditor’s report. That’s just one of the many instances where he makes innocuous links on TIP’s website look like entrenched relationships.
My understanding of TIP is that it’s mostly just a network for people running Restart Schools to share best practices and new ideas. And from what I’ve heard about Restart Schools, I don’t think any of them are going all-in on technology. The ones they always lift up in Edgecombe County seem to have mostly focused on empowering students (and hiring charismatic principals).
Ultimately, my impression of TIP is that they’re trying to do what charters said they would do: serve as models for innovation that we could learn from, but doing so within democratic inclusive public school systems. One may be reasonably skeptical of “innovation” since we’ve never actually implemented the basics: well-resourced, integrated school communities where all students’ basic needs are met. But TIP is not at all part of the billionaire’s plans to replace teachers with robots.