Handing over critical school operations to pricey outside consultants who don’t know what they are doing is kind of a sore subject in the school system at the moment. The bus mess is surely a cautionary tale, but Alvarez and Marsal are not alone. Outside consultants are practically a leitmotif of the Dept. of Education under Klein and Bloomberg. The issue bears looking further and harder.
Let’s ask what value uber-consultant Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric) and other crack management consultants have contributed to training principals for the school system under the pricey Leadership Academy.
To date the Academy, which Klein and Bloomberg launched in 2003, has spent about $60 million and placed 164 principals. That’s $365,854 per principal, but who’s counting, especially when you get leaders of the caliber of Jolanta Rohloff. Remember her? She was the principal of Lafayette High School who changed student grades, painted over their mural and withheld their textbooks. It’s OK, though, because Lafayette is closing, along with four other schools. Three of those four had Leadership Academy principals as well.
OK, let’s not criticize by anecdote. Let’s take a hard look at the data. Are those principals getting results? Are their kids meeting standards?
A year ago, the DOE told the New York Times that early results were promising. But those results were based on a select sample. Using more current data on the 39 elementary and middle schools that have Leadership Academy principals from the 2004 graduating cohort, the results tend to swing the other way. Apples to apples comparisons are not easy in this instance, but here’s what the data show in a nutshell:
The percentage of students meeting English Language Arts standards in elementary and middle schools currently headed by the first group of Leadership Academy graduates rose 6.3 points in two years. By comparison, their home districts’ average gain was 9.4 points.
(In those schools with only one year of data available, the average percentage meeting ELA standards fell 5.6 points. Their home districts fell too, but by a lot less–1.3 points.)
In math, the LA-led schools gained 8 points. The comparable average district gain was 11 points.
The averages mask many extremes. At PS 84 in District 3, the percentage of students meeting reading standards fell 4.1 points over two years while the district on average gained 7.3 points. At IS 232 in District 18, math scores dropped 4.4 points while the district overall gained 20.5 points.
To be sure, there are standouts in the other direction. PS 65 in District 19 raised scores 24.7 points while the District gained 14.5. But on average, the Leadership Academy schools underperformed their districts.
It’s hard to believe that the DOE hasn’t crunched these numbers too, and come to a similar conclusion. But in their by-now familiar style, unfavorable results get buried deep in the bowels of Tweed. Only good numbers see the light of day, whether or not they are really valid or reliable.
The Leadership Academy needs tax-levy funding to continue. Its original private funding is almost used up. But if these results continue, how would Klein justify such spending? Judging schools by test scores alone isn’t fair, of course (but then neither is remapping bus routes in the middle of January without even checking to see if the street runs in the right direction). When you play with the public purse you have to meet basic standards. So far, the consultants haven’t met them.