CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misidentified Robert Travaglini of Connecticut. The Herald regrets the error.
Cash-strapped Boston schools have inked $40 million worth of no-bid contracts with plugged-in “strategic partners” in recent years, raising concerns that a lack of oversight has allowed politics and money to trump performance in the city’s neediest classrooms.
A Herald review of two dozen Boston Public Schools contracts signed since 2011 — totaling about $40 million in commitments — revealed some politically wired board members, spotty outcomes and services that one leading expert says could be handled in-house. The contracts include:
• A $9.5 million contract with City Year through 2017 to expand their “Whole School, Whole Child” program, which pays young classroom tutors $282 weekly stipends “to impact the drop-out rate and academic achievement.” In 2012, five of 12 district schools hit their improvement target for all students; that dropped to four out of 20 in 2013 and 2014; and five out of 21 in 2015. Prior City Year contracts with BPS were signed by then-superintendent Carol Johnson. She now sits on City Year’s national board of trustees, which doesn’t handle BPS contracts.
• A $1.6 million contract with Teach Plus through 2017 to place its “Turnaround Teacher Teams (T3)” in high-needs schools. Two schools that started the program last year, Channing and Winthrop, did not meet their overall improvement targets for 2015, and another, Mattahunt, saw no improvement over two years. Michelle Boyers, a former top official in BPS Human Resources and the Orchard Gardens school, helped to launch the firm and chairs its board. Former state education commissioner David Driscoll is on the board.
• A $2 million contract with Achievement Network through 2016 to conduct assessments and coaching “geared toward improving student performance” in 24 schools. So far, nine met their improvement targets for all students in 2013; four in 2014 and two in 2015. Former interim superintendent and Boston Latin School headmaster Michael Contompasis was a longtime Achievement Network board member, but recused himself from voting on the BPS contract. He is also a $120,000 consultant for Mass Insight Education, which has a $450,000 contract with BPS to help more students access advanced courses.
• A $1 million contract running from 2013 to 2016 with Blueprint Schools Network to implement changes at two struggling schools, the Elihu Greenwood and English High, including “high dosage” tutoring and “building a pipeline of teachers and leaders.” Last January, $462,000 was added to the contract, which is partially funded by grants, to compensate Blueprint “math fellows,” who make $21,000. Despite the outside help, Elihu Greenwood closed last year, and English did not hit its improvement target for all students in 2013, 2014 or 2015.
• A $325,000 contract with the National Center on Time and Learning, founded by former gubernatorial candidate and venture capitalist Chris Gabrieli, to expand the school day and implement its “Effective Time Use Audit Tools.” NCTL employs Robert Travaglini of Connecticut as a $121,000 senior director.
The Herald review comes amid a pitched battle over school funding for next year, with BPS facing a projected $40 million shortfall and an expired teachers contract. The review also found some clearer benefits are being provided by longer-established nonprofits like the Boston Plan for Excellence, which has a $2 million contract to recruit diverse teacher candidates who commit to BPS for three years.
There is no outside oversight of these so-called “strategic partnership” contracts. Aside from standard accounting controls, BPS administration conducts only informal annual meetings with the firms to review progress, and there’s no policy requiring written records be kept of the meetings.
“Direct audits are not performed on every BPS contract,” district spokesman Richard Weir said. “It is the responsibility of the individual BPS department head or school leader to ensure that all conditions of the contract are being met.”
Superintendent Tommy Chang said the contracts are “meeting gaps that we’ve had in the past,” but he signaled a review is in order.
“I think it is absolutely critical to understand the return on investment that’s being made with these organizations,” Chang said, adding that such work “needs to be internal as much as possible.”
In interviews with the Herald, leaders of several nonprofits cited the annual district review as their key accountability mechanism. Matt Cahill of the Boston Finance Commission said the public should know more about what the firms are hired to achieve, and if they succeed.
“It seems like those deliverables, their actual mandates, should be placed online, and how far along they are in achieving those goals,” Cahill said. “Certainly if we’re outsourcing, we want them to exceed where the public schools are right now.”
Some experts and parents worry these types of contracts are part of a “privatization” trend that uses students as guinea pigs for firms seeking marketable fixes for low test scores and other problems.
“It’s called the education-industrial complex,” said Diane Ravitch, who served in education posts under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. “This is the typical reform approach — to flood districts with all these consultants. They don’t have a track record of success, they have a track record of disruption. They’re never held accountable, but they’ll get their money.”
Ravitch questioned why BPS, with a $1 billion budget, needs to issue no-bid contracts for what she sees as essential school functions.
“What does the Boston Public Schools central office do if it’s not training principals, creating teacher professional development programs and allowing teachers to do most of the assessments themselves?” Ravitch said. “It sounds like they’re outsourcing everything.”
Defenders say the nonprofits are providing services students would otherwise not get, and some financial return is necessary to expand.
“In cases where these efforts have been proven to work, much of what these organizations do is figure out how to scale what they’re doing in a sustainable way,” said Tripp Jones, who sits on the boards of at least two BPS contractors and whose firm “21c” consults on social sector investing. “That almost always, ultimately, requires some kind of a margin.”
City Year spokesman Jonathan Palumbo — formerly a BPS spokesman — said the nonprofit attracts substantial investment into the district in addition to millions it reaps from it.
“I know the district pays a large amount, but we definitely do our best to make sure that other people are investing in Boston students as well,” Palumbo said.
Teach Plus points to some bright spots, like early grades at the struggling Mattahunt school beating district averages on literacy assessments.
“We have very careful metrics that we use to measure our progress,” said Lindsay Sobel, Massachusetts Senior Executive Director of Teach Plus.
Contompasis said the kind of work Achievement Network does takes time to show results, and requires difficult culture change in schools.
“People tend to think that you can bring about results as if it were a sprint, and it isn’t, it really takes much longer,” he said.
Yet Kenny Jervis of the Citywide Parents Council said he worries the chief allure of the contract is avoiding the need to hire more staff.
“My biggest worry is that we’re going to be privatizing our schools, running the schools like a business, and looking for ways to save money at whatever expense,” Jervis said.