Nashville education blogger TC Weber digs deep into the relationship between several nonprofit “education reform” groups and the overall state of education policy in Tennessee. The bottom line, it’s quite a tangled web.
Here’s the key point in his analysis:
What I’ve shared here is just the tip of the iceberg. SCORE, TNTP, and other non-profits have been exerting an undue influence on Tennessee education policy for at least a decade. As unelected officials, they are free from disclosing where their money comes from or how they ply their trade. They implement education policy with little accountability to anybody but their funders. It’s the best of all worlds – lots of influence, little responsibility.
Weber’s post was brought on by an $8 million contract awarded by the State of Tennessee to The New Teacher Project (TNTP). What’s noteworthy about that (besides that the money is going to an outside, private vendor rather than directly to districts) is that Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn is married to Paul Scwhinn, an employee at TNTP who does consulting work with school districts.
Sam Stockard at Tennessee Lookout has more:
First, though, she obtained approval from the state’s Central Procurement Office, promising to distance herself from the agreement, according to a letter to the department’s legal counsel from Michael Perry, chief procurement officer for the state’s Central Procurement Office. Perry approved the matter based on Schwinn’s proposal dealing with conflicts to ensure she and her husband, Paul, didn’t get involved in the work.
Stockard notes that Sen. Mike Bell, who sits on the education committee, is raising concerns:
Bell, who has a copy of the contract, said Monday that Schwinn’s husband’s role in the company “appears to be a conflict of interest.” He plans to investigate the matter to determine Paul Schwinn’s role with the company, how the contract was procured and whether it uses federal or state money.
Weber is right to call attention to TNTP, SCORE, and a host of other so-called "pro-education” nonprofits. These groups have, in fact, been driving the policy train in our state for more than a decade now with absolutely zero accountability.
In a separate post, he notes the salaries paid to some of these top executives:
John King, Education Trust, made $531,027 in 2018. Many of you know that Acting-US Secretary of Education Ian Rosenblum previously worked for EdTrust but did you know that in 2018 he cleared a salary of $216,788?
Elisa Villanueva Beard, Teach For America, in 2017 drew an annual salary of $493,836
Daniel Weisberg, TNTP, in 2018 received $348,779 in compensation.
David Mansouri, SCORE CEO, and Sharon Roberts, Chief Impact Officer, pulled in $313,295 and 272,808 respectively.
Brent Easley, TNCAN, the year before he went to work for Governor Lee cleared roughly $170K.
Candace McQueen, NIET, didn’t take over as Executive Director until last year but in 2018 her predecessor drew a salary of $402K
Emily Freitag, Instruction Partners, in 2018 cleared $225K, willing to bet it’s a lot higher these days.
Weber also points out the strong bonds between SCORE and TNTP. In a post last year, I noted that SCORE (a creation of Bill Frist) seems to be designed to give donors a place to park cash and claim to be helping schools, all the while maintaining a status quo that continues to see Tennessee in the bottom in the nation in school funding.
So, SCORE keeps pushing a “bold” agenda while Tennessee’s schools lack funding and Tennessee students are not moving forward academically.
Meanwhile, the organization took in $5.6 million according to its 2018 IRS form 990. That was, admittedly, down from some $10 million in revenue the year before. Still, SCORE reported assets of $11.5 million.
Photo by Hossein Thv on Unsplash
Coming up this week in the General Assembly, Laurie Cardoza-Moore gets a hearing for an appointment to the state Textbook Commission. Here’s more on Moore:
First, her nonprofit is pretty shady:
That year (2017), Moore’s group – Proclaiming Justice to the Nations (PJTN) raised just over $1 million.
What’d she do with the cash?
Well, she paid herself $130,000. Then, she paid her husband’s business $67,000. There was a business “office expense” for occupancy at just over $49,000. She runs PJTN from her home, so that means she’s paying her mortgage with the cash. That’s $200,000 in payments to Moore and her husband, and another 50,000 a year to cover their mortgage. Then, there’s another $26,000 paid to Moore as an “occupancy expense.” Oh, and there’s $41,000 on “meals and entertainment.” Finally, her two kids received a total of around $2000 from the organization for “contract labor” that year.
While Moore claims she only wants “wholesome” values taught in schools, she also encouraged participation in (and joined) the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
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