Kido Award #1: The Haliburton No-bid Contract of Public Education Reform – Jack O'Connell, Randy Ward, and the Eli Broad Connection

In political circles Jack O’Connell could be described as the candidate’s candidate. Articulate, handsome, quick on his feet, he does what few in the era of divisive partisanship can: genuinely appeal to folks on both sides of the aisle. In fact, he is such a respected moderate, as a state assembly member he once received the nomination of both the Democratic and Republican parties .In 2002, California’s largest teacher’s union, CTA, proudly endorsed O’Connell as the new State Superintendent of Education, describing him as “a strong advocate for public schools,” citing his favorable positions on class size reduction, improving teacher recruitment, and his tenacious belief that “We have a testing system that is out of whack and out of balance” .

Why on earth would the Unruly Advocate want to award a Kiko to this pillar of educational virtue?

We could start with a fairly recent irony regarding his anti-testing tenacity. O’Connell gave a speech to the Edsource Forum back in March of this year where he compared the reasonable accountability found in California’s API to the “long jump” in order to criticize the federal No Child Left Behind AYP goals, which he labeled “the high jump.” The focus of this track meet-allusion diatribe, unfortunately, was not sports metaphors. No, O’Connell touted the API as a model for measuring improvement and excellence in promoting accountability. Could the man who courted teachers in 2002 with the impassioned rhetoric against standardized testing now favor the concept of standardized testing as the primary measure of school success? We’ll let the man speak for himself. With the API system in place, O’Connell happily declared what his favorite part of this accountability system seems to be, “The third column, the one that I really focus on, is: did your school do better this year than last year? That’s about improvement. That’s what I think the growth model should be” .

Wow! The API ranking sounds great! It’s far more impressive than the “high jump” model Bush developed. Could an accountability system with such strong political endorsement have any other useful social purposes? Dig a little further into Google and you’ll find this interesting quote from a Chronicle article, sans track metaphors. What’s the real purpose of determining an API ranking? According to O’Connell, “parents and real estate agents rely more heavily on the state's API than the federal AYP.” . Thank goodness someone’s watching out for the real estate and property development industries. Californians can now rest easy knowing the CDE has the value of their 1800 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bath home at heart when developing education policy. and and don’t forget Sacramento .

Besides all the fine work he has done on behalf of Century 21 and Alan Pinel Realty offices across the state, O’Connell’s department performs a sad but necessary evil. They are charged with taking over poor-performing and insolvent school districts. One of the first districts to fall under state control during the era of API accountability, though prior to O’Connell becoming the State Superintendent, was the beleaguered Compton Unified School District. The administrator sent to run the district on behalf of the CDE was Randy Ward, a former principal in Long Beach and graduate of the Eli Broad Academy, a foundation started by billionaire Eli Broad (the latter half of the land developing/home building firm Kaufman and Broad) aimed at training superintendents for urban school districts . Compton suffered severe fiscal mismanagement prior to Ward’s appointment, and he was charged with restoring fiscal accountability and stabilizing the budget. His supporters claim that Ward worked budgetary miracles, following a site-based management model developed by a Canadian school district. His detractors — and believe us, he has lots of detractors — claim Ward improved the district’s finances by closing schools and reopening them as charters through private charter organizations funded by the Eli Broad Foundation. Team Unruly believes Ward’s dictatorial management style had the largest impact on Compton’s fiscal stabilization. In the most detailed article on Ward’s career, appropriately titled “The Caustic Reformer,” Robert Gammon writes, “Ward's Compton critics blamed his authoritarian management style and a lack of follow-through for the district's poor academic record. One of Compton's most glaring failures was the district's consistent inability to attract and retain good teachers. When Ward left, more than half the teaching force was not fully credentialed.” . What’s the easiest way for a school district to save money? Drive out faculty at the top of the pay scale and replace them with recent college grads who earn half the salary of a twenty-year veteran. It’s a two-for-the-price-of-one business strategy that works even better when an incompetent dictator bent on disempowering the teacher’s union helps decimate morale. Gammon also notes that while Compton’s fiscal picture improved, their academic progress remained bleak.

In 2003, the state prepared to turn Compton’s management back to the elected trustees on the school board. Around the same time, Oakland Unified fell into state receivership primarily because then-superintendent Dennis Chaconas had the unmitigated gall to recognize that Oakland’s teachers worked in some of Northern California’s toughest schools, lived in an area with an extremely high cost of living, and received the lowest salary when compared to neighboring districts. That bit of reality prompted him to give teachers a 24% raise over three years. The budget tightening that needed to accompany such a raise failed to happen, however, forcing the CDE to step in. O’Connell met with Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and one other key figure to discuss who should be the designated interim superintendent. The other key figure? Southern California billionaire Eli Broad. Broad wanted someone loyal to his education reform ideology, one who’d be willing to let his financial clout dictate Oakland school policy and allow him easy access to convert some Oakland schools into privatized charters run by entities connected to his foundation .

O’Connell, who spent his life prior to professional politics in public education, thought it best to take his cues from a multi-billionaire with no professional educational experience. That’s because, when it comes to persuasive educational policy dialogue, nothing sounds more compelling than a rich white guy’s checkbook during campaign season . Editor’s note: Team Unruly also finds it strange that the Orange County Register, hardly a liberal rag by any stretch of the imagination, cites Broad as a “major contributor” but O’Connell’s own website fails to disclose that information. Maybe O’Connell distinguishes between a contributor and an endorser. Perhaps Broad only cut a fat check but would not give a formal endorsement. Then there’s the insidious possibility. Could the appearance of a conflict of interest scandal between O’Connell and Broad be something the incumbent superintendent is trying to hide?

Broad and O’Connell decided the best man for the job was Randy Ward, whose many triumphs as Compton Unified’s state-appointed administrator included dodging a charge of sexual harassment on a technicality after he “touched, winked, and licked his lips at [the plaintiff]” . Ward would go on to serve his public and private sector bosses well. According to the Oakland Educator’s Association, Oakland leads all other urban school districts in California with the number of students enrolled in charter schools per capita; 6000, or 1/7 of the city’s K-12 students . As more of Ward’s charter takeover plans came to fruition, press releases celebrated the reform efforts. Note how this press release celebrates Ward’s plan — with glowing approval from O’Connell and Broad

Covert union-busting, privatized charter conversions, and gratuitous lip-licking are not Ward’s only claim to Kiko fame. His autocratic management style puts him on par with the other rogues awarded our infamous prize. As the aptly titled article “The Caustic Reformer” notes, “Ward's often-caustic personality is seen as an impediment by many of his critics” . That single aspect of his leadership is destroying morale in Oakland Unified. Evidence abounds. When Ward first came to Oakland, he distributed a three page pamphlet to school principals detailing the necessary steps to take in order to fire a tenured teacher . Ward’s totalitarian edicts stretched down to the classroom where “teachers particularly [felt] the lack of democracy. Curriculum guidelines and staff training [have been] reduced to directives and threats” . When one charter school not connected to Broad’s foundation failed to show “significant gains”, Ward moved to close the school. When the school’s principal attempted to discuss the matter, Ward banned her from entering the district offices and used his 140k a year bodyguard to make sure she didn’t get in . At a school board meeting, middle school principal Joanna Lougin gave a presentation on the steps her school would take to improve test scores. Part of the presentation focused on the difficulty she had in recruiting permanent teachers for her school, located in one of Oakland’s poorest neighborhoods. As she lamented on having to get by on a series of substitutes for several classes, Ward bellowed out, “ ‘As a principal in a school, you have to prepare for that. These things happen every year.’ The exchange made both audience and school board members cringe.” .

To the chagrin of Eli Broad and his political allies, this caustic dictatorial behavior prevents Ward from building allies to support his plan to convert more Oakland schools into Broad-connected charters. When Ward tried to close 8 under-performing elementary schools, parents and students revolted, forcing Ward to abruptly leave the board meeting addressing his school-closure agenda item. Eventually only 5 schools were closed .

Ward briefly became a household name around the Bay Area this past year as he geared up for a battle with the Oakland Educator’s Association. As the purported bean counter who brought Compton back to solvency, early in his tenure Ward convinced the OEA to accept a 4% salary decrease . Of course, Ward himself suffered no decrease. He currently makes over 240K a year . When it came time to negotiate a new contract with the teachers, Ward stalled for 18 months. The union followed the necessary steps to call a legal strike, a lengthy process that requires an independent auditor to develop an impartial report. The union waited for that report to be published. In a feeble attempt to damage the reputation of the teacher’s union, Ward started placing ads for scabs —at three times the usual sub pay — in local papers and on Craigslist and . Ward let his ego write a check his butt couldn’t cash, however. The seemingly undisputed bean-counting king, the solvency savior of Compton Unified apparently had more than his share of trouble with the accounting abacus because the arbitrator’s report “also found that the financial data presented by the district at fact-finding hearings ‘was often incomplete, inaccurate and unverifiable (and) reflected more of its ongoing internal accounting problems ... than any attempt to understate its actual financial position.’" . How did Ward respond to being told his accounting was often incomplete, inaccurate, and unverifiable by a non-partisan agency? He claimed the arbitrator’s report was inaccurate! . Scroll down to the next article on the above link and you’ll find Ward’s friend Jack O’Connell, the same Jack O’Connell who earned the endorsement of CTA by calling for, among other things, better pay for teachers stood by Ward, chastised the arbitrator’s report, and essentially argued that Oakland teachers have too generous a compensation passage. Emergency negotiation sessions staved off the impending strike, and the abundance of letters to local media outlets comparing Ward to a mafia boss died down . His troubles appeared to be behind him, but thanks to a Sacramento court and his tongue-moistened lips, his behind appears to be in just as much trouble as ever — at least from our perspective. .

And what about Eli Broad? Some might see Broad’s goals as an honest attempt to bring change to our nation’s neediest student population. Yet if Broad’s own political ally with the highest education-impacting political office in California admits that the state is not adequately paying its teachers and runs a campaign on a platform calling for stronger funding for K-12 schools why would he coerce those charged with administering a public school system into turning over some of those schools to his control in a manner that fails to avoid a glaring conflict of interest? Or, more simply, why not use a businessman/billionaire’s political clout to help all schools obtain the adequate funding they need to achieve success? That’s the million dollar “it ain’t rocket science” question privatizing charter developers prefer to avoid. When the question presents a sound proposition but no sound is heard in response, a red flag rises.

Of course, plenty of sources offer compelling arguments about Broad’s political motivations, and the bottom line always connects to money and power. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the business dots. Broad needs money to run his foundation. He gets that money from his primary role in life, being the latter half of the Kaufman and Broad homebuilding corporation (read here: http://www.kbhome.com/ ). KB homes wants to elect business friendly politicians who will create laws that benefit their operations and they’ll join organizations that push their agenda forward . When land developers are involved this usually means relaxing environmental regulations and eliminating hindrances to development, like the Endangered Species Act — hence the article by Rep. Richard Pombo cited above. Unless, of course, the company can hire a slick attorney to attempt to use existing environmental law in the company’s favor . Conventional wisdom holds that labor unions favor democratic candidates. Getting a congressional incumbent who happens to be a land developer like Richard Pombo more support to pass business friendly legislation means taking the necessary steps to eliminate political competition. What better way to do that than to develop a tax-exempt non-profit that trains superintendents to go into urban districts, close down low-performing schools, convert those schools into charters, and thereby weaken the local teacher’s union by lowering the number of due-paying members! Susan Ohanian offers the most compelling analysis of Eli Broad’s political motivations we’ve uncovered.

Exposing the political motivations and exorbitant cronyism of the land development industry is not The Unruly Advocate’s mission. We leave that type of political prognosticating to our unruly colleagues at the Antananarivo Grocer’s Weekly Savings Guide editorial office. Our goal has always been to expose the true threat to public education: incompetent school boards and the totalitarian administrators they hire. Those are the folks that destroy employee morale and ruin local communities. Their abhorrent actions devalue a truly noble profession in dire need of reclaiming its dignity. For too long the debate has centered on educators and unions being at fault for public education’s woes. A complacent media fails to investigate the allegations propagated by those making these false claims. That’s the purpose of the Kiko Award. Reading Ohanian’s analysis of the Broad Foundation with the narrow focus of our mission in mind, we found the most compelling reason to send Eli a Kiko. Scroll down to the article until you come to a list of administrators the Broad Foundation believes display exemplary managerial skill . Guess whose names pop up? Alan Bersin, the first Stalinesque administrator we profiled other than Zendejas . Had we come up with the Kiko Award concept back then, Alan “I will be ruthless in pursuing you” Bersin would have been the first recipient. Arlene “extortionist” Ackerman, our second Kiko winner, is a Broad Foundation superstar . Randy ”touch, wink and lick” Ward makes the cut, and in this issue you can read about Joel “rubber room” Klein, the New York City Chancellor of Schools (See this month’s “Where the Rubber Meets the Kiko”). Four Kiko winners celebrated on a website other than ours? That’s why Eli Broad deserves a Kiko to call his own. But hey, who are we to judge? If he achieves the same kind of success shaping public policy his reputation as a home builder has garnered, maybe a truly reformed public education system will thrive because of his influence. .

Okay, maybe not.

And so, the honorable members of The Unruly Advocate Kiko Award Committee proudly bestow the following distinguished gentlemen the Kiko Award for setting public education back four decades through personal engagement in the following activities. Jack O’Connell, for convincing the state teacher’s union that he supports the issues important to their membership only to turn his back on those members due to the appearance of a conflict of interest whereby he entered into a suspicious arrangement with a billionaire charter developer in order to build up a million dollar war chest for a run-off election that failed to happen . Randy Ward, for egregious totalitarian behavior, caustic public and employee relations, absurd union busting tactics, preemptive scab hiring, abject cronyism, and unprofessional displays of hormonal activity. Eli Broad, for blaming teachers for the failures of urban schools, developing a sweet backroom deal that allows Broad Foundation charter affiliates to quietly take over a number of Oakland’s elementary schools, and promoting a nationwide effort to instill autocratic administrators into our country’s poorest school districts. Congratulations, gentlemen, on a job poorly done.