The Delaware Department of Education is paying UChicago Impact, a non-profit owned by the University of Chicago, $443,750.00 for the 5Essentials Survey. The work will be completed in a year. This is all part of the Delaware School Success Framework, aka, the school report card. How much time and resources has the DOE spent on this part of our ESEA flexibility waiver? My biggest question is why the DOE pays so much money to outside vendors. I’m sure their response would fall somewhere along the lines of “our Department can’t be biased with these things so we need an outside voice”, but if you look at the “partners” of UChicago Impact, the bias is already there. They are all about the corporate education reform movement. The questions in their 5Essentials Survey are extensive and intrusive in my opinion and I don’t see any benefit coming to schools with these. It is just more ammunition for the DOE to blast teachers and schools.
While the scope of the work is vast, how can the DOE keep contracting with vendor after vendor with no oversight whatsoever by the state? Yes, I’m sure this is in their budget, but why are they allowed to have such an extensive budget when the students of Delaware have to sit in bloated classrooms with limited resources? This is a waste of money. $443,000 for a survey? Why are we making sure these education “fix it” companies are well-fed, but we can’t even do the same for our own citizens? Delaware DOE, you are actually making the problem worse. It almost seems like the Delaware DOE wants to have an elite “country club” status in education. But they don’t realize how much they are starving Delaware schools of what they truly need. Below is the contract with UChicago Impact and the Delaware DOE.
So, approximately $60k for the TELL survey last year and this survey brings the total to about $500k. Really?
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$100 million of the $119 million RTTT money (sent to Delaware) documented as going to these types of auctioneers/snake-oil salesmen and that is a disgrace that should be included in a certain someones legacy of harm to children. Some recipients include RODEL, Gates, Teach For America and a myriad of others with no backgrounds, experience or credentials as educators and no intentions to improve anything other than their own financial circumstances. Disgraceful!
Representative John Kowalko
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Just another reason to dismantle DoE and start over….
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Another piece of BS that will not directly help in the classroom. Just allows some beaurocrat an attempt to justify their worthless job at DoE.
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