Malloy Admin- Drops $2 million on consulting firm to micro-manage Alliance Districts then blames districts for program’s failures.
Here we go again…
Rather than properly fund Connecticut’s public schools, Governor Malloy has turned his back on the majority of Connecticut’s public schools and local property tax payers by shifting almost all new state education funding to Connecticut’s so-called Alliance Districts.
Making matters far worse, rather than using the State Department of Education’s expert team of superintendents, principals and policy experts who had been working with Connecticut’s Priority Schools, when Malloy’s first Commissioner of Education, Stefan Pryor, took office he laid off and reassigned the Connecticut experts and handed their work over to Mass Insight, Inc., a politically connected, out-of-state Corporate Education Reform consulting company. Mass Insight then sent in a team of consultants, with little to no education experience, to manage the day to day work associated with the Alliance District and Turnaround Program.
And heading up the overall operation, which has spent more than $300 million in public funds, Commissioner Stefan Pryor recruited a school principal from Achievement First, Inc. the large charter school management company that Pryor co-founded.
Lacking the certification necessary to teach or work in a Connecticut school, Morgan Barth had already spent eight years illegally teaching and working at Achievement First, Inc. However, Barth’s claim to fame was that he was a close relative of Richard Barth, the CEO of the massive KIPP Charter School chain who, in turn, is married to the Wendy Koop, the founder of Teach for America.
When it comes to actually overseeing Malloy’s Alliance District program, Barth and Mass Insight’s track record has been abysmal, but that didn’t stop Mass Insight from collecting at least $1,957,960 in consulting fees and Barth finding the time to head out to UConn to Malloy Admin- Drops $2 million on consulting firm to micro-manage Alliance Districts then blames districts for program's failures. - Wait What?: