Columbus school attendance scandal | The Columbus Dispatch

Columbus school attendance scandal | The Columbus Dispatch:

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• Gene Harris sentenced
• Will Gene Harris be charged?
• Tankovich sentencing delayed again
• Columbus schools fires four principals
• Bunker culture contributed to problems
• School Data Scandal Dissected
• Police seize Columbus school records
• Cheating on school enrollment

The Allegation

Columbus City Schools employees - and perhaps others in schools throughout the state - are accused of falsifying students' records to improve their schools' standing on state report cards.

The Method

School workers withdrew students they knew to be still enrolled, deleted their absences, and then re-enrolled them. The district is accused of choosing children with many absences or low test scores.

The Motive

By withdrawing and re-enrolling students, employees can break a student's string of "continuous enrollment." Only the test scores of students who have been enrolled nonstop from October through the time they take state tests in the spring are counted in a school's overall test-passing rate.

Former superintendent Harris pleads to dereliction of duty in data scandal

The former superintendent of Columbus schools pleaded no contest this morning to a misdemeanor dereliction of duty charge for failing to fully investigate and stop data fraud in the district. A judge placed her on probation for a year and sentenced her to 100 hours of community service.

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Columbus schools’ data-scandal legal bill: at least $1.4 million

The legal tab paid to a Downtown law firm representing Columbus City Schools in data-rigging matters continued to swell over the second half of this school year. The Columbus Board of Education approved $275,000 more on Tuesday night, to be paid to Porter, Wright, Morris & Arthur by the end of this month.

In wake of school data scandal, state investigating more teacher misconduct

The state education department investigated more educators for misconduct last year than it has in at least a decade, a surge driven in part by its scrutiny of dozens of educators caught up in the student-data tampering scandal. In 2014, the Office of Professional Conduct, the educator-discipline arm of the Ohio Department of Education, investigated 997 of the more than 9,000 referrals of potential wrongdoing it received, according to the annual report the office released this week.

Ginther’s documents show Columbus school audit started, then stalled

Responding to attacks by his political opponents that he didn’t do enough to uncover the Columbus schools data scandal, Columbus mayoral candidate Andrew J. Ginther says his campaign has unearthed documents that show the investigation continued at least as long as he was on the school board. But one of the key documents — a list of school-district audits active as of November 2006 — also shows that about two years after the student data audit started, investigators had spent just 114 hours on it. That’s equivalent to about a week and a half of work for two auditors.

School board fires ex-principal who altered grades at Marion-Franklin

The Columbus Board of Education voted unanimously last night to fire former Marion-Franklin High School Principal Pamela Diggs. A hearing examiner ruled last month that her role in district data manipulation was “dramatically wrong.” Diggs changed 186 grades at her school during the 2010-11 school year. At Marion-Franklin that year, 31,079 absences were deleted and 43 students were withdrawn retroactively at year’s end.

Columbus schools auditor gets three-year contract, raise

The Columbus school board approved a three-year contract for its internal auditor last night and gave her a raise. Carolyn Smith, who is most well known for investigating and helping to expose the district’s student-data scandal, had been working under a series of one-year contracts. Her salary will increase to $131,000 a year from $97,500.

Report: Firing former Marion-Franklin principal is justified

The Columbus school board would be justified in firing a former principal for falsifying student data at her school, a hearing officer ruled yesterday. Pamela Diggs, the former principal at Marion-Franklin High School, is the second principal the district moved to fire more than a year ago in connection with its data scandal. Diggs and other educators at her school had to return bonuses that were based on the altered data.

Ex-administrators from Columbus schools stripped of licenses

Two former Columbus schools administrators — one involved in the district’s data scandal and another who used school email and students to send sexually explicit notes to a teacher — lost their educator licenses yesterday.

Columbus school board dumps ‘policy governance’

It was out with the old last night, as Columbus City Schools ridded itself of the controversial “ policy governance” oversight model that it instituted in 2006, fired a principal accused of data-rigging and announced it would sell three unused school buildings. Policy governance, the hands-off model that put extraordinary power to run the district in the hands of the superintendent with minimal board oversight, is officially revoked. In a unanimous vote, the board put the final nail in the coffin of a system that began crumbling soon after it became apparent that a major data-altering scandal had been allowed to unfold under the board members’ collective noses.

Most Columbus schools staff repaying unearned bonuses

Most of the Columbus school workers who were told to repay unearned bonuses have started making payments, district financial data shows.

Columbus school board justified if it fires ex-principal, hearing officer rules

The former Linden-McKinley STEM Academy principal cared for her students, but overwhelming evidence that she knowingly cheated gives the Columbus school board good reason to fire her, a hearing officer has ruled. In a decision sent yesterday to lawyers for Columbus City Schools and for former principal Tiffany L. Chavers, the hearing officer agreed that evidence and witnesses in an 11-day employment hearing proved Chavers withdrew undesirable students and gave passing grades to some who failed.

Columbus school attendance scandal | The Columbus Dispatch:

The ugly reform mess in Newark public schools — by a top Newark education official - The Washington Post

The ugly reform mess in Newark public schools — by a top Newark education official - The Washington Post:

The ugly reform mess in Newark public schools — by a top Newark education official

Cami Anderson, the hermit superintendent of the Newark schools

The public school system in Newark, N.J., is not run by the people of Newark but, rather, by a superintendent appointed by Gov. Chris Christie (R). That superintendent, Cami Anderson, who was appointed in 2011, has turned many in the city — including former allies — against her as she has implemented a highly controversial reform plan, called “One Newark.”According to this story by my Post colleague Lyndsey Layton, this is how the reforms were implemented:

The plan, which fully took effect during this academic year, essentially blew up the old system. It eliminated neighborhood schools in favor of a citywide lottery designed to give parents more choices. It prompted mass firings of principals and teachers, and it led to numerous school closures and a sharp rise in the city’s reliance on charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately run.

“One Newark” has led to seven separate complaints of civil rights violations now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Education, Layton reported. In April 2014, dozens of clergy in Newark warned Christie that school reform was causing so much “unnecessary instability” that they were “concerned about the level of public anger” over the issue. Weeks later, Newark voters elected a new mayor, Ras Baraka, whose campaign was focused on attacking Anderson’s reforms, and who continues to call for Anderson’s resignation. To date, Christie has maintained his support for Anderson.

Just last week, Baraka issued his latest letter to the Newark community in which he blasts Anderson’s reforms, saying in part (note that the bold-face type and underlining is in the original letter.] :

The facts can no longer be ignored. Our schools are being failed. They are not failing; they are being failed. Our schools have been attacked by a narrow reform agenda that amounts to nothing more than chaos, graft, and mis-education.

The following post details what is going on in the Newark district, which was so low-performing that the state took over in control in 1995 but failed to either do much to improve things or return control back to the city. This was written by Lauren Wells, who was appointed in 2014 as the Chief Education Officer in Baraka’s administration. An educator and school change agent, she was, from 2006-2009,  the project coordinator of a statewide education policy coalition called the New Jersey Education Organizing Coalition.  In 2009, Dr. Wells became the director of the Broader Bolder Approach to Education at the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University, where she  led the design and implementation of a major school reform initiative in The ugly reform mess in Newark public schools — by a top Newark education official - The Washington Post:

Baraka: Time for the people to take back their schools.

Perfect attendance: Let charter schools keep track of charter students | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Perfect attendance: Let charter schools keep track of charter students | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

Perfect attendance: Let charter schools keep track of charter students

Pennsylvania school districts pay the tuition of 119,000 students who don’t attend their schools but instead go to charter schools or learn online through one of 14 cyber schools. Should the districts that don’t teach these students have to monitor their attendance?

State Rep. Dom Costa thinks not. The Stanton Heights Democrat has a bill that would require charter schools, including cyber schools, rather than the students’ home districts, to report truancy. Some charter-school chiefs are concerned about that, saying they are already stretched too thin. But all schools are. Attendance can’t be divorced from achievement, and the charter schools should not dump their work on the school districts.

While brick-and-mortar schools monitor absenteeism through empty seats, cyber charters measure attendance electronically. Students must check in each day through Blackboard.com, and their presence is monitored via their online activity. In both physical and cyber schools, truancy — in Pennsylvania, defined as three or more unexcused absences — has significant social costs. Chronic absences are considered a predictor of substance abuse, teen pregnancy and delinquency. One California study showed that 60 percent of juvenile crime occurred during school hours. Another, at Johns Hopkins University, estimates that 10 to 15 percent of U.S. students are chronically absent.

The idea that a school district, which has nothing to do with a student other than paying the tuition bill, should be responsible for attendance is nonsense. Charter schools, like their traditional compatriots, should be responsible for every aspect of their students’ learning — including that all important “Here.”

Meet the Editorial Board.

Perfect attendance: Let charter schools keep track of charter students | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The great charter school rip-off: Finally, the truth catches up to education “reform” phonies - Salon.com

The great charter school rip-off: Finally, the truth catches up to education “reform” phonies - Salon.com:

The great charter school rip-off: Finally, the truth catches up to education “reform” phonies

Fraud, financial mismanagement, lousy results: Reports highlight awful charter schools and people are catching on

Diane Ravitch, Michelle Rhee (Credit: MSNBC/AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

Last week when former President Bill Clinton meandered onto the topic of charter schools, he mentioned something about an “original bargain” that charters were, according to the reporter for The Huffington Post, “supposed to do a better job of educating students.”

A writer at Salon called the remark “stunning” because it brought to light the fact that the overwhelming majority of charter schools do no better than traditional public schools. Yet, as the Huffington reporter reminded us, charter schools are rarely shuttered for low academic performance.

But what’s most remarkable about what Clinton said is how little his statement resembles the truth about how charters have become a reality in so many American communities.

In a real “bargaining process,” those who bear the consequences of the deal have some say-so on the terms, the deal-makers have to represent themselves honestly (or the deal is off and the negotiating ends), and there are measures in place to ensure everyone involved is held accountable after the deal has been struck.

But that’s not what’s happening in the great charter industry rollout transpiring across the country. Rather than a negotiation over terms, charters are being imposed on communities – either by legislative fiat or well-engineered public policy campaigns. Many charter school operators keep their practices hidden or have been found to be blatantly corrupt. And no one seems to be doing anything to ensure real accountability for these rapidly expanding school operations.

Instead of the “bargain” political leaders may have thought they struck with seemingly well-intentioned charter entrepreneurs, what has transpired instead looks more like a raw deal for millions of students, their families, and their communities. And what political leaders ought to be doing – rather than spouting unfounded platitudes, as Clinton did, about “what works” – is putting the brakes on a deal gone bad, ensuring those most affected by charter school rollouts are brought to the bargaining table, and completely renegotiating the terms for governing these schools.

Charter Schools As Takeover Operations

The “100 percent charter schools” education system in New Orleans that Clinton praised was never presented to the citizens of New Orleans in a negotiation. It was surreptitiously engineered.

After Katrina, as NPR recently reported, “an ad hoc coalition of elected leaders and nationally known charter advocates formed,” and in “a series of quick decisions,” all school employees were fired and the vast majority of the city’s schools were handed over to a state entity called the “Recovery School District” which is governed by unelected officials. Only a “few elite schools were … allowed to maintain their selective admissions.”

In other words, any bargaining that was done was behind closed doors and at tables where most of the people who were being affected had no seat.

Further, any evidence of the improvement of the educational attainment of students in the New Orleans all-charter system is obtainable only by “jukin the stats” or, as the NPR reporter put it, through “a distortion of the curriculum and teaching practice.” As Andrea Gabor wrote for Newsweek a year ago, “the current reality of the city’s schools should be enough to give pause to even the most passionate charter supporters.”

Yet now political leaders tout this model for the rest of the country. So school districts that have not had the “benefit,” according to Arne Duncan, of a natural disaster like Katrina, are having charter schools imposed on them in blatant power plays. An obvious example is what’s currently happening in the York, Pennsylvania.

School districts across the state of Pennsylvania are financially troubled due to chronic state underfunding – only 36 percent of K-12 revenue comes from the state, way below national averages – and massive budget cuts imposed by Republican Governor Tom Corbett (the state funds education less than it did in 2008).

The state cuts seemed to have been intentionally targeted to hit high-poverty school The great charter school rip-off: Finally, the truth catches up to education “reform” phonies - Salon.com:

DC civil rights organizations fail to represent education civil rights agenda | TheHill

DC civil rights organizations fail to represent education civil rights agenda | TheHill:

DC civil rights organizations fail to represent education civil rights agenda

In recent weeks, a few national civil rights organizations including the National Council of La Raza, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the League of United Latin American Citizens and National Urban League have vocally opposed efforts to highlight the dangers of high stakes testing by students and parents opting out of annual assessments. Uniting under the banner of the Washington, D.C.-based Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, these groups are urging parents to comply with annual testing requirements. We strongly disagree with their position.  

Data from these annual assessments are not a reasonable proxy for educational opportunity, and even more, educational equity. African American and Latino students are more likely to be suspended, expelled or pushed-out of school regardless of their performance on the test; and despite some improvement in graduation rates, significant disparities remain.

Moreover, of all the topics that could be addressed as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is considered for reauthorization, why defend a policy that has proven ineffective in advancing the educational interest of children of color and disadvantaged children generally? Schools serving poor children and children of color remain under-funded and have been labeled "failing" while little has been done at the local, state or federal level to effectively intervene and provide support. In the face of clear evidence that children of color are more likely to be subjected to over-testing and a narrowing of curriculum in the name of test preparation, it is perplexing that D.C. based civil rights groups are promoting annual tests.

Why should wealthy parents be able to opt-out of the over-testing by sending their children to private schools while disadvantaged students are forced to exist in a high stakes, over-tested climate for the sake of producing data that confirms what they already know---their schools lack the needed supports?

We are not opposed to assessment. Standards and assessments are important for diagnostic purposes. However, too often the data produced by standardized tests are not made available to teachers until after the school year is over, making it impossible to use the information to address student needs. When tests are used in this way, they do little more than measure predictable inequities in academic outcomes. Parents have a right to know that there is concrete evidence that their children are learning, but standardized tests do not provide this evidence

While high performing countries, wealthy parents and educational experts are calling for more student-centered and deeper learning experiences for their students, LCCR and others are asking communities to continue the practice of subjecting students to tests that have failed to deliver very little in the way of excellence or equity.  Parents have a right to demand enriched curricula that includes the arts, civics and lab sciences.  The parents who are opting out have a right to do so, and they certainly have a right to demand that their children receive more than test preparation classes that leave them bored and less engaged

We should all remember that NCLB was originally enacted in 1965 as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty.  The measure was designed to compensate for disadvantages in learning opportunities between low-income and middle-class children. While it was never adequately funded, ESEA was envisioned as an "anti-poverty" bill.  

We now know students cannot be tested out of poverty, and while NCLB did take us a step forward by requiring schools to produce evidence that students were learning, it took us several steps backward when that evidence was reduced to how well a student performed on a standardized test.  Most states have long realized that the goals set by NCLB - such as 100-percent proficiency in reading and math by 2014 - could not be achieved.  In 2013, the US Department of Education wisely began to allow states to opt out of meeting this unattainable requirement. Why not give parents the right to opt out of tests when they realize states have not done the work of guaranteeing their children are being adequately prepared?  

The civil rights movement has always worked to change unjust policies. When 16-year-old Barbara Johns organized a student strike in Prince Edward County, Virginia in 1951 leading to Brown v. Board in 1954, she opted out of public school segregation. When Rosa Parks sat down on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 she opted out of the system of segregation in public transportation. And as youth and their allies protest throughout the country against police brutality, declaring that "Black Lives Matter," we are reminded that the struggle for justice often forces us to challenge the DC civil rights organizations fail to represent education civil rights agenda | TheHill:

Is Voter Turnoff Inviting a Progressive Rollback? - Pacific Standard

Is Voter Turnoff Inviting a Progressive Rollback? - Pacific Standard:

Is Voter Turnoff Inviting a Progressive Rollback?

Recent events in California foreshadow what can happen in a progressive state when voters don’t vote and corporate interests are able to put their representatives in power.

It’s become an unsettling fact of political life that as election turnouts dwindle, campaign spending skyrockets. Los Angeles’ recently concluded school board races, which drew a paltry 7.6 percent of potential voters, underscored this point. Ref Rodriguez, who unseated the District 5 incumbent, received most of the $2.2 million contributed by political action committees controlled by the California Charter Schools Association Advocates. Rodriguez has co-created several charter schools and his backers, unsurprisingly, came from that community. Among the familiar local names of extreme wealth and influence were Eli Broad, Richard Riordan, and William Bloomfield. Equally familiar to followers of school privatization were more distant funders such as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Walmart heir Jim Walton, Laurene Powell Jobs, the Gap Inc.’s Fisher family members, and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Rounding out Rodriguez’s cascade of thousand-dollar checks were names associated with high-powered investment firms, various charter schools, and charter-advocacy groups, such as Parent Revolution and StudentsFirst. Even among this varied and far-flung group, two names stuck out: Amplify Learning president Larry Berger of New York, and New Majority California, which calls itself the state’s largest Republican PAC.

There’s some early evidence that even in this bluest of states, the will of the electorate and its representatives is being thwarted.

Amplify Learning is probably the easier of the pair to figure out. It’s Rupert Murdoch’s education information division, headed by Joel Klein and built on the foundation of Berger’s old Wireless Generation company, which Murdoch’s News Corporation purchased in 2010. The friendlier the nation’s second-largest school system’s board of education is toward charter schools, the more likely Amplify is to land lucrative contracts with the Los Angeles Unified School District. New Majority California, on the other hand, is a political money funnel for corporate interests.

The homepage for New Majority California’s website features an image of burning $100 bills—presumably a symbol of the “government waste” the PAC publicly deplores but, perhaps, also a metaphor for the limitless cash that conservative groups are prepared to burn through in order to shape American opinion and elections. One such organization, the American Legislative Exchange Council, is feeling comfortable enough with California to hold its annual convention in San Diego this July—even though its annual Rich State, Poor State report ranks us 44th in “economic outlook” and 50th when it comes to not being a right-to-work state.

Primarily known for creating “model legislation”—that is, laws modeled on the business interests of people like the Koch brothers—ALEC’s corporate members may figure that if their politicians of choice in California cannot win a single statewide office and remain a battered minority in Sacramento, there’s still promise in focusing on change at the local level. Perhaps with that in mind, ALEC last year created the American City County Exchange, which aims to promote ALEC’s “free market” values (low wages, zero government regulation of goods and services, and bans on fracking bans) at the city hall level.

There’s some early evidence that even in this bluest of states, the will of the electorate and its representatives is being thwarted, with or without ALEC’s direct involvement. California’s plastic bag ban has been put on hold, thanks to a plastics industry-sponsored 2016 ballot measure, which would overturn the new law if passed. And on May 26, Irvine’s city council rescinded its living wage ordinance that had been in effect since 2007.

Affluent Irvine’s attempted rollback of a historic movement to raise the standard of living for America’s lowest-paid workers may be a one-off anomaly, or it could foreshadow what can happen in a progressive state when voters don’t vote and corporate interests are able to put their representatives in power council by council, board by board.

This post originally appeared on Capital & Main, a Pacific Standard partner site, as “Is Voter Turnoff Inviting a Progressive Rollback?"Is Voter Turnoff Inviting a Progressive Rollback? - Pacific Standard:

School reform needs reform - Baltimore Sun

School reform needs reform - Baltimore Sun:

School reform needs reform

It's time to put the narrative to rest: teachers are not lazy, incompetent, uncaring union thugs who need to be monitored by lengthy student testing and supplanted by devices. This tired, poorly drawn image brought to you by the so-called education reformers is falling to the truth, and public demand, resulting in the recently shortened PARCC testing in Maryland, beginning next year.

The myth of bad public school teachers is unfortunate — and so untrue. Sure, in every profession there are some bad actors. Doctors performing unneeded surgery, lawyers working the loopholes, business people cheating customers or their employees. But one bad apple (we are, after all, talking about teachers) is hardly representative of a whole bunch — or for that matter, the entire orchard.

I'm leaving teaching at the end of this school year, as one of the over 200 teachers taking Howard County's early incentive package, which was instituted to save the system money by replacing experienced teachers with cheaper, less experienced ones. It's my time to go; my body can no longer sit on the tiny chairs of an Early-Childhood Special Education classroom and not suffer for it. But as I leave I cannot stop thinking about the many teachers I leave behind. My colleagues, nation-wide, have been taking the blame for the impact of broader issues — poverty, culture and social strains on families — for too long. Public school educators are in a constant battle for fair pay while ever-increasing sums are spent on programs from Gallup consultants to testing companies and classroom technology. This trend has the worst possible effect — it discourages our best and brightest to join the teaching profession.

Good communities like the school I'll leave behind help to ameliorate the effects of poor treatment with great administrators, supportive parents (and flourishing students) telling us we are doing good work, and it makes a difference. But that won't be enough to attract the best teachers and hold onto them. If the anti-teacher (and really anti-student) reformers have their way, we'll turn our students over to technicians who will merely help the students to stay on the right computer program. Are we having fun yet?

It would be helpful if we all stepped back and examined what we want for our nation, communities, families and children. Albert Einstein wisely stated, "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge." If that is our mission, then our schools must be designed accordingly. We need to foster humanity in our schools, especially in a device-driven culture. We need to value each life that comes before us, regardless of economic background, disability or giftedness, ethnic, gender, or racial definitions. If we can do that, we'll impress upon our children that fairness and dignity are due to each one of us. If we are to do that, we must bring the value of the well-rounded teacher front and center.

We have a tendency in education to allow ourselves to be swayed by every new program, device or reform that comes along. Integrated classroom projectors are fun, but they will never outweigh the value of my ability to relate to my students and plan their learning step-by-step. If you remember the teacher that made the biggest impression on you, you'll recognize that it was the basic humanity of the teacher that pulled you in: the passion for their subject; the kindness in spending extra time to teach you; the ability to analyze your errors, and try to teach the subject so that you could understand.

When honored and exalted, professionals strive to outdo each other and themselves; when belittled and beaten, they skulk to easier quarters. Taxpayers, school boards, superintendents and public officials must pull away from the current trends and commit to the truth: we are only human, and we build better schools by recognizing the humanity in our students and the staff they interact with every day.



Last week, for the very last time, I wrapped my 60-year old self in our classroom parachute to simulate the School reform needs reform - Baltimore Sun:

Jeb Bush Offered To Help Obama Administration Re-Authorize No Child Left Behind, Emails Show - BuzzFeed News

Jeb Bush Offered To Help Obama Administration Re-Authorize No Child Left Behind, Emails Show - BuzzFeed News:

Jeb Bush Offered To Help Obama Administration Re-Authorize No Child Left Behind, Emails Show

Jeb Bush’s correspondence with the Department of Education shows the Florida Republican offered to help Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on the re-authorization of the controversial education law.

In an email from 2009 obtained by BuzzFeed News, Jeb Bush offered assistance to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan on reauthorizing No Child Left Behind – the controversial education legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush.

In the email, the former Florida governor proposes a meeting between Patricia Levesque, at the time the executive director of Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education, and a high-level official at the Department of Education.

Among the topics to be discussed: how Levesque could “help” the Obama administration re-authorize No Child Left Behind.

The law, which technically expired in 2007 but has remained on the books, mandates annual statewide testing for every grade and penalizes schools for poor performance. The law is unpopular with both Democrats and Republicans, but in efforts to replace the law, the Obama administration has fought to retain as much of the law’s strong federal role as possible, maintaining elements like mandatory annual testing, federal grant programs, and government oversight of achievement by students, especially minorities.

The issue has pitted Jeb Bush against most of his fellow Republicans, who oppose any federal government role in education. In a March op-ed in The Washington Post, however, Bush wrote in support of a limited role for the federal government in education, instead arguing for the states to take the lead.

The 2009 email is one of several pieces of correspondence between Bush and the Department of Education, obtained by BuzzFeed News by way of the Freedom of Information Act.

The email, dated May 29, 2009 — just over four months after Duncan took office — begins with Bush expressing his regret that Duncan had declined his invitation to keynote Excellence in Action 2009, the second annual “national summit on education reform” put on by Bush’s Foundation for Excellence in Education.

“Hopefully, we can get you to come to another event down the road,” Bush writes.

“Also, Patricia Levesque, the executive director of the Foundation I Chair will be in D.C. in late June,” Bush continues, “and i would love for her to meet with one of your top staff, to tell them about Florida progress, help you in nclb reauthorization or in bold initiatives to advance reform, etc.”

Bush concludes: “I hope you are enjoying your job!!!!”

Here’s Bush’s email offering to help with No Child Left Behind:

BuzzFeed News / Via Department of Education

The re-authorization of No Child Left Behind is not the only controversial issue on which Bush offered assistance to the White House. Last week, BuzzFeed News reported that Duncan turned to Bush for advice about how to deal with Florida Governor Rick Scott’s objections to Common Core.

A hand-written note from Duncan to Bush in 2013 shows Duncan’s appreciation for Bush’s efforts to reach across the aisle.

“I know this is hard, but your continued courage and clarity of thought is vital to giving our nation’s children a chance in life,” Duncan writes. “They are lucky to have someone with your tenacity as their champion.”

Here’s Duncan’s note to Bush:

BuzzFeed News / Via Department of Education

And here’s the complete correspondence obtained by BuzzFeed News:

BuzzFeed News / Via Department of Education

Ilan Ben-Meir is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Contact Ilan Ben-Meir at ilan.ben-meir@buzzfeed.com

Jeb Bush Offered To Help Obama Administration Re-Authorize No Child Left Behind, Emails Show - BuzzFeed News: