The Board is moving ahead with their equity audit process: USD116’s DEI Director Dr. Caffey selected two more players, Educational Innovations and Solutions and The Equity Imperative – to add to the mix.
We didn’t have time for a deep investigation (thanks to the district tortured maneuvering – the sad story of which is related in the appendix), and will present just a brief overview of what we could quickly learn from the available documents.
Education Innovations & Solutions, Inc. is an enterprise located on campus of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and is run by its President, Dr. Chance Lewis and his wife, Mechael (COO). It is not clear who else works there.
Dr. Lewis is the Carol Grotnes Belk Distinguished Professor of Urban Education, and the Executive Director of the Urban Education Collaborative at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His UNCC page is sparsely populated, featuring most prominently the link to his personal website, which immediately offers opportunities to purchase some of the products and services Dr. Lewis provides.
Among those opportunities are “relevant and tailored workshops,” “keynote and professional development speaking engagements,” “comprehensive school turnaround services,” “book coaching,” accompanied with links to amazon.com to purchase actual books and reports by Dr. Lewis. Before we dive into what is relevant to us, – comprehensive school turnaround services, – let’s check what we can learn about the illustrious Dr. Lewis from his website.
His CV is a sight to behold: at 84 pages it easily beats any resume I saw in my life, and let me tell you, engineering professors are not shy about padding their vitae.
It is true we are living in the era of conspicuous bloat of credentials, but Dr. Lewis towers even in this landscape: the amount of minutia stuffing the document is extraordinary. I can understand inclusion of a one page preface to a book of algebra exercises as a refereed guest editor introductory article, – but what on Earth is the purpose of adding to his resume six pages long list of grant applications that were not funded? Followed by a list of 15 “urban school district contracts (submitted),” all from 2017? What this is for?
At any rate, in that sea of padding, there are articles published in refereed journals, and some of them even claim a degree of computational competence. I will address the quality of the statistical research used in Dr. Lewis quantitative work elsewhere, if the need arises.
The consulting tab on his site takes us to a page that contains a marketing pitch, 8 Top Reasons to Select for Consulting. This is a bit misleading: the leaflet rather advertises Dr. Lewis as an event speaker. (The final, eight reason is that he’s “not someone who’s just there for the paycheck,” – call 704.659.6842 for pricing.)
Besides booking options, the page features a link pointing directly to Dr. Lewis’ firm, Education Innovations & Solutions, Inc, a candidate to run the Equity Audit in USD116. That’s where we can learn about the turnaround services Dr. Lewis offers, right?
Examining the Education Innovations and Solutions, Inc web site didn’t bring much clarity about what those solutions are. The site contains further upsell pages for e-Books (additional titles on amazon.com, for sure) and videos (bundle discounts available), and that’s about it. Unlike the hucksters from Systemic Educational Equity LLC, Education Innovations and Solutions, Inc. does not list schools or districts that used their services. (Was that the whole point of Dr. Lewis’ voluminous CV, to steer us to do the legwork sieving through all the “submitted” contracts there? Hard to tell…)
Why did our district pre-selected Dr. Lewis’ enterprise as a potential vendor? Did it have any evidence of what kind of service EIS Inc performs? If it did, that evidence remains hidden. In the documents the district made public, Dr. Lewis seems to be unwilling to bare much:
I am unable to provide examples of previous Equity Audits due to non-disclosure agreements with other school district clients<…>. For the previous equity audits I have completed, the price points have ranged between $25,000 – $40,000 depending on the scope of work involved in the project.
From Dr. Lewis’ letter to Dr. Caffey.
(If you wonder why a public entity would try to hide the results of their Equity Audit behind an NDA, you’re not alone. Let’s hope Dr. Caffey knows the answers to that puzzle.)
Enough of the Innovations and Solutions, Inc.; let’s move on to The Equity Imperative, our district’s third candidate. It is a Chicago-based startup, with formidable workforce of four identifiable workers (including the founders and owners). What else is there?
What about a 5-Part Project Proposal template for the Equity Audit they supply as the opening move? The template does not have Dr. Lewis’ price flexibility, setting the tag firmly at $59,250. The bulk of the costs comes from:
- 13 “sessions” (each of 90 minutes, each priced at $1500 or so),
- 115 hours of various flavors of “data analysis” (Quantitative Analysis, Implementation of Administration of Stakeholder Surveys & Interviews, Artifact Analysis), priced at $250/hour, and
- 20 hours of work on “summative report” (also at $250/hour).
What these money will buy is not entirely clear. The Scope of Work section states:
Scope of Work Parameters
This Scope of Work has been designed such that the Equity Imperative will build internal capacity of the project lead and up to 2 additional designees working with the project lead. The Equity Imperative will not be responsible for:– Logistics for any sessions held in person.
– Completion of surveys, interviews, and any observations
– Collection of any data or artifacts from various sources, including central office, schools, and other
Perhaps the general programmatic statements of the company are more informative. Here’s how they characterize their operational theory:
THEORY OF ACTION
Illuminate
We equip practitioners to illuminate how gaps in performance frequently reflect historical opportunity gaps.
Indicate
We empower practitioners to indicate the appropriate research-based strategies to mitigate and even eliminate inequities.
Navigate
We engage practitioners in systems-thinking and planning to ensure that equity-based initiatives become a part of the organizational culture.
At least we know that in the end of all that pricey data-analysis work, the district will be equipped to illuminate, empowered to indicate, and engaged in systems-thinking and planning.
This is all good and nice and cozy, but will the district be able to start teaching the kids better? If so, how? Will it be able to decide which learning disabilities are crippling advanced classes participation by minorities? Will it know whether to reallocate funds to bus services to bring kids home from after-school activities? I mean, all that really boring stuff, will the district be able to do that, a year and sixty thousand dollars later?
I do not know. I guess the district administration does, and will reveal to us, like a magician in the end of an implausible prestidigitation sequence, if they select this vendor.
What else… The Equity Imperative goes on a limb to project general hipness and coolness. Its site (like Dr. Lewis’) does not have any pointers to schools or districts which mastered the art of illumination, indication and navigation, but it does offer a blog, with a total of two entries. One of them, analyzing school budgets, views the root problem thusly:
This system ensures that the private bank industry earns profits off the interest paid from loans that have been issued (Huber, 2017). These set of facts are at the heart of what caused the market crash of 2008, however, the US monetary system never changed.
(Those horrors of capitalism, how can we live with them. The banks get interests on loans. I mean, given this nightmarish hellscape, what’s $250/hour between friends?)
The other blog post, filed, like the first one, on Dec. 30, 2020 starts with a cheerful “Springtime is here!” and continues with a startling fact that
in the third quarter of the school year, on average, students have received nearly 60,000 minutes of instruction; a persistent stream of seconds
No kidding.
Anyway. However amusing the armchair critical theory by the Equity Imperative can be, it comes at a cost. The Board and the administration are spending their very real time and attention span on patently vacuous proposals by the wannabe equity entrepreneurs. (Of course, if the district signs up any of these useless producers of words, definitions, and performative actions, the damage will explode.)
Should it be this way?
Update – here.
Appendix.
After we started our little investigation of strange business practices of SEE LLC, the district launched predictable bureaucratic warfare around their Equity Task Force. They cancelled one meeting (on Dec. 9) for no particular reason, and garbled their Zoom session for the next meeting (on Jan. 6) so that it had to be cancelled as well.
As the Equity Task Force was supposed to drive the process of Equity Audits, these absolutely innocent and unrelated acts, – effectively removing the decision making from any public input, – left us pondering: what is the district up to, with its equity audit? and who is running the process?
As it happened, we learned a few weeks ago that Dr. Caffey converged on a few alternatives to Systemic Educational Equity LLC.
I sent him an email, asking who these new vendors are. Predictably, Dr. Caffey didn’t answer, but Ms. Johnson (assistant to the District Superintendent, Dr. Ivory-Tatum, and the FOIA point person) did, to the effect that they are opening a FOIA to respond to my query (because why not). They waited a week allowed by the law and responded that they don’t have the information I need. When I pointed out that this cannot be remotely true, Ms. Johnson waited another day, and… posted the information as the agenda for the upcoming Board meeting (admonishing me that she could have ignored my request because that is how she interprets the law).
I know that the penalties for not taking FOIA requests seriously are small and impersonal (meaning neither Ms. Johnson, nor whoever told her to skirt the rules will be liable personally).
But still, – why? why doing that? Sure, it is fun to make trolling someone with a day job your day job, but doesn’t it come at a cost? damage to your credibility; general karma; that thing, soul? are those little games worth it? really? why? why?
…no answer. Don’t think a FOIA will help…