| 08.31.09 UPDATE RE THIS WEB PAGE: Here in Texas the head of our state DOE is appointed by the governor, not elected. In 2007 when it came time for a new education commissioner there was a large field; one of the contenders was Democrat Sandy Kress, tied to Texas' TEKS accountability system and NCLB; hats off to him, and to anyone who wants to work hard and achieve success in this life. However, many folks preferred Republican Robert Scott, who was already doing the job and to his credit, together with Gov. Perry, took Texas in a different direction by posting TEA's check register online, the first DOE in the nation to do so; just as important, Robert's NOT a lobbyist. While Robert Scott's support ran the gamut of Republicans -- conservative and progressive alike -- plus TASA, TASB, PTA moms and even many Democrats, and he was already possessed of a unique skillset, having already run the Texas Education Agency behind the scenes for years, it was felt that because he had no conflict of interest, Scott could easily pass the upcoming Senate confirmation process, which indeed occurred when the Lege met again this year. By contrast, Sandy Kress's fan base appeared to center on the Governor's Business Council whose members according to reports were in frequent, active and generously supportive communication with the Governor and his staff. I'm leaving this page online for both historical purposes and because Pearson continues to be a major accountability player. |
| What Al Scardino has done: o Advisor to fellow Democrat Bill Clinton's presidential campaign o Bought England's oldest soccer team; within a year or two it was bankrupt. |
| OR MATH OR ABLE TO READ OR UNDERSTAND HISTORY |
| Marjorie Scardino's husband Albert Scardino By Peyton Wolcott Sat., Sept. 1, 2007 - 1:00 am |
| H o w w e t a k e b a c k o u r c h i l d r e n ' s e d u c a t i o n : o n e p e r s o n , o n e q u e s t i o n , o n e s c h o o l a t a t i m e - Copyright 1999-2009 Peyton Wolcott |
| P E Y T O N W O L C O T T |
How we take back our children's education: one person, one question, one school at a time. |
| FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of education issues vital to a republic. We believe this constitutes a "fair use" of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C., Chapter 1, Section 107 which states: the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright," the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond "fair use" you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
| ATTENTION EDUCATORS AND ADMINISTRATORS: Every attempt possible has been made to verify all sources and information. In the event you feel an error has been made, please contact us immediately. Thank you. |
| Copyright 1999-2009 Peyton Wolcott |
| Following the money: From Sandy Kress to Akin Gump to U.K.- owned Pearson to NCLB--the collision of lobbyists, edu-vendors and government By Peyton Wolcott Updated Monday, September 3, 2007 - 10:00 a.m. |
| Pearson Education facts (from Pearson site) Pearson Education is the global leader in educational publishing. Our international business (outside the US) is three times bigger than that of our nearest competitor. 18m US school students learn English and Maths with a Pearson programme. Scott Foresman's Dick, Jane and Spot series have taught generations of Americans to read since 1930. 24,000 US schools are using Pearson Education technology to instruct children and monitor their progress. Half a billion people are learning English with Pearson Longman materials. 10,000 primary schools in the UK use digital materials from Pearson Education. 3.6m college students in America are using one of our online services. Nearly 100 million constructed response scores and 40 million exams were scored by Pearson Education in the US last year. Edxecel marks 9.4 million examination scripts each year, of which 3 million were marked on-screen in 2005. 1 in 3 US school children studies English or Maths with a Scott Foresman or Prentice Hall textbook. 3.5m people qualified in our testing centres in 2005. |
| Pearson programmes and testing centres Scott Foresman Pearson Education Pearson Longman Edxecel online services Prentice Hall |
| 2006 Pearson to acquire Chancery Software Ltd 31 May 2006 (Pearson press release) Pearson, the world's leading education company, today announced the acquisition of Chancery Software Ltd., a leading provider of student information systems (SIS) in the K-12 US school market. Over the past 20 years, Chancery has built a range of software tools to help schools and districts collect and manage student information such as enrollments, scheduling, attendance, grading, and student performance. Chancery is the second largest SIS company in the US market with an installed base of 6,000 schools and recognized capabilities in building, installing and supporting customized systems for large school districts. Pearson is the market leader in the enterprise and student information systems business with an installed based of more than 16,000 schools. It provides SIS solutions for K-12 school districts combining student information, assessment, reporting, and business solutions to fulfill the accountability requirements set by No Child Left Behind through its SASI school server-based product and its Centerpoint web-based offering. These products lead the SIS market for small- and mid-sized school districts. Last week Pearson also announced the acquisition of PowerSchool, the third largest school SIS provider, from Apple. Chancery and PowerSchool will be integrated into a single company, Pearson School Systems, operating under the leadership of Mary McCaffrey. Steven Dowling, president of Pearson's School Companies, said: "Student information is central to our goal of helping schools raise student achievement through personalized learning. The acquisitions of PowerSchool and Chancery transform our SIS business, doubling its size and enabling us to offer the pre-eminent software solutions for all levels of schools and districts (small, medium, and large). All three businesses have a long and successful history of investment and innovation, and together we will continue to develop new services to help schools achieve their goals." "The large districts that Chancery supports require a very high level of customization and support as they build and install their systems. Chancery has a great deal of experience and talent in this area and will bring a lot to Pearson." About Pearson Education Educating 100 million people worldwide, Pearson Education is the global leader in educational publishing, providing scientifically research-based print and digital programs to help students of all ages learn at their own pace, in their own way. Virtually all students and teachers in America learn from a Pearson program at some point in their educational career. In the U.S., nearly 25,000 schools use Pearson technology to help instruct K-12 students and manage how they are doing. Pearson Education is a business of Pearson, the international media company (LSE: PSON; NYSE: PSO). About Chancery Software Chancery Software (www.chancery.com) is one of the leading providers of Student Information Systems for K-12 schools, districts, classrooms, and homes. Chancery solutions offer accurate real-time information on more than thirteen million students to one million educators every day. Built to address the challenges faced by today's districts, Chancery Student Management Solutions are uniquely aligned to meet the accountability and reporting requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act. With over 20 years of industry firsts and implementations, Chancery's customized SIS solutions meet the needs and budgets of diverse schools and districts throughout North America. For more information: Pearson Simon Mays-Smith/ Deborah Lincoln: +44 (0)20 7010 2310 Wendy Spiegel: +1 (212) 782 3482 |
| Corporate (from Pearson site) For over 20 years, Chancery has been in the business of creating Student Information Systems (SIS). Working first at the school site level, we designed solutions for the Mac and Windows platforms—our award winning Mac School® and Win School® SIS. Over six years ago, we introduced "Open District®," our first web-enabled solution and began moving the key features of our site-based products over to this new platform. During that time we also recognized the need for a fully web-based, centralized, totally integrated solution using web services and employing n-tier architecture. Four years ago, we began building a new and integrated SIS solution from the ground up—Chancery SMS™. This architecture separates the user interface (browser) from the back-end database, giving you flexibility in your platform and database selections as well as critical business logic in the middle tier (which is where our application resides). This allows for flexibility, integration, security, and the enhanced functionality we've spent years developing. We are very proud of the experience we've gathered during our more than 20 years of developing SIS, which manages data on over 13 million students. And we're excited about our Chancery SMS solution—which we believe will take your student information to new levels and help you not only meet, but also exceed NCLB and state reporting requirements. We also believe it takes more than just a great product to help your school district get the most from the technology you are using. This is why we offer the industry's widest and most flexible range of technical support and customer services to help you get the highest benefit from your partnership with Chancery. |
| More about Houston ISD's dropout rate |
| www.nottscountyfc.pr emiumtv.co.uk |
| ISSUES RAISED RE SANDY KRESS, AKIN GUMP |
| "A powerful Washington, D.C., law firm with unusually close ties to the White House has earned hefty fees representing controversial Saudi billionaires as well as a Texas-based Islamic charity fingered last week as a terrorist front....Another longtime partner is Barnett A. 'Sandy' Kress, the former Dallas School Board president who Bush appointed in January to work for the White House as an 'unpaid consultant' on education reform.... In addition to the royal family, the firm's Saudi clients have included bin Mahfouz, who hired Akin, Gump when he was indicted in the BCCI banking scandal in the early 1990s." |
| Per Scott Parks re Sandy Kress: "Lobbyist a go-to guy on school policy, but some question his motives." Asked about the serv- ices Kress provides to corporate clients, he says, "I don't want to talk too much about what I do for my clients because I don't think they like that." |
| EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE SANDY KRESS BIO Sandy Kress, Partner skress@akingump.com 1-512-499-6234 fax: 1-512-703-1112 Austin; Practice Areas: Public Law and Policy Telecommunications and Information Technology Sandy Kress served as senior advisor to President Bush on Education with respect to the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Mr. Kress previously served as president of the board of trustees of the Dallas Public Schools. He has served on two statewide committees to recommend improvements to Texas public education. His practice focuses on public law and policy at the state and national levels. Appointed in 1998 by Governor George W. Bush, Mr. Kress serves on the Education Commission of the States. He has also served as counsel to the Governor's Business Council and Texans for Education, and as a member of the Texas Business & Education Coalition and the Telecommunications Infrastructure Fund Board, which will spend more than $1.5 billion over the next 10 years to bring technology to Texas schools. Mr. Kress was appointed by Lieutenant Governor Bob Bullock to the Educational Economic Policy Center. He was later asked to chair the Center's Accountability Committee. This committee produced the public school accountability system that was later adopted into Texas state law and recognized as one of the most advanced accountability systems in the nation. Mr. Kress was also appointed by Lieutenant Governor Bullock to serve on the Interim Committee to study the Texas Education Agency. Prior to joining Akin Gump, Mr. Kress was a partner in the Dallas law firm of Johnson & Wortley, P.C. He also served as deputy assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the U.S. Treasury Department. Mr. Kress received his A.B. in 1971 from the University of California, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He received his J.D. with honors in 1975 from the University of Texas School of Law, where he served as president of the student government. Mr. Kress is a member of the State Bar of Texas and the District of Columbia Bar, and is involved with many civic organizations. He serves on the board of directors of the Gladney Center. Mr. Kress has also served on the boards of the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce, the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas and the University of Texas Law School Association, and as a member of the board of governors of the Dallas Symphony Association. ___________________________________________________ NOTE: The above was published on ETS' site with no date. |
| Educational Testing Service |
| Sandy Kress' $150 million a year plan Leaders of the newly formed Texans for Excellence in the Classroom--an offshoot of sorts of the Govern- or's Business Council-- visited the Chronicle late last week to rally support for a comprehensive reform initiative that they hope will put an ''excellent teacher in every classroom'." ...Leaders say the plan would cost Texas an extra $100 million to $150 million a year. It's money well spent, they say, because research shows that highly effective teachers can close achievement gaps over five years. "That's how serious this is," Sandy Kress, once a senior education adviser to President Bush, told the Chronicle. "We cannot lose another generation." |
| Results in Dallas: Dropouts, cheating "Sandy Kress...has a lot in common with George W. Bush. Their 'involvement' with education reform has nothing to do with children and everything to do with their own personal agendas. Both men continually misrepresent or distort the truth even when confronted with the cold, hard facts. Sandy's "accountability" measures created a system that gave principals and teachers the green light to falsify and cheat on test scores and attendance records....And what did DISD have to show for all of Sandy's "great" work? Hispanic dropouts and pushouts, low graduation and retention rates, soaring truancy, and the saddest result of all...illiterate graduates who tested well on TAAS! |
| "I have just three 'go to' websites: The Texas Legislature, Texas Longhorn sports, and Eduwonk" -- Sandy Kress NOTE: EduWonk is run by Andrew Rotherham, a former Clinton White House advisor who is also connected to The Broad Foundation (below, 2002). |
| EDUWONK.COM |
| The elephant in the room is how much the testing process itself is costing us. Remember that NCLB was sold to a Republican White House by a Democratic lobbyist, surely the lobbying coup of the century. Estimates for developing, publishing, administering, grading, and reporting NCLB-required statewide tests: $517 million during the 2005-06 school year. (SOURCE-- Eduventures) Per Education Sector, "some testing company executives peg the number somewhat higher, at $700 million to $750 million." |
| N C L B |
| Here's the thing with Sandy Kress. You never quite know when he discusses public education--whether he's worrying aloud or cheerleading--which hat he's wearing. A good example would be this past spring when Sandy was alerting folks across the U.S. to the danger of any changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, of which he is generally credited as being the architect. David Sanger wrote in The New York Times in May that, "President Bush's senior education adviser, Sandy Kress, warned today that a movement in Congress to modify the president's education plan by removing requirements to test students annually would 'cut out the heart and soul' of the effort to overhaul America's schools." |
| The question Now, then. Was Sandy worried as NCLB's architect about his pet project's being diminished by those--including conservatives and schoolteachers and their administrators--who don't get NCLB, those who maybe think any collaboration undertaken with Democratic Senator Teddy "Don't worry about the pregnancy, Mary Jo, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it, I've inherited enough money to support two families" Kennedy is inherently suspect? Or was Sandy speaking as a lobbyist for his client Pearson which |
| Mary Jo Kopechne, Teddy Kennedy |
| company's revenue stream would dry up considerably if our public schools suddenly quit buying Pearson's tests? |
| A CLOSER LOOK: PEARSON'S CHANCERY SOFTWARE June 1, 2006 eSchool News " Making its second acquisition of a major competitor in less than a week, Pearson School Systems announced yesterday that it is purchasing Chancery Software Ltd., a leading publisher of student information systems... " |
| Dear Friends: While I very much appreciate the inclusion by Harvey Kronberg and his staff in today's above-named QR commentary, no one from QR contacted me in the course of their researching or writing this report; I would have characterized my questions and comments differently regarding Sandy Kress, whom I have contacted on multiple occasions in order to invite correction of anything factually incorrect. Further, not sure how QR arrived at the statement that Mr. Kress, "is not Pearson’s lobbyist in Texas," given the information below available at time of this writing on the Texas Ethics Commission website. Have we entered the area of defining "is"? Perhaps a change has been made to the TEC webpage not reflected in this list below copied this past hour from the TEC site. -- Peyton |
| TEXAS ETHICS COMMISSION 2007 Lobby List with Concerns (Employers and Clients) Sorted By Concern Name Part III - (M-S) Printed August 28, 2007 Pearson Education 1 Lake Street Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 Bryan, Beth Ann (00055189) 300 West 6th Street Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701 Type of Compensation: Prospective Amount: Less Than $10,000.00 Client - Start: 01/19/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007 Carter, Janis L. (00039065) 401 Congress Avenue Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701 Type of Compensation: Prospective Amount: $10,000 - $24,999.99 Client - Start: 01/10/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007 Foster, Wendy M. (00056685) 401 Congress Ste 2100 Austin, TX 78701 Type of Compensation: Prospective Amount: $10,000 - $24,999.99 Client - Start: 01/22/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007 Kress, B. Alexander (00032037) 300 West 6th Street Suite 2100 Austin, TX 78701 Type of Compensation: Prospective Amount: Less Than $10,000.00 Client - Start: 01/08/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007 Valenzuela, Joe D. (00050742) 401 Congress Ste. 2100 Austin, TX Type of Compensation: Prospective Amount: $10,000 - $24,999.99 Client - Start: 01/10/2007 Term Date: 12/31/2007 www.ethics.state.tx.us/tedd/conlob2 007c.htm |
| QUESTION: Why would Gov. Perry--elected as a Republican by Republican voters--appoint a Democratic lobbyist whose edu-vendor clients include Pearson as Texas' next education commissioner? Especially if they've made millions from government programs like NCLB he helped design? What if the kicker is that he sends his own son to a private school? |
| Pearson logos |
| Houston ISD dropout rate whistleblower Bob Kimball (PHOTO--CBS) |
| "HISD's software system gets an 'F' for frustration," wrote Jennifer Radcliffe last October in the Houston Chronicle, citing $600,000 in overtime expenses for district employees. "Houston's launch of Pearson School Systems' Chancery soft- ware has been troubled since August, when thousands of student schedules weren't done in time for the start of school." |
| REPORTS OF PROBLEMS WITH CHANCERY FLORIDA - "Orange County Public Schools is jettisoning a glitch-prone software program that gave the parents of middle-school students headaches rather than their children's grades. After nearly two years of waiting for the company to fix the problems, the district is looking for a new vendor to create a program that will give parents, teachers and students access to critical information." COST: $3.8 million (SOURCE--Orlando Sentinel) MARYLAND - "The Howard County district...has reported repeated problems since installing Chancery last summer. In that district, report cards were late and had errors." (SOURCE--Houston Chronicle) TEXAS - "I wonder why the Klein ISD problems were not mentioned in this story. There were quite a few very heated Klein ISD School Board discussions about the failure of this software to deliver on what it promised, and the resultant extra costs to the district. I remember hearing that Pasadena ISD was not happy with it either. I wonder just how many school districts out there bought this software." (SOURCE--Anonymous entry/Houston Chronicle blog) |
| QUESTIONS RE HOW CHANCERY IS PURCHASED BY PUBLIC SCHOOLS (1) Why did Reggie Moore, Gledich and Thompson purchase "flawed" software with "poor reviews"? "Orange County Public Schools Chief Operations Officer Nick Gledich....and Chief Information Officer Charles Thompson acknowledge the software rollout was flawed from the start. The district went ahead with the middle-school system despite poor reviews from other schools testing the program." (SOURCE--Orlando Sentinel) (2) Was Pearson a TAS/MUS sponsor in April at the Boerne Tourney? Who did the Pearson vendor play golf with at the TAS/MUS conference? |
| Fast forward: Chancery HISD champion resigns Houston ISD has announced that "Reggie Moore, the 46-year-old chief operations officer, was leaving 'to pursue other opportunities.' Moore, who came to the district from the private sector in 2004, oversaw the district's police, transportation, food service, maintenance and technology departments. Most recently, Moore, who earned $164,424 a year, made the news for overseeing the rollout of Chancery." |
| Reggie Moore |
| QUESTION: Is a "big bet" really a bet when Pearson's lobbyist is friendly with the White House? And its lobbyist helped draft NCLB? |
| QUESTION RE EDU-VENDOR PEARSON How did Houston ISD purchase $18.4 mil in 'flawed' Canadian Chancery software with 'poor reviews' from U.K. vendor Pearson? Will it help HISD's 40-50% dropout rate? By Peyton Wolcott Wednesday, September 5, 2007 - 8:38 a.m. |
| How Chancery connects with HISD's dropout rate We won't know for some years if Chancery has succeeded in providing the district with sufficient student information that the actual dropout rate drops to the 1.3% level it claimed in 2002 when then-HISD administrator Bob Kimball blew the whistle on the district's dropout reporting practices. For now, Kimball confirmed by telephone last night that Houston ISD's actual dropout rate had been determined to be in the 40-50% range by a group of scholars who met at last October at a conference at Rice University; sponsors included the Rice University Center for Education, Children at Risk, and the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University. Hats off to Fox News in Houston for highlighting this issue by interviewing Bob last week as the new school year began. |
| 60 MINUTES / CBS The 'Texas Miracle' 60 Minutes II Investigates Claims That Houston Schools Falsified Dropout Rates Aug. 25, 2004 It was called the “Texas Miracle,” a phrase you may remember because President Bush wanted everyone to know about it during his 2000 presidential campaign. It was an approach to education that was showing amazing results, particularly in Houston, where dropout rates plunged and test scores soared. Houston School Superintendent Rod Paige was given credit for the schools' success, by making principals and administrators accountable for how well their students did. Once he was elected president, Mr. Bush named Paige as secretary of education. And Houston became the model for the president’s “No Child Left Behind” education reform act. Now, as Correspondent Dan Rather reported last winter, it turns out that some of those miraculous claims which Houston made were wrong. And it all came to light when one assistant principal took a close look at his school’s phenomenally low dropout rates – and found that they were just too good to be true. --------------------------------------------------- “I was shocked. I said, ‘How can that be,’” says Robert Kimball, an assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, on Houston’s West Side. His school claimed that no students – not a single one – had dropped out in 2001-2002. But that’s not what Kimball saw: “I had been at the high school for three years, and I had seen many, many students, several hundred a year, go out the door. And I knew that they were quitting. They told me they were quitting.” Most of the 1,700 students at Sharpstown High are under- privileged immigrants -- prime candidates for dropping out. One student was Jennys Franco Gomez. She dropped out of Sharpstown in 2001 for an all-too- familiar reason: she had a baby. “My baby got sick, and I don’t have nobody to take care of my baby and take it to the doctor,” she says. The high school reported that Gomez left to get a GED, or equivalency diploma, which doesn’t count as a dropout. But Gomez says she never told school officials anything of the sort. All in all, 463 kids left Sharpstown High School that year, for a variety of reasons. The school reported zero dropouts, but dozens of the students did just that. School officials hid that fact by classifying, or coding, them as leaving for acceptable reasons: transferring to another school, or returning to their native country. “That’s how you get to zero dropouts. By assigning codes that say, ‘Well, this student, you know, went to another school. He did this or that.’ And basically, all 463 students disappeared. And the school reported zero dropouts for the year,” says Kimball. “They were not counted as dropouts, so the school had an outstanding record.” Sharpstown High wasn’t the only “outstanding” school. The Houston school district reported a citywide dropout rate of 1.5 percent. But educators and experts 60 Minutes checked with put Houston’s true dropout rate somewhere between 25 and 50 percent. “But the teachers didn’t believe it. They knew it was cooking the books. They told me that. Parents told me that,” says Kimball. “The superintendent of schools would make the public believe it was one school. But it is in the system, it is in all of Houston.” Those low dropout rates – in Houston and all of Texas - were one of the accomplishments then- Texas Gov. George Bush cited when he campaigned to become the “Education President.” At that time, Paige was running Houston’s schools, and he had instituted a policy of holding principals accountable for how their students did. Principals worked under one-year contracts, and each year, the school district set strict goals in areas like dropout rates and test scores. Principals who met the goals got cash bonuses of up to $5,000, and other perks. Those who fell short were transferred, demoted or forced out. --------------------------------------------------- Kimball took his findings about Sharpstown High to CBS affiliate KHOU-TV, which first reported the dropout scandal. Then, he went to State Rep. Rick Noriega. In Noriega’s largely Hispanic, mostly poor district, many kids start high school, but never finish. “In my district in particular, where I have many of my high schools, 1,000 ninth-grade students, yet only approx 300 or so will walk the stage four years later and receive a diploma. A big question should go off in people’s heads, where are the other students?” says Noriega, who asked the state to find out. Investigators checked half of the city’ s regular high schools. They reviewed the records of nearly 5,500 students who left those schools, and checked how the schools explained it. They found that almost 3,000 students should have been, but weren’t, coded as dropouts. The audit substantiated Kimball’s allegations. “The problem is the lack of integrity that’s being demonstrated when you say there’s such a low dropout rate, when we know, everyone knows, that 30 to 40 percent of the kids are dropping out of schools," says Kimball. 60 Minutes wanted to ask Houston school officials about Kimball’s charges, but they wouldn’t talk on camera. They said they wouldn’t “get a fair shake.” But they did meet off camera, and they argued that the audit proved outright fraud only at Sharpstown High. At the other schools, they contended, the false statistics were due to “confusion” about the complex state system for coding students, and sloppy bookkeeping. They conceded, however, that Houston’s “official” 1.5 percent dropout rate was not accurate. Those officials also urged 60 Minutes to get a better picture of the Houston school system on by talking on camera to Rob Mosbacher, a Houston businessman, school supporter and Republican activist. “I think the district looks at the challenges it has, and sets high expectations. And that’s something that makes all of us very proud. Because they’ve been making the progress that shows that expectations can be realized,” says Mosbacher. 60 Minutes also tried to talk to Paige himself, but he declined. His spokesman said the dropout controversy broke after Paige left Houston to become education secretary. And he said the phony statistics at Sharpstown were the work of a few individuals. Paige’s spokesman suggested that 60 Minutes talk to Jay Greene, a leading expert on dropouts at the Manhattan Institute. Greene supports the kind of accountability reforms Paige enacted in Houston. But this is what Greene said when asked what he thought about Houston’s “official” dropout rates: “I find that very hard to believe. It is almost certainly not true. I think it’s simply implausible. I think a reasonable guess is that almost half of Houston’s students do not graduate from high school.” Greene also points out that Houston’ s dropout problem is no worse than that of school systems in many other large American cities: “I think they are doing about as well as most urban school districts, which is to say not very well … I don’t think they’ve been doing super well.” --------------------------------------------------- Houston also won national acclaim for raising the average scores on a statewide achievement test that was given to 10th graders. Principals were judged on how well their students did on the test. But at Houston schools, Kimball says, principals taught addition by subtraction: They raised average test scores by keeping low- performing kids from taking the test. And in some cases, that meant keeping kids from getting to the 10th grade at all. “What the schools did, and what Sharpstown High School did, they said, ‘OK, you cannot go to the 10th grade unless you pass all these courses in the 9th grade,” says Kimball. What's wrong with that? Wouldn't this help students get the basics down before moving on? “Because you failed algebra, you may be in the ninth grade three years, until you pass the course. But that’s not a social promotion if you just allowed the student to go to 10th grade, just you know, let him take algebra again, and work on it there.” That’s just what happened to Perla Arredondo. She passed all her courses in ninth grade, but was then told she had to repeat the same grade and the same courses. “I went to my counselor’s office, and I told her, ‘You’re giving me the wrong classes, because I already passed ‘em,” says Perla. “So she said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I know what I’m doing. That’s my job.’” Perla spent three years in the ninth grade. She failed algebra, but passed it in summer school. Finally, she was promoted – right past 10th grade and that important test -- and into the 11th. Without enough credits to graduate, Perla dropped out. While she worked as a cashier, a secretary, and a waitress, she learned an important lesson: “I know I can’t get a good job without a high school diploma. You know? I can get a job as a waitress. I mean, and I don’t wanna be doing that all my life.” Why? “For my dad and mom. You know, I wanna give ‘em, I want them to be proud, you know,” says Perla. “That’s another thing I want. I want them to be, you know, proud of what I am.” --------------------------------------------------- Gilbert Moreno has seen many Perla Arredondos. He runs a school filled with dropouts. “There are some horrible stories,” says Moreno, who is director of the Association for the Advancement of Mexican-Americans, which operates a private, non-profit charter high school for disadvantaged kids. “A youngster passed, say, five different subjects, passed the English, but wasn’t given the algebra, and then was later told, at the end of the year, ‘Well, you’re not gonna pass to the 10th grade. You never passed algebra. You never took algebra,’” says Moreno. “And the youngster goes, ‘I never knew this.’ And it looks almost that there was an attempt to maybe identify some certain students and not give them the required curriculum.” There is no state audit to back up this claim, but Moreno points out that many Houston high schools have bulging ninth grades, and very small 10th grades. One school, he says, held back more than 60 percent of its ninth-graders. School officials say students are held back because they’re not ready for the next grade. They deny that they were held back to avoid the test. Students and teachers at Moreno’s charter school showed 60 Minutes that dropouts are not a lost cause. Former dropouts get help here to stay in school. Classes are small, there is daycare for students with children, and programs to combat drugs and gangs. There was determination, ambition and hope in their voices. Roscio dreams of becoming a cartoonist. “I’m really good at drawing,” he says. “Right now, I want to go to med school and continue to become a pediatrician,” says Victor. And Vanessa dreams of becoming a journalist. --------------------------------------------------- Noriega says Houston school officials focus on statistics instead of real problems: “That’s the issue. It’s the kids, stupid. And people continue to wanna spin around it all, and lose sight of it all. And it’s Kimball, and it’s just one school, and it’s this and it’s that. And it’s not.” If that sounds like a political statement, it’s because questions about the Houston school miracle are now being raised in Washington. And Education Secretary Paige, who declined to give 60 Minutes an interview, responded to those questions in a speech in Houston just before Christmas 2003: “Critics come after the school district in Houston. Not Sacramento, not Denver, Boston or Los Angeles. It is Houston that they put on the front page. They come after you, not because of an interest in quality education, but because of where you live.” And in the case of whistle-blower Kimball, school officials have denounced him as incompetent, and transferred him to a primary school for kindergarten through second grade, where he is the second assistant principal. “The district felt that, by sending me down there, somebody who’s taught at university level, taught at high school level, and middle school level, would be humiliated at a low primary school, but I’m telling you that I love it,” says Kimball, who adds he isn’t going to quit. --------------------------------------------------- After 60 Minutes broadcast that story, Robert Kimball filed a whistle- blower suit against the Houston School District for retaliating against him. The school board dropped its reprimand and paid Kimball $90,000. Kimball resigned and is now teaching at a local university. A few weeks later, three top school board officials, including Superintendent Kay (sic) Stripling, resigned their posts. State Representative Rick Noriega, a major in the Army Reserves, is now on active duty in Afghanistan. |
| Supes golfing with vendors during TAKS week |
| THE WORLD ACCORDING TO PEARSON (From Pearson's site) Pearson at a glance Pearson is an international media company with market-leading businesses in education, business information and consumer publishing. We lead our markets in quality, innovation and in profitability. We draw on common assets, capital, processes and culture. With more than 29,000 employees based in 60 countries, we are a large family of businesses that are alike in sharing the same aim: a focus on making the reading and learning experience as enjoyable and as beneficial as it can possibly be. Pearson is listed on the London (PSON) and New York (PSO) Stock Exchanges. In 2006 our businesses had sales of £4,423m ($8,669m) and adjusted operating profit of £592m ($1,160m). Pearson Education The world's leading education company. From pre-school to high school, early learning to professional certification, our textbooks, multimedia learning tools and testing programmes help to educate more than 100 million people worldwide - more than any other private enterprise.... Financial Times Group The Financial Times Group, one of the world's leading business information companies, provides a broad range of business information and multimedia services to the growing audience of internationally-minded business people.... The Penguin Group The world-famous Penguin brand is the label of quality from novels and classics to cookbooks - and much more - around the world. We publish an unrivalled range of fiction and non-fiction, bestsellers and classics, children's books and illustrated reference treasure chests in over 100 countries. (SOURCE--Pearson) |
| CHANCERY Student Management Software (From Pearson's website) District Administrator Challenge Need to secure district funding, ensure district performance, and meet NCLB requirements. As head of the district, you are invariably looking for funding sources— much of which is dependent upon the schools under your jurisdiction meeting state and federal achievement and reporting requirements. Your performance is under constant scrutiny by both the school board and the community. These groups want to know how your district is performing and they want to know that the money invested in student achievement has been wisely spent. |
| Solution The reporting and data mining capabilities in Chancery SMS lets you respond quickly to inquiries, create effective funding applications, meet No Child Left Behind requirements, and make better decisions for the district. Chancery SMS helps you understand and analyze student data and ensure district funds are employed in ways that have a direct impact on your students’ educational achievement. |
| PEARSON EDUCATION (from Pearson site) Through acquisitions, strategic alliances, and organic growth, we have put in place all the pieces necessary to create the world's leading learning company. These pieces include the most comprehensive range of educational programmes; leadership in testing, assessment, and enterprise software; and the very best in online consumer and professional learning. We are engaged in these activities for every age and level of student - from pre-school through kindergarten, primary and secondary school, college and university and on into professional life. Pearson Education's international business has been growing rapidly in recent years, and we now have a presence in over 110 countries. |
| UPDATE: final FY 2005- 2006 numbers now in TEA checks in the mail to Pearson: $135,500,000 Raising questions for any consideration of Pearson or other lobbyists (inclu- ding Sandy Kress) as Texas' next edu-missioner By Peyton Wolcott Updated Fri., Sept. 7, 2007-5:32 p.m. |
| 2006-10-13 4,299,072.35 2006-10-18 102,554.25 2006-10-19 88,672.55 2006-10-20 157,571.47 2006-10-25 62,750.46 2006-10-26 280,216.09 2006-10-27 64,679.81 2006-10-30 4,990.50 2006-11-02 70,107.08 2006-11-03 231,793.67 2006-11-08 259,421.55 2006-11-09 116,172.27 2006-11-10 126.00 2006-11-13 17,591.36 2006-11-15 26,547.00 2006-11-16 80,825.27 2006-11-17 58,026.91 2006-11-21 201,201.62 2006-11-24 22,956.09 2006-11-29 31,972.30 2006-11-30 10,049.20 |
| NCS PEARSON INC 2006-09-28 3,831,697.00 2006-10-19 1,847,622.00 2006-10-31 2,905,758.00 2006-11-09 447,486.00 2006-11-21 3,192,006.00 2006-11-30 1,280,785.00 2006-12-19 3,726,515.00 2007-01-18 2,851,141.00 2007-01-25 206,420.05 2007-01-26 89,767.00 2007-02-14 5,000.00 2007-02-20 6,087,045.00 2007-03-01 27,377.00 2007-03-21 8,667,964.00 2007-04-19 13,364,700.00 2007-04-20 484,421.00 2007-05-10 6,869,667.00 SUBTOTAL FIRST 3 QTRS. $ 55,885,371 |
| 2006-12-06 44,612.80 2006-12-07 42,672.68 2006-12-08 11,852.13 2006-12-13 21,520.23 2006-12-14 34,267.87 2006-12-15 4,882.83 2006-12-20 2,884.75 2006-12-21 61,666.84 2006-12-27 387.38 2006-12-28 8,690.14 2007-01-03 722.00 2007-01-04 25,464.33 2007-01-05 5,005.14 2007-01-10 2,077.00 2007-01-11 35,941.82 2007-01-18 25,100.36 2007-02-01 121,344.08 2007-02-07 202,853.44 2007-02-08 10,325.96 2007-02-09 60,371.34 2007-02-12 33,908.54 |
| 2007-02-15 416,540.50 2007-02-20 509.60 2007-02-21 24,689.15 2007-02-22 4,635.20 2007-02-23 18,721.53 2007-02-27 42.10 2007-03-01 27,635.16 2007-03-02 9,691.83 2007-03-14 28,742.55 2007-03-15 14,862.70 2007-03-22 31,029.87 2007-03-23 1,210.00 2007-03-28 1,507.25 2007-03-29 1,614.68 2007-04-04 13,135.69 2007-04-18 78,978.25 2007-04-20 2,789.14 2007-04-27 2,012.10 SUBTOTAL FIRST 3 QTRS $ 7,622,196 |
| The following represent $135,500,000 in checks paid to Pearson Education/NCS Pearson by Texas taxpayers via the Texas Education Agency during the most recent fiscal year (09/01/06 - 08/31/07); these checks are posted on TEA's website. For the record, as of this week, the Texas Ethics Commission lists Sandy Kress as Pearson's paid lobbyist. (Full current list of Pearson's Texas lobbyists below far left in greybar.) Many thanks once again to Gov. Rick Perry and to Interim Commissioner of Education Robert Scott for posting TEA's check register online earlier this year -- the first and only state department of education to do so in the U.S.! |
| 2006-10-10 48,500.00 2006-12-14 137,781.00 2006-12-15 29,110.00 2006-12-22 46,995.30 2007-01-25 1,140,739.50 2007-02-14 46,130.60 2007-04-12 1,394,031.70 2007-04-26 106,506.90 2007-05-02 45,710.50 EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE SUBTOTAL FIRST 3 QUARTERS $ 2,995,505.50 |
| And many thanks to the alert late-night reader who suggested a revisit of the Texas Ethics Commission lobby lists, where we find other Sandy Kress clients, Educational Testing Service and Edvance Research, Inc.; here are some of the checks TEA wrote to these two businesses during the first three quarters of the current fiscal year. |
| NCS PEARSON |
| PEARSON EDUCATION |
| 2007-03-29 41,878.73 2007-04-27 42,380.63 2007-05-29 47,535.41 EDVANCE RESEARCH INC SUBTOTAL FIRST 3 QUARTERS $ 131,794.77 |
| EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE |
| EDVANCE RESEARCH |
| Lobbyist Sandy Kress (L) Pearson's "Big Man on School Reform" (Caption source--Scott Parks/Dallas M. News) (R) Marjorie "Marj" Scardino, Pearson's CEO |
| TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY - FISCAL YEAR FY 2006-2007 TOTALS NCS PEARSON INC $ 93.6+ million PEARSON EDUCATION TOTAL: $ 41.9+ million TOTAL PAYMENTS $ 135.5+ million |
| A closer look at Edvance Research, Inc. By Peyton Wolcott - Friday, September 7, 2007 - 5:41 pm |
| THE GOVERNOR'S BUSINESS COUNCIL, THE COMMISSION FOR A COLLEGE READY TEXAS, and EDVANCE RESEARCH, INC. Sandy Kress is registered lobbyist for the first two, chair of the third By Peyton Wolcott Updated Thursday, September 13, 2007 |
| 2003 PRESS RELEASE re TCCRT "2003 Governor Perry has directed the Governors Business Council to organize the series of College Ready Summits around Texas to unite the business community and the education establishment in the common goal of lowering dropout rates and improving college readiness of graduating high school students....The College Ready Summits build upon the Texas High School Project (THSP), a $130 million public-private initiative organized by Governor Perry. THSP partners the State of Texas, the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to benefit at-risk students and encourage high school graduation. "The public sector and the private sector must work together to solve the problem of high school dropouts," added Perry. "If we expect the Texas economy to be prosperous tomorrow, we must first equip our high school graduates to succeed today." (SOURCE--Gov. Perry press release) |
| Sandy Kress (PHOTO--PBS) |
| ________________________ "No Child" graphic source: Pennsylvania Citizens for Science |
| * "Multiple Case Study of the Fiscal Conditions that Exist in Five California School Districts under State Receivership," by Christine Lizardi Frazier (2006). |
| What are REL's? In an effort to help educators and policymakers use research as a basis for improving schools and ensuring that all students receive a challenging and effective education, the U.S. Department of Education has awarded $51 million to operate 10 regional educational laboratories in FY 1996, the first year of a 5-year contract. The laboratories will operate along two major themes. One will be to examine ways in which the various pieces of comprehensive reform programs (e.g., standards, curricular alignment) can be put together to effectively support high levels of learning for all children. The second will be to develop workable strategies for "scaling up" effective teaching and learning practices. In addition, each of the labs has been assigned a specialty area that will serve to expand and direct its development and applied research activities and to develop national prominence in its respective area. The regional laboratories are currently authorized under the Educational Research, Development, Dissemination and Improvement Act of 1994 and were initially funded in 1966 |
| The Broad Foundation's Broad Prize for Urban Education, Capitol Hill (Oct. 2, 2002) (PHOTO and CAPTION--US DOE) |
| And while it's easy to see that the Democratic governor who hatched GBC in 1994 (grey box above) might have needed some assistance in creating a more business-friendly climate, you might also wonder why then-Gov. Bush continued the GBC -- until you |
| THE GOVERNOR'S BUSINESS COUNCIL INC 816 CONGRESS AVE STE 1100 AUSTIN, TX 78701-2471 Status: IN GOOD STANDING - EXEMPT CORPORATION Registered Agent: JUSTIN YANCY 515 CONGRESS AVENUE, SUITE 1780 AUSTIN, TX 78701 Registered Agent Resignation Date: State of Incorporation: TX File Number: 0131395601 Charter/COA Date: May 25, 1994 Charter/COA Type: Charter Taxpayer Number: 17525800607 PRESIDENT LEE M. BASS 201 MAIN ST., SUITE 3200 FORT WORTH , TX 76102 CHAIRMAN LOUIS BEECHERL 5950 CEDAR SPRINGS ROAD, SUITE 200 DALLAS , TX 75235 CHAIRMAN ROBT. G. DAVIS 9800 FREDERICKSBURG ROAD SAN ANTONIO , TX 78288 |
| Handcuffed 1994 Governor's Business Council chair Ken Lay escorted by FBI agent into Houston courthouse, 2004 (PHOTO--Richard Carson/REUTERS) |
| 1994 Texas Governor's Business Council chair Ken Lay 10 years later, handcuffed en route to court (PHOTO--Michael Stravato/AP) |
| MARCH 21, 2007 PRESS RELEASE THE BROAD FOUNDATION Eli Broad names 13 "distinguished leaders in the fields of education, science, the arts and business" to Broad Foundation Board of Governors |
| Among those named were Barry Munitz and Rod Paige. |
| Barry Munitz (PHOTO--LA Times) |
| Barry Munitz is described in the above press release as "trustee professor, Califor- nia State University, Los Angeles, former president of The J. Paul Getty Trust, former chancellor of the California State University." Compare that with this 2004 LA Times headline: |
| Getty Deal Raises Questions: Conflict-of- interest specter haunts land sale to Eli Broad, a close friend of the trust's CEO. (More here) |
| About Rod Paige, Broad has this to say: "chairman of Chartwell Education Group LLC, former U.S. secretary of education." Others, however, remember Mr. Paige as having been the Houston ISD supe-in-charge credited with producing the "Houston Miracle" or the "Texas Miracle," which has since been discredited as in this 2003 Washington Post article (below) thusly: "Houston Independent School District — showcase for the 'Texas educational miracle' that President Bush has touted as a model for the rest of the nation — is fending off accusations that it inflated its achievements through fuzzy math." |
| Scandal in an education ‘miracle’ Bush critics cite disputed Houston school system data The Washington Post By Michael Dobbs Updated: 5:39 p.m. CT Nov 7, 2003 HOUSTON, Nov. 8 - When the state of Texas bestowed “exemplary” status on Austin High School in August 2002, ecstatic administrators compared the honor to winning the Super Bowl. There was more cheering and pompom-waving a few weeks later when a private foundation honored Houston for having the nation’s best urban school district. JUST a year later, the high school has been downgraded to “low-performing,” the lowest possible rating. And the Houston Independent School District — showcase for the “Texas educational miracle” that President Bush has touted as a model for the rest of the nation — is fending off accusations that it inflated its achievements through fuzzy math. Austin is one of more than a dozen Houston high schools caught up in a burgeoning scandal about the reliability of their dropout statistics. During a decade in which, routinely, as many as half of Austin students failed to graduate, the school’s reported dropout rate fell from 14.4 percent to 0.3 percent. Even a Houston school board member calls the statistic “baloney.” If this were any other school district in the nation, few people would pay much attention. But Houston is the political springboard for U. S. Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige. He was school superintendent here before moving to Washington, and what originally began as an argument over dropout data has expanded into a debate about the administration’s entire approach to educational reform. Opponents of the Houston system of business-style accountability have seized on the dropout scandal as evidence that some of Paige’s most cherished accomplishments — including narrowing the “achievement gap” between white and minority students — rest on false or manipulated data. They have raised questions about the validity of test results that purport to show spectacular progress by Houston students in reading, writing and arithmetic. “It is all phony; it’s just like Enron,” said Linda McNeil, a professor of education at Houston’s Rice University, referring to the bankrupt Houston-based energy services company that boosted its stock price by covering up losses. “Enron was concerned about appearances, not real economic results. That pretty much describes what we have been doing to our children in Houston.” ACCOUNTABILITY Paige, in an interview, called such remarks “inflammatory, very unfair.” He vigorously defended his record as Houston school superintendent between 1994 and 2000, saying the criticism came from people who believe it is “fundamentally wrong” to measure student achievement and who have a “vested interest” in preserving a dysfunctional status quo. During his tenure, Paige formed a political alliance with Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who became an ardent advocate of accountability and high-stakes testing. After Bush was elected president, Paige’s ideas became the inspiration for the administration’s “No Child Left Behind” plan, aimed at raising educational standards nationwide. Schools now face penalties for failing to show improvement in such things as dropout rates and reading scores. Conceding that individual “indiscretions” may have occurred in a school system that serves more than 200,000 students, Paige described the Houston Independent School District as “the most evaluated school district in the history of America.” He said he places great stock in the credibility of an accountability system that demands quantifiable results from administrators, teachers and children. “The whole system for me rode on integrity,” Paige said. The Houston accountability controversy reflects a rift that cuts to the heart of the debate about the future of American education. Paige and other proponents of high-stakes testing say it is scandalous that many American children lack basic academic skills, and they contend this can be remedied by an emphasis on bottom-line results. Skeptics say Paige’s reforms are causing a dumbing- down of the curriculum and douse any spark of creativity in the classroom in a flood of dubious data. MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES Springtime is testing season for the 200,000 or so students who attend Houston public schools, and it is approached with the kind of enthusiasm normally reserved for sporting events. There are pep rallies and marching bands, and results are blared from billboards and bumper stickers. The tests determine whether students advance to the next grade, whether teachers are promoted and whether administrators earn annual bonuses. ‘He (Roderick R. Paige) and George Bush made it acceptable in conservative circles to talk positively about public education.’ — SCOTT HOCHBERG [Democratic state representative from Houston] Although the system of high-stakes testing predated his appointment as school superintendent, Paige quickly became a symbol of the accountability movement. A former college education dean, Paige joined forces with local business leaders who favored a results-oriented approach to education that included rewards for success and penalties for failure. Soon after he became superintendent, he introduced a system of one-year contracts for school administrators, effectively tying their job security to the accomplishment of measurable goals. In revamping the school district, Paige said, he spent a lot of time studying the works of management gurus at the Houston-based American Productivity and Quality Center, which provides training courses for executives of Fortune 500 companies. By applying modern management techniques to the school system, Paige said he could explode “the conventional wisdom that big school districts could not work . . . that they were crime-ridden, underperforming and overexpensive.” The low point for Houston schools came in 1996, when voters turned down a proposed $390 million education bond issue. Two years later, with the help of the business community and public goodwill generated by steadily improving test scores, Paige secured voter approval for $678 million in new loans to rebuild many of the district’s decrepit schools. Even Paige’s critics credit him with helping to reverse the traditional Republican disdain for public education. “He and George Bush made it acceptable in conservative circles to talk positively about public education,” said Scott Hochberg, a Democratic state representative from Houston who is critical of many aspects of the accountability system. SKEWED STATISTICS After years of relying on dropout statistics as a key component in their annual accountability studies, school officials concede that they were worthless all along. At Paige’s confirmation hearing in January 2001, senators from both parties hailed him for rescuing a troubled urban school system. Last year, Houston became the first winner of the $1 million Broad Foundation prize for the best urban school district. But there were always dissenters, locally and nationally, who argued that the Houston miracle rested on skewed statistics and artful public relations. They claimed vindication earlier this year, when local television station KHOU uncovered a dropout-reporting scandal at Sharpstown High School. Under pressure to produce results, Sharpstown administrators had changed the withdrawal codes for at least 30 students to make it appear that no one had dropped out in the 2001-2002 school year. The television station tracked down one such student, Juana Juarez, behind the counter of a local Wendy’s. Juarez had informed Sharpstown officials that she was leaving school to find work, but they changed her record to show she had transferred to a private school. Exactly who changed the dropout codes at Sharpstown High School remains a mystery. An investigation by state auditors showed that at least 14 other Houston high schools, including Austin, reported unusually low dropout rates in 2000-2001, although there is no evidence administrators falsified data. By reporting a dropout rate of less than 0.5 percent, school principals increase their chances of winning bonuses of as much as $10,000 and earning top accountability ratings for their campuses. After years of relying on dropout statistics as a key component in their annual accountability studies, school officials concede that they were worthless all along. “The annual dropout rate was a crock, and we’re not [using] it anymore,” said Robert R. Stockwell Jr., the district’s chief academic officer. Katie Haycock, director of the Washington- based Education Trust, a nonprofit group that supports strict accountability standards, said dropout statistics are notoriously unreliable, in Houston and across America. “We have been lying to the public for a very long time about how many kids leave high school by using a dropout-reporting system that is crazy,” she said. Officials from the Houston school district provided The Washington Post with a different set of data, based on graduation rates, which show that Houston’s dropout rate fell from 19.2 percent in 1998 to 9.2 percent last year. But even those numbers paint a more positive picture than official enrollment statistics. Typically, about 13,500 students make it to the eighth grade in Houston, but fewer than 8,000 earn high school diplomas. Paige said Houston filed its dropout data according to Texas state regulations, and he expressed confidence in the integrity of the statistics collected while he was school superintendent. He said he is unable to comment on developments in Houston after he accepted the post of education secretary in December 2000. RISING NUMBERS AT AUSTIN Austin High, one of Houston’s oldest public schools, offers a window into Paige’s tenure as school superintendent, and the achievements and failings of the accountability movement. It serves a poor, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood within sight of glistening downtown skyscrapers. Nine of 10 students qualify for free or reduced- price lunches. Since the early 1980s, the school’s enrollment area had experienced an influx of Mexican immigrants and the flight of white residents to the suburbs. Built to accommodate 2,000 students, the school was desperately overcrowded. In 1989, students staged a walkout to protest conditions. By many accounts, the atmosphere at the school improved significantly during the 1990s. A new principal, Jose Trevino, tightened discipline by introducing school uniforms and expelling troublemakers. Enron became a corporate sponsor. Two new schools opened in the neighborhood with funds generated by the school bond issue, relieving overcrowding at Austin. ‘The secret of doing well in the 10th-grade tests is not to let the problem kids get to the 10th grade.’ — ROBERT KIMBALL Academic accomplishment also shot up, at least according to annual test results. In 1995, at the end of the first year of Paige’s tenure as superintendent, only 26 percent of Austin 10th- grade students passed the Texas math test. By 2000-2001, the year Paige retired, 99 percent of 10th-graders were passing. In the wake of the dropout scandal, some local residents are questioning whether those results are as unreliable as the dropout statistics. They point out that the Texas test is administered in the sophomore year. Austin High, like many other Houston schools, routinely holds students back in the ninth grade under a policy that effectively allows school administrators to exclude weaker students from the 10th-grade test results. In 2001, for example, there were 1,160 students in the ninth grade and 281 in the 10th grade. Perla Arredondo, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, took ninth grade three times before being moved up to 11th grade. By then, she was so discouraged she dropped out of Austin High, along with many of her friends. She regrets her decision, after discovering she needs a high school diploma even for jobs such as secretary or cashier. “I felt school was a waste of time because I had to go over the same thing over and over again and wasn’t moving up,” she said. Because Arredondo skipped 10th grade, she was never included in Austin High’s accountability statistics. According to Robert Kimball, a former Sharpstown High assistant principal who provided KHOU with much of its information, that is common practice in Houston. “The secret of doing well in the 10th- grade tests is not to let the problem kids get to the 10th grade,” he said. While declining to discuss individual cases, school district officials defend the policy of holding back students who are not ready to advance because they do not speak English well enough or cannot meet minimum academic standards. The alternative, said district spokesman Terry Abbott, is the discredited system of “social promotion” that pushes students “through a pipeline until they fall out the other end.” “This is not a Houston phenomenon, it is a national phenomenon,” Paige said of the sharp spike in ninth-grade enrollment figures, and the equally sharp drop-off in subsequent grades. “If you look at the data, every school system has a spike like that.” But an analysis of ninth-grade enrollment data suggests that the spike is more pronounced in Houston than elsewhere. In the 2001-2002 school year, the size of the ninth-grade class in Texas was 1.6 times the size of the 12th- grade class. In Houston, there were 21/2 times as many ninth-graders as 12th-graders. © 2003 The Washington Post Company |
| (Top) Houston ISD HQ; (below) former Houston ISD superintendent Kaye Stripling (PHOTO--Texas Music Project) |
| 'Education reform Mafia? No, Vito, it's just some goodfellas' By John Young/Waco Trib-09.09.07 Editorial mentions Neil Bush, Sandy Kress, more. |
| RE: QUORUM REPORT September 4, 2007/1:36 p.m. "Some on Governors (sic) Business Council promoting Sandy Kress for Commissioner of Education; Education community has reservations considering lobby background and lack of hands on experience in public schools" |
| Dallas Morning News 09.09.07 "How do we acknowledge districts that do a really good job of advancing students, particularly disadvantaged students? "That is something that we probably as a state and a country need to keep working on in terms of refinements in our accountability system." ---Sandy Kress, "a former education policy adviser to President Bush who helped design the state and federal accountability systems." |
| Did you know that when then-Enron CEO Ken Lay (right) "was the head of The Governor's Business Council, the GBC employed Sandy Kress for $10,000 a month to push Bush's education agenda around Texas"? (SOURCE--R.G. Ratcliffe/Polly Hughes /Houston Chronicle, March 2004) I didn't, either, until last week. When I see two or more |
| Although according to the corporation's site, "Edvance Research is a woman and minority-owned small business and is HUB (Historically Underutilized Business) certified in the state of Texas," its CEO is Dean Nafziger, who appears (see above) to be not a woman but a man. the company "was established in 2005 with a mission to be a leader in the advancement of rigorous education research." Edvance's CEO was Workforce Summit speaker Dean Nafziger, founding partner & CEO of Edvance Research, Inc., was a speaker at last year's U.S. Chamber of Commerce "Education and Workforce Summit" in Dallas; Nafziger appeared on the same panel as Charles Miller, who chairs the Commission on the Future of Higher Education/US DOE, and is the former chair of UT's Board of Regents. is quoted as saying, "a system that is simple and transparent showing funding from the state to the district and from the district to the school, would enable the general public to understand how much money their local schools receive, how they spend it, and who to hold responsible for expenditure decisions. It would also make it easier for policymakers to evaluate the impact various expenditure decisions have on student performance and adjust school expenditures accordingly." * President/Harcourt Educational Measurement (San Antonio) Director/Regional Education Lab Southwest Senior VP/Sylvan Teachers Institute Executive VP/Educational Testing Service CEO/WestEd Ass't assistant to the superintendent of the San Diego City Schools 000000000000000000000000000000000000000000' DGL |
Following the money business, t EOC CONTRACT WHO'S GOING TO GET IT JIM NELSON - VOYAGER MIKE MOSES - ase don't get me wrong; I'm a free-market pro-business kind of girl, and am all for anyone and everyone legally here, men and women alike, pursuing the American dream with as much gusto and integrity as they can generate. Why I'm taking exception to Pearson and Marjorie Scardino is the same reason I take exception to other education vendors and executives who are doing way more business with our school districts than our children need in order to get a good basic education. properly answer this question, we first have to look at the many companies which comprise Pearson today. Pearson: The new British Empire Trying to regain America? Bigger and bigger slices of the pie chart |
| advice, research and counsel in the develop- ment and implementa- tion of laws, regulations and programs to improve the business climate in Texas; pro- viding advice & counsel with respect to the elimination and |
| The Governor's Business Council (GBC) was created in 1994 by then-Governor Ann Richards as a non-partisan 501c(6) non-profit corporation. The GBC was designed to assist the Governor of the State of Texas with economic development by: providing |
| The late Gov. Ann Richards |
| modification of statutory, regulatory and structural impediments to economic development in Texas; providing support for legislative and congressional initiatives which further economic development in Texas; and actively participating in the governor's economic development outreach efforts. (SOURCE--The Colorado Business Roundtable) FIRST GBC CHAIR: Ken Lay, CEO/Enron. |
| Ann Richards |
| Geo. Bush |
| CONTRIBUTIONS: KEN LAY/ENRON |
| Mr./Mrs. Ken Lay: $12,500; Enron PAC: $19,500 (SOURCE ALL FIGURES--DDay) |
| Mr./Mrs.Ken Lay $47,500 Enron PAC: $146,500 From 1994, the Lay's gave $122,500 for both Bush guberna- torial campaigns; $100,000 for his inauguration; $250,000 for the Bush I presidential library. Enron and Enron executives gave $736,680 to Bush for his political campaigns, his election recount, and his inauguration. |
| "Voyager has been helped by government policy changes like that mandated by the Texas Legislature in 2003, which attached a little-known rider to an appropriations bill to give the Texas Education Agency $12 million to spend on reading — that is, to spend on a single intervention program for struggling readers in kindergarten and elementary schools. All districts had to use the one program chosen by TEA or pay for their own. The TEA’s choice: Voyager." (SOURCE--Betty Brink/Fort Worth Weekly) |
| Ken Lay (PHOTO--CNN) |
The Commission for a College Ready Texas Gov. Perry has appointed Sandy Kress as chair. But before we can look at TCCRT, we have to look at The Governor's Business Council--for which Mr. Kress is also a registered paid lobbyist here in Texas--and how it intertwines with the Texas Education Agency. Such looks are revelatory. Back to the beginning Ken Lay was chair in 1994 |
| Okay, maybe Vance wasn't such a great example of GBC membership. Let's keep looking. Here's another familiar name: Randy Best, the fellow who brought us via Rider 51(a) an earmarked $12 million edu-program in 2003 called "Voyager Expanded Learning," which later employed both Texas edu-missioner Jim Nelson and his wife Karen. |
| Randy Best |
| Jim Nelson |
| recently completed her second term as chair of the Texas State Board of Education. And who is Vance, here chairing a 2005 benefit (right) with Tincy? Vance is CEO of Herman S. Miller, a real estate outfit founded by his grandfather in 1914 and calling itself "the largest independent commercial real estate services firm in Texas." Looks like he and Tincy are living large; according to Dallas CAD, their Highland Park home is valued at $1.8 million. |
| Geraldine 'Tincy' & Vance C. Miller at 2005 charity gala in Dallas (PHOTO--The Social Whirl) |
| Governor's Business Council members - 2007 Here's a familiar name: Vance C. Miller, husband of Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, who |
| The Governor's Business Council, Inc. - 1994 You might wonder why a Republican governor would need a formal organization of business leaders to help him out. Don't they by definition already kind of hang together? |
| according to his profile on Texans for Public Justice, Vance was able to contribute $20,000 to Bush’s gubernatorial campaigns." (SOURCE--SourceWatch) "Vance Miller lives in a Highland Park mansion, carries weight in the GOP, and parties with high society. He owes you, the taxpayer, $26 million, and he ain't paying," wrote Thomas Korosec in the Dallas Observer in 1998, noting that Vance claimed he was "tapped out." As the only settlement offer I have been able to locate from Vance is $50,000 -- to cancel the entire $26,000,000 -- and contact information for Vance is sparse, I have today emailed both Tincy and Vance to find out if and how they finally settled. In the meantime, we have scenes of their family playing polo with the Prince of Wales (left). |
| Vaughn Miller (2nd from left), Prince of Wales (2nd from right) |
| Subject: Your e-mail of Sunday September 09, 2007 10:58pm Date: Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:47:12 -0500 From: "Valorie Hubler" <vhubler@henrysmiller.com> September 10, 2007 Ms. Wolcott: The 10 year old article in the Dallas Observer is typical of the slanted, highly embellished “hatchet jobs” in which they have consistently portrayed conservative businessmen and republican elected officials. I never owed the amounts stated to the government. The disputed claim was purchased by a collection lawyer who conspired with the author in an effort to induce me to settle this spurious claim by writing this highly critical and misleading story in the Observer. All claims were paid or reasonably settled nearly 10 years ago, and I have no debts or obligations whatsoever. As you recall, nearly all of our major financial institutions failed in the early 1990’s, taking with them many prominent real estate professionals. However, I worked through all of my obligations very successfully with a lot of hard work and integrity. Today I am Chairman and CEO of Texas largest independent Commercial Real Estate firm with over 200 real estate professionals doing over a billion dollars a year in transactions, and managing more than one hundred major commercial properties. Mr. Vance C. Miller |
| QUESTIONS FOR SANDY KRESS, THE MAN WHO WANTS TO BE TEXAS' NEXT EDUCATION COMMISSIONER First asked: Aug. 16, 2007 Response to questions: None Asked again: Aug. 31, 2007 Q: Have you drafted any sort of model for your leadership should you be named Texas' next edu- missioner? Answer received: None. Q: You are already by all accounts a very wealthy man; would you keep your TEA salary? Would you perform all TEA-related travel functions at your own expense? Answer received: None. Q: What changes might you make to TEA and the ESC's as an education entity? Answer received: None. Q: What you would do about our state's rampant TAKS cheating? Answer received: None. Q: PEIMS? Answer received: None. Q: TEA salaries and expenses? Answer received: None. Q: How transparent are you prepared to be--would you post your calendar online? Answer received: None. Q: Finally, it appears from veteran Texas teacher Donna Garner's published accounts that she approached you ten years ago about endorsing the Texas Alternative Document (TAD) which would have brought true accountability standards to Texas public education. Instead of endorsing the TAD, from all that I've been able to discover, you went along with the education establishment with the result that we now have the TEKS, which are subjective and therefore cannot truly be tested. The TEKS brought millions of dollars to your clients including Pearson. And millions of Texas schoolchildren now cannot read and cannot tell you what six times nine is because they were not drilled and instead were encouraged to talk about their feelings about six and nine and math. This is a sincere question: No matter how well-intentioned you might have been ten years ago, it appears you were dead wrong, and benefited financially to boot, and Texas schoolchildren were harmed. Why should you be rewarded now by being named Texas' next education commissioner? Why do you deserve a do-over? Answer received: None. ____________________________________ PW note to Sandy Kress: If these statements above are incorrect and any of the facts as stated above are incorrect, please show me where and how. As a side note, you will note from my site that I have been similarly careful to keep all issues on topic, and business related, not personal, as it is my assumption and expectation that any future communications from you will be also. |
September 10, 2007 Ms. Wolcott: The 10 year old article in the Dallas Observer is typical of the slanted, highly embellished “hatchet jobs” in which they have consistently portrayed conservative businessmen and republican elected officials. I never owed the amounts stated to the government. The disputed claim was purchased by a collection lawyer who conspired with the author in an effort to induce me to settle this spurious claim by writing this highly critical and misleading story in the Observer. All claims were paid or reasonably settled nearly 10 years ago, and I have no debts or obligations whatsoever. As you recall, nearly all of our major financial institutions failed in the early 1990’s, taking with them many prominent real estate professionals. However, I worked through all of my obligations very successfully with a lot of hard work and integrity. Today I am Chairman and CEO of Texas largest independent Commercial Real Estate firm with over 200 real estate professionals doing over a billion dollars a year in transactions, and managing more than one hundred major commercial properties. Mr. Vance C. Miller |
| UPDATE: The following response was emailed September 10, 2007/5:47 p.m. by Valorie Hubler, here with Vance Miller's original spelling, grammar and punctuation: |
| Follow-up questions for Vance C. Miller: Re: 3:94-CV-00912-Stonehenge/FASA v. Vance C. Miller - Default of Loan by Promissory Note 1. According to the article written in 1998 by reporter Thomas Korosec, the judgment against you in question was the result of "a one-day trial before U.S. District Judge Joe Fish and two subsequent appeals" which resolved that with interest you owed a total of "$ 26,635,742.71." 2. For the purpose of clarification, are you stating that the amount of the default of loan by promissory note in the above-captioned suit -- the final legal judgment against Vance C. Miller -- was $ 26,635,742.71? 3. For how much did Stonehenge/FASA settle, meaning of the either $23 million or $$26,635,742.71 judgment, how much did you finally repay the federal government and American taxpayers? 4. What was the final date of the settlement? Do you have any documents confirming that you discharged your debt to the federal government as determined by the courts in full? =============MORE QUESTIONS DEVELOPING=============== |
| UPDATE: The following response has been received from Tincy Miller, here with original spelling, grammar and punctuation: |
| Your information is incorrect. |
| Follow-up questions for Geraldine "Tincy" Miller: Re: Geraldine Miller v. Stonehenge/FASA- Texas, JDC, L.P. 993 F. Supp 461, 464-465 (N.D.Tex. 1998) 1. You say that "your information is incorrect." What do you believe in this 1998 article in the Texas Observer is incorrect? 2. Statement please regarding the above- captioned lawsuit; it appears that your suit was dismissed by the jury. 3. Please confirm or deny that you called the attorney appointed by Stonehenge/ FASA-Texas to collect on the judgment against your husband a "Nazi" during the trial; it is possible for there to have been an error in the transcript. Would you recommend such practice to Texas schoolchildren? Would you say that this is a suitable practice for SBOE members? |
| DALLAS OBSERVER ARTICLE: Deadbeat Vance Miller lives in a Highland Park mansion, carries weight in the GOP, and parties with high society. He owes you, the taxpayer, $26 million, and he ain't paying. By Thomas Korosec Dallas Observer - Published: January 15, 1998 SCROLL DOWN to bottom of page FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE |
| Deadbeat Vance Miller lives in a Highland Park mansion, carries weight in the GOP, and parties with high society. He owes you, the taxpayer, $26 million, and he ain't paying. By Thomas Korosec Dallas Observer Published: January 15, 1998 This should be a routine collection matter. Two federal marshals, a locksmith, several appraisers, and a lawyer armed with a court order approach the two-story mansion at 3815 Beverly Drive, making ready to seize art, jewelry, antiques--anything of value to satisfy a judgment that has remained outstanding for far too long. They move past the matched set of maroon Cadillacs and a Halloween harvest display cast against the French colonial backdrop, and toward the floor-to-ceiling windows adorned with plantation shutters. One of the marshals makes his way to the front steps, but hesitates as if awed by the majesty of the Highland Park address. Suddenly, as if from out of nowhere, a diminutive, blonde steel magnolia of a woman stands defiantly in their path, catching everyone off guard. The marshal mutters something about his authority, saying a federal judge has given them the legal right to come in and search the house. "Oh no you're not," says the 62-year-old woman standing her ground. "You're not coming into my house." She then turns to lock the door shut, giving a parting glance to her would-be intruders that dismisses them with a "Who the hell do you think you're dealing with" resolve. "We know this is Henry Miller's son's house," says one of the marshals to Brenda Collier, the attorney attempting to collect the judgment. To her amazement, the marshals put their hands in their pockets and amble about the property, instead of using the force of law and the locksmith to break into the house. In deference to the family, to their position on high, the marshals decide to wait the woman out. But Brenda Collier is tired of waiting. The man of the house, Vance Miller Sr., a member of the city's power elite, owes the U.S. government $26 million on an old real estate debt from the funny-money days of the S&L crisis. The debt has been wrangled over in legal battles for nearly four years, gone up to the Supreme Court of the United States and back down again, and now his creditors have come to call. Yet in mid-October of last year, there is far more scraping and bowing by the authorities than usual, far more than if the marshals had knocked on some bungalow in Mesquite. After all, this is the home of the scion of a wealthy Dallas family, the first family of Dallas real estate, a dynasty whose name is woven into the fabric of the last hundred years of Dallas history: Henry S. Miller. About an hour and a half later, the lady of the house, Geraldine "Tincy" Miller, emerges again. This time she is in the company of a chauffeur who is carrying two large suitcases. He deposits them in the trunk of a white limousine. Walking gingerly, the 62-year-old socialite-cum-politico heads to the car, waits while the door is opened, climbs into the back seat, and is driven away. As they say on the "A-list" social circuit, h-o-o-o-o-o-w embarrassing. Here was the queen of Dallas' 1997 society season being rousted from the same home where she'd been hosting teas, fashion fetes, and chic planning parties for the Crystal Charity Ball, the big mid-December soiree that she chaired. Throughout the year, the many swell moments--the trip to Williamsburg, Virginia, to research the waiters-in-powdered-wigs theme; the fashion show with Italian clothing designer Gianfranco Ferre at Hotel St. Germain; the chic, sneak-preview luncheon at Mediterraneo--were memorialized in The Dallas Morning News' society columns, or in D magazine's unctuous coverage of the Park Cities' leisure class. Before she fled, Tincy Miller had summoned her sons, Vaughn, 35, and Gregory, 31, both of whom work for the family company, to take over protection of the fortress. "Any reasons to have those moving vans parked in front of the house?" Vaughn asks the invaders. On this stretch of the boulevard, fretting about what the neighbors might think means worrying about investor Thomas Hicks, who last week bought the Texas Rangers, oilman-SMU philanthropist Edwin Cox, and heiress Betty Hunt. Until now, few people outside of the family and a circle of lawyers and judges knew anything about the Miller saga. To the untrained eye, real estate executive Vance C. Miller Sr. and his wife are extraordinarily rich. They sponsor matches at the Dallas Polo Club and make the scene with Oscar de la Renta. They are honored guests at fashion and jewelry shows at top-drawer boutiques like Hermes and Cartier. He tees it up at the exclusive Preston Trail Golf Club, where memberships start at $75,000. Vance Miller, who is 64, is listed in public records as president or CEO of two dozen companies, many under the umbrella of the Henry S. Miller Cos., the privately held real estate brokerage firm begun by his grandfather in 1914. That's roughly one company for every five pairs of designer pumps in Tincy's wardrobe. A videotape of the Miller home interior shows approximately 120 pairs of Ferragamos, Cole Haans, Manolo Blahniks, and other pricey footwear occupying their closet--enough Italian leather to trigger at least a small tremor in Imelda Marcos' bosom. Under oath, however, Vance Miller insists his existence is not as golden as it may appear. He is tapped out, he says. Too poor to have a bank account. His dad lends him money to buy his clothes. He's not even sure how the money in his wallet got there, living as he does on "petty cash." Answering questions put to him in October by Collier, the lawyer attempting to collect the $26 million he owes U.S. taxpayers, Miller says he lives on the charity of his wife--a former schoolteacher who came to the marriage 40 years ago with no independent wealth--and his father, Henry S. Miller Jr., who in the middle decades of this century turned the little family real estate agency into a major corporate conglomerate. His wife and father also give Vance the lucre he uses to back politicians, he says. His largesse around election time has earned him considerable influence in the local GOP, where he favors Republicans and fiscal conservatives such as Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. Miller's protests aside, Collier and her employer believe he is holding far more wampum than he lets on. He controls family companies easily worth $100 million, she says. But that's just a guess. Her estimates come from standing on the outside of the Miller enterprises looking in, with Vance's lawyer fighting her search for hard information every inch of the way. The way in which Miller has avoided paying this decade-old debt--without declaring personal bankruptcy--forms another of those uniquely infuriating, but classic tales of "going broke" Texas-style. Along with the legends born of booms and busts, tales of S&L bandits, blowin' and goin' gamblers, and pyramid-scheme operators, one must add the story of a Dallas real estate heir who thumbed his nose at his obligations for so long that he got a shot at getting rich all over again. It features a cheeky lawyer and a legal system that protects those wealthy enough to exploit its endless opportunities for delay and diversion. Such is the saga of Vance C. Miller, Yber-deadbeat, the richest "poor" man in Dallas. In the early 1980s, Vance Miller was on his way to becoming what former associates say he always wanted to be: another Trammell Crow. Having split off from the family brokerage business and operating on his own as a developer-investor, he soared. He owned apartments in Houston, a construction company and prime land in Hawaii, business parks at freeway corners in Dallas, housing developments along golf courses, hotels including a Sheraton in Arlington, and his very own country club--Prestonwood in North Dallas. In the overheated market that was fueled by easy money from S&Ls, riches just seemed to rise up from the dirt. Oilman Clint Murchison, in an account of his days as owner of the Dallas Cowboys, recalled how Miller got him into a real estate deal where he didn't have to put up a dime. The transaction netted Murchison $8 million. He liked Miller. In December 1982, in one of those grand gestures that fuel the myth of Texas' audacious "big rich," Miller and car dealer W.O. Bankston put down $550,000 for the remaining tickets to a Cowboys game so the local TV blackout would be lifted. The following year, the pair put in a bid to buy the team--offering $90 million--but lost out to H.R. "Bum" Bright. When real estate prices began free-falling in Houston in 1984, then in Dallas within the next two years, Miller's wings melted. His joint ventures and partnerships defaulted on their loans, court records show, and the loans, in turn, became the failed assets of the federal government after the S&Ls cratered. Typical was Miller's Mesquite I-30 Venture, a 55-acre business park he was developing at the corner of Interstate 30 and Galloway Avenue. He and a partner took out a promissory note for $12 million in October 1984. Just over two years later, it was in default. By 1989 the lender--First Federal Savings and Loan Association of Waco--had been taken over by the feds, who the next year sold the property at auction. Although the Dallas market was already slowing in 1986, Miller launched a grand plan to enhance his prized possession, Prestonwood Country Club, by building a second golf course in Collin County--and selling the surrounding land for luxury homes--as well as proceeding with a major renovation of the old clubhouse in Richardson. But the lingering downturn dried up new memberships, and as his debts came due, Miller quietly went to federal court in 1992, put the club into bankruptcy, and began negotiating with his creditors. He may have owed millions, but that didn't stop him from renovating his Beverly Drive house that year. County records show he put up a new detached garage, just beyond the pool. The largest of Miller's country club creditors was the Resolution Trust Corp., the now-dissolved federal receiver for the failed S&Ls. Miller, through family companies, somehow managed to renegotiate about $10 million in debt and retain the club and its two 18-hole golf courses. But because he had signed personal guarantees backing the original notes, government attorneys asserted that Miller himself was on the hook for the rest of the debt: about $23 million. The government sued him in May 1994, and a one-day trial before U.S. District Judge Joe Fish and two subsequent appeals resolved that Miller indeed owed $23 million, plus interest. As of October, the total came to $26,635,742.71--a figure that grows at more than $1 million per year. Miller declined to comment for this story, although his attorney, Dallas bankruptcy specialist Gerrit Pronske, says his client has "no ability to pay $26 million." Miller is like a lot of developers who were hammered in the '80s, Pronske says. "They didn't end up writing checks for the full amount. They got rid of these debts by doing one of two things: settling them for cents on the dollar or filing bankruptcy." The argument smacks of entitlement: This is how rich guys do it. When these gentlemen hit the skids, they needn't pony up like the guy who's two months late on his rent-to-own TV. Somebody else will pick up their tab. Miller has never filed personal bankruptcy to clear himself of the debt, Pronske says, but he declined to discuss why. Some speculate that Miller is too wealthy to seek bankruptcy protection; others say he is too proud. He has made offers to settle, Pronske says, although he declined to reveal how much Miller has offered to pay. Collier, the collection attorney, says the only offer Miller has extended to her employer over the past two years was to wipe the books clean for $50,000. That amount brought laughter at Stonehenge/FASA-Texas, which has attempted to collect the government's money since January 1996. Stonehenge, a kind of high-dollar collection agency, has formed a partnership with the feds over Miller's debt: Stonehenge picks up all collection expenses and agrees to split any recovery from Miller 50-50 with the federal treasury. The government bail-out of the S&Ls in the 1980s--which ended up paying depositors whose money had been loaned to speculative high-flyers such as Miller--came out of general federal revenues and ended up being added to the national debt. In the grand scheme of things, the government had to borrow money to pay Vance Miller's bills. Collier, Stonehenge's current lawyer, is a tough-skinned litigator with experience in going after fallen real estate barons and S&L execs. "Most people fight pretty hard to keep from paying large outstanding loans," she says. "It's that arrogance that helped make them a lot of money in the first place. But eventually they make peace with you. "Miller is different. He's been doing this for more than a decade, and he's not tired of it yet." Court records in Dallas show that the feds aren't the only ones lined up looking for money owed by Miller, whose now-booming companies moved three years ago into the top-floor offices of the slick, 11-story Providence Towers located at the Dallas North Tollway and Spring Valley Road. A Houston lender tried unsuccessfully for 10 years to squeeze about $190,000 out of Miller--once again a debt owed on money personally guaranteed by him. That obligation was also taken up to the U.S. Supreme Court; it too remains outstanding. In 1996, a local golf pro tried collecting a judgment against the Vance Miller-run Prestonwood Country Club. The jury award had its roots in an incident involving Miller's eldest son, Vance Jr., who seriously beat up the pro's wife. Vance Miller Sr. and his lawyer then began moving assets in what an opposing lawyer called "a shell game" designed to avoid payment. Vance Sr. finally settled that case last spring, a few months after his troubled 38-year-old son--under the influence of cocaine, alcohol, and marijuana--drove his car into oncoming traffic on Marsh Lane and was killed. As far back as 1989, when Cullen/Frost Bank of Dallas was trying to collect $763,922 from Miller on one of his defaulted notes, the bank claimed in court papers: "Vance Miller, while claiming insolvency, nevertheless maintains a high lifestyle far greater than would be expected from someone who is truly insolvent." Sure enough, Vance's leisure activities made the daily paper several times that year. That winter, he was out at the exclusive PGA West Course in La Quinta, California, teeing it up with the pros. He and his wife turned up again at the Brook Hollow Golf Club, at the debutante party for the granddaughter of one of the founders of Frito-Lay. When it comes to world-class debtors, says Gary Pridavka, a Dallas attorney who went to court and got a settlement out of him, "Vance Miller is very much the exception to the rule. It takes a lot of planning and a great deal of lawyers' time to do what he's done, to live a wealthy lifestyle and be poor on paper." If there ever was a man equipped for that task, it's Miller, a number of business associates say. Arrogant, elitist, brassy, belittling, he is known for his hard-nosed business tactics. "He's no pantywaist," says one real estate executive and former broker in the Miller firm. Says another, again insisting on anonymity because of the business he's done with Miller companies, "He's a unique guy. He's unpredictable. He walks around with this grin on his face, and people just don't know what's going on inside. He talks, and you wonder what he said." In contrast to his adopted father, Henry Jr., who was known for his sense of fairness and gentle demeanor, Vance Miller is "not exactly held in very high esteem," according to one recent business partner. No one would dare say that of any of the family patriarchs who preceded Vance Miller. Aaron Miller came to Dallas in the decade after the Civil War, choosing to flee Poland rather than get conscripted by the Russian army. A Talmudic scholar, he conducted the first Jewish services in Dallas, years before there was an organized synagogue. His son Sam inherited the family grocery store in South Dallas, became the president of the first Jewish congregation, and had six children, including Henry S. Miller Sr. Henry had a mind for business and little interest in peddling vegetables. So in 1914, the year Henry Jr. was born, he entered into the real estate business. His success, old-timers say, came in pressing flesh and making friends. "Henry would go to Republic Bank nearly every day, stand around the tellers' counter, and convince customers to invest in his deals," recalls Horace Vale, a salesman who worked for Henry Sr. A charitable man, Henry Sr. became known as "Mr. Realtor," offering his expertise free of charge to nonprofit institutions around the city. Henry Jr., a soft-spoken, studious man, joined his dad's firm in the 1940s and developed a reputation as the consummate mediator between buyer and seller. His mild manners, however, belied his no-nonsense approach to business. Developer Trammell Crow became Henry's best client. He brokered deals for nearly every national company that purchased land in Dallas though its big growth spurts in the '50s, '60s and '70s. He helped cover the landscape with Kentucky Fried Chicken stands, Jack-in-the-Box, Baskin-Robbins, and Dunkin Donuts. By the early 1970s, the company had expanded to Houston, San Antonio, and Austin. Beyond the brokerage business, Henry Jr. developed Preston Royal Village shopping center in 1958 and bought the now-tony Highland Park Village in 1975 for only $5 million. The center, which is now held by a Miller family trust, has the highest rents of any retail space in Dallas-Fort Worth. The company grew to 13 divisions by 1983, including an international division with offices in Belgium and West Germany, and a residential division with 700 brokers. After that record-setting year, it ranked as the largest privately held real estate brokerage firm in the nation. In 1984, at the top of the market, Henry Jr. sold the company's commercial and residential divisions to San Francisco-based Grubb & Ellis, a publicly held company, for $47 million. Henry Jr. retired to spend a portion of the year in his Paris apartment, but continued to raise money for Dallas' opera, symphony, and other cultural institutions. When quizzed in the business press about mentors, former Miller underlings such as Roger Staubach and Herb Weitzman, who now own their own real estate firms, are apt to remember Henry Jr. as a role model and true civic leader. Nobody seems to volunteer the same opinion of Vance. Born in Oklahoma in the middle of the Great Depression, he was actually Charles Calvin Vance for the first 12 years of his life. His mother, Juanita, from Kiowa, Oklahoma, the daughter of a Methodist preacher, was a widow when she met Henry Jr. in Hot Springs, Arkansas, during World War II. When they married in 1945, Henry Jr. adopted Juanita's two children, Charles and his sister, Patsy. He was renamed Vance Charles Miller. In the following years, the socially ambitious Juanita steered the family away from Henry Jr.'s Jewish roots--which weren't exactly welcomed at the Dallas Country Club. Growing up in South Dallas and later in Greenway Park, Vance got teased for being Jewish--even though he was not, one acquaintance recalls him saying. Henry Jr. related in an interview that he and Juanita studied Christian Science before their marriage and that, three years later, they both converted to the faith, although they never fully embraced its aversion to medical science. As Henry Jr.'s fortunes increased, Juanita's status quest did as well. "She was in the women's choir at the Rotary Club, and I knew her. We would talk," recalls one longtime Dallas acquaintance. "After her husband became wealthier, her nose went up, and...she didn't know any of us after that." Nobody would deny Henry Jr. and his wife's importance in bringing the Dallas Opera into existence and sustaining the Dallas Symphony. Henry Jr. later conceded in an interview in 1987 that his civic work--including all the society parties and charity balls--had a business purpose as well. It helped increase his company's exposure in "important places," he explained. In contrast to Henry's tenderness, Juanita possessed a certain boot-toughness. "Everyone at Miller was scared to death of her," says one former employee. "She would show up unannounced and do a sort of white-glove inspection, get really angry if your desk was messy." It's that brass that Vance seems to have inherited. Like his adopted father, Vance went to SMU. He graduated in 1955 and served in the Air Force as a fighter pilot before going to work in the family business. He was shortish (5 feet 6 inches on his driver's license), with a full head of hair and features more classical than his father's. He married his college sweetheart, Geraldine "Tincy" Erwin, who did her best to follow in her mother-in-law's footsteps. "It was very difficult marrying into this family with the power that Juanita had," she told a reporter in 1994. "She is very intimidating." By the late 1960s, when Vance moved to his current home on Beverly Drive, it was clear that he, rather than his half-brother, Henry S. Miller III, would be the one to assume the mantle as head of the family business. Under Henry Jr.'s expansionist hand, the company had grown large but remained a family affair. In 1971, he named Vance president, but during the mid-1970s real estate slump, he was replaced. Vance kept somewhat involved in his father's company as vice-chairman on the Miller executive committee, but he turned most of his attention toward his own development company, Vance C. Miller Interests. In 1976, he bought Prestonwood Country Club and the unspoiled acreage adjoining it, picking it up for cheap from the estate of the deceased owner. "He came with a whole lot of expertise whose name was 'daddy,'" says one real estate executive who has worked with the Miller companies. "He loves to make the deal, but he ain't Henry, and he ain't Trammell Crow." By 1984, Vance was independently worth $81 million--or so he claimed on financial statements he gave to secure his loans. He moved up from a board seat to co-chair BancTexas, a regional bank groaning under the weight of troubled oil-business loans. In a profile that appeared in the Downtown News in 1983, Miller was pictured as a man sitting back in his office on the 30th floor of Bryan Tower. "Friday, I bought another 350 acres in west Plano," he said while sucking on a big La Corona cigar. He was bullish on what he described as the North City--his projects near Prestonwood Country Club: "It's probably the best place to be in the U.S., or in the world." At the same time that Miller was pointing out of his window and telling the impressionable writer about all the land he planned on developing, he and his wife were emerging as powers in the Dallas GOP. In 1984, Tincy Miller was appointed to the state board of education, a Dallas and Collin county seat that she has retained in the last three elections. Meanwhile, President Ronald Reagan rewarded Vance for his support by naming him to a one-year term on the board of the Federal National Mortgage Association, which buys mortgages from lenders and issues securities. To the present day, Vance Miller is considered a key GOP benefactor. "I like Vance," says Tom Pauken, former state Republican chairman and a candidate for Texas Attorney General. "It's a big party, and there are a number of key supporters; Vance is definitely one of them." In advance of this year's primaries, for instance, Dallas County District Attorney candidate Bill Hill--the presumed next DA--listed Miller among his big-name backers. In March 1994, the Millers used their Beverly Drive home to host a fundraiser for Carole Keeton Rylander, a Republican on the railroad commission. And during the 1996 national campaign, Miller hosted a $10,000-a-plate fundraiser with House Speaker Newt Gingrich at Prestonwood Country Club. But all the time he was pressing political flesh, he owed the feds his whopping eight-figure debt. Although Vance Miller is credited with a certain amount of real estate savvy, he had his neck out as far as the next guy, if not further, when 1986 in Dallas turned into 1929. He lost his hotels, his business parks, his apartment houses. His bank closed, and his creditors came knocking. By 1987, after obtaining a court judgment to collect a defaulted loan, Cullen/Frost Bank cleaned out his personal bank accounts--garnishing a total of $41,000--and began looking for more. When they sought to sit him down for a deposition, to make him expose his assets under oath, |
| he produced a doctor's note saying his health wouldn't permit it. By 1990, Jerome Ferguson, the bank's lawyer, had concluded that Miller's father had established a trust for his son, who also served as his own trustee. The arrangement would have let Miller put assets out of easy reach. "It's called litigation," says Miller attorney Pronske, defending some of the tactics he and his client have used over the past eight years to cushion the downside of Miller's romp in the free market. "You put the creditor to his proof, you litigate, and you settle. That's the way the thing is done." Pronske, reached over the holidays at his vacation home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, pointed out that Miller eventually settled the Cullen/Frost case, the Mesquite I-30 Venture loan, and a substantial debt with NCNB--all for negotiated and undisclosed amounts. Just last year he settled with another debtor, golf pro Alan Neiderlitz and his wife, Peggy, says Pronske. That tale, which unfolded between 1992 and 1997, provides some insight into what style of litigation Pronske and Miller employ. The unpleasant story begins in Naples, Florida, where Vance's eldest son, Vance Miller Jr., then 36, was passed out drunk on the floor of the Neiderlitz home. Cocky and filled with a sense of entitlement, Vance Jr. was more than a garden-variety problem rich kid. By his 30s, he had accumulated 15 arrests and nine convictions, including four for driving while intoxicated and three for drug possession. In late 1991, a woman accused Vance Jr. of beating her with a baseball bat. She dropped the charges, she said, after she agreed to go away for an $80,000 cash settlement. Just after that, Vance Jr. left for Florida. The son, who had been given a $60,000-a-year job and a company car for doing little more than attending Prestonwood directors' meetings, was accomplished at one thing in life: golf. At Prestonwood, he had befriended club pro Alan Neiderlitz, who by 1992 had moved to Florida. Vance Jr. took up an invitation to visit his old teacher and quickly became the houseguest from hell. In a drunken rage, he assaulted Neiderlitz's wife, Peggy, who pressed charges against him, which later led to his criminal conviction for battery. The following year, Peggy Neiderlitz filed a civil suit in Dallas, seeking damages from Vance Jr. for the assault. A jury eventually awarded her $24,750. That case begat yet another lawsuit, this one in federal court. The Neiderlitzes had discovered that Vance Jr., in his capacity as a director for Prestonwood, had illegally obtained their credit report, presumably to use against them in the state court fight. In November 1995, a jury found Prestonwood Country Club liable for violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act and awarded the couple $168,702. Almost immediately, rather than pay that sum, Vance Sr., who was the club's chairman and president, and Pronske got busy. In February 1996, they incorporated an entity called Providence Texas Capital Corp., with Vance as the only director and Pronske as the registered agent. According to court documents, Miller, acting as the president of Henry S. Miller Co., then transferred nearly a million dollars worth of Prestonwood Country Club debt to the newly formed Providence, which suddenly became the club's creditor. On April 2, at 11 p.m., federal marshals put the country club up for sale on the courthouse steps, which the Neiderlitz couple then ostensibly bought to satisfy their judgment. Two hours earlier, however, Providence foreclosed on Prestonwood's debt because the club had supposedly defaulted on its indebtedness to Providence. In essence, Miller foreclosed on himself. Pronske claimed at the time that the corporate entity that was Prestonwood--which the Neiderlitzes bought at auction--became an empty shell, and worth nothing. The Neiderlitzes responded by suing Vance Sr. and Pronske for fraud. In a legal brief filed later, a Miller creditor claimed, "Miller plays a shell game with his assets, moving them around in hidden transfers as creditors approach." Last spring, a full year after the courthouse auction, the Neiderlitzes settled for an undisclosed sum and sealed the record with a confidentiality agreement. "They can't go on like this forever," Peggy Neiderlitz says now, her voice choking with emotion when the Miller name is mentioned. "They can't keep treating people like this. Someday, someday I wish...I wish them no harm, truly." As the daily paper made clear, 1995 was a big year for Vance Miller Sr. and his wife on the Dallas social circuit. She was snapped rubbing elbows with designer Oscar de la Renta at a charity fashion show. He turned up at a preview party for the chic Oak Lawn restaurant, Joey's, where the well-off guests played at making handprints in wet concrete. As a society columnist put it: "Mega-developer Vance Miller strolled through the mess unruffled in a pin-stripe suit. 'This is what I construct things in,' he said.'" He had a less fabulous time at the Dallas federal courthouse, where lifetime judges--unlike their state counterparts--are above the business of raising campaign money from the same well-connected families that occasionally end up in their courtrooms. By late 1995, federal government lawyers had spent $64,000 to take Vance to court to collect on his personal guarantee of tens of millions of dollars in commercial loans left in the portfolios of three failed S&Ls. These were the notes he had taken out in the 1980s to expand Prestonwood and to buy a 103-acre piece of property in Austin. Of course, a Miller-controlled company continued to own Prestonwood, which by this time had about 1,200 members. Why it took the government so long to sue Miller to enforce his guarantees is a question for a story on the government's vigor, or lack of it, in handling the S&L mess. Once the case got to trial in Dallas, however, the matter before U.S. District Judge Joe Fish came down to a question of Miller's responsibility for the Prestonwood debt following the club's corporate bankruptcy in 1992. Pronske--who keeps pretty busy with this one client--argued that the bankruptcy got Vance off the hook personally, too. Fish ruled against Miller, and the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the bulk of his ruling the following year. Last year, Pronske kicked the fight up one more level, to the U.S. Supreme Court, which let the lower court ruling stand. All that was left was for Miller to step forward and pay the $23 million, plus the interest that had begun gathering at several thousands of dollars a day. "There isn't much sympathy out there for rich people who don't pay their bills," says Brenda Collier, the lawyer who has been trying to get Miller to pay his tab. And by all outward appearances, Vance C. Miller's present fortunes are as rich and shiny as the Christmas display he put out last month in front of his Beverly Drive mansion--tens of thousands of little white bulbs strung, just so, through the big trees. Out of the ashes of the 1980s, with Texas again in a boom, the Miller real estate empire is flourishing once more, with Vance at the helm. In August 1991, the family repurchased its residential real estate business from Grubb & Ellis for $4 million. The company moved immediately back into commercial real estate and, after four or five exceptional years, is again Dallas' biggest commercial brokerage, with 81 agents, according to the Dallas Business Journal. It is also the city's third-largest residential broker, with $1.4 billion in commissions in 1996. With the help of publicist Terry Van Willson, the Millers now practically live in the social columns, where Vance Sr. is often referred to as a "magnate" or "mogul." Not content to let others do all the gushing, Willson also does some of his own writing about his client family, saying of them in a cover story in Philanthropy in Texas, "Ask charity organizations in the city what the Miller name stands for, and the answer will be charity itself." When his creditors come calling, though, Vance Miller sounds more like a man who requires charity rather than someone who gives to it. Given the various protections Texas law provides individuals for their personal debts, there are plenty of opportunities for a man as apparently wealthy as Miller to render himself poor on paper, or "judgment proof" as lawyers put it. For starters, Texas is a relatively debtor-friendly state, says Dallas lawyer Gary Pridavka. "You can keep your house under our homestead protections--even if it's a mansion--two cars, $60,000 worth of personal possessions, and so on." Beyond that, he says, "It's a rich man's game, but if you hire enough lawyers, you can figure out enough schemes to hide behind. You can hide behind this corporation or this trust. You keep enough balls in the air, and you wear them out. They file a lawsuit against you. You sue them back." The playbook sounds familiar. Brenda Collier, who was hired to work at collecting the Miller debt last fall, began her efforts with some moves that seemed to have been designed primarily to embarrass. "He doesn't embarrass easily," she says. She obtained an order to garnish the fees Miller is paid as a director of Pilgrim's Pride Corporation. She also secured a court order to collect property above the $60,000 limit from the Miller mansion, which sits on a lot that alone is valued on the tax rolls at more than $500,000. When Collier pulled up last October 15 with the moving vans and Tincy Miller obstinately locked the door, Pronske was soon on the driveway telling the federal marshals that Collier was allowed only to videotape the contents of the Miller home. Vance's 35-year old son Vaughn was quick to add, "We're not going to stand and fuck around. Let's get this going." Vaughn, now an executive with the Miller commercial division, also has left a slightly tarnished record at the courthouse over the years, which includes receiving 45 tickets for moving violations and a 1985 conviction for resisting arrest. The Miller home turned out to be filled with unremarkable traditional furniture, some banal starving-artist-sale-type artwork--little of obvious resale value beyond a silver service for 24 and some jewelry. There were, in addition to all of Tincy's shoes, closet after closet of expensive-looking dresses, some of which no doubt played a part in Tincy's being named among the best dressed society women in Dallas in both 1994 and 1996 by the Crystal Charity Ball. During the tour, Collier noticed "certain valuable pieces of jewelry worn by Geraldine [Tincy] Miller in recent family photographs which were displayed in the Miller residence." But they weren't among the jewelry found in the search. Collier's legal papers make note of the fact that Tincy left the house with two suitcases, which the marshals did not search. "Geraldine Miller may have hidden certain property," the papers conclude. Pronske says, "That's just not true." He claims she was on her way out of town to meet her husband in Arizona when the Collier group arrived. A few weeks later, she filed suit against Collier and Stonehenge for "invasion of privacy" and "civil rights violations" against a "highly respected member of the community." In this sideshow battle, Collier denies any wrongdoing and says Tincy Miller's claims are "barred by her own illegal acts" and "the doctrine of unclean hands." Two weeks after the house search, Vance Miller appeared under subpoena to give Collier a deposition. He brought almost none of the relevant financial documents such as the personal tax returns that she had requested, and seemed to let her know right off what he thought of her efforts. "We had the video camera and microphones and everything set up for Mr. Miller to sit at one chair. He came in and sat in another chair and said he wasn't moving," she recalls, adding that the equipment had to be rearranged to meet Miller's wishes. Over the next four hours, under penalty of perjury, Miller told Collier that he makes a mere $250,000 a year in salary as CEO of the Miller real estate conglomerate--and pays every penny to the company to satisfy a debt. Amazingly, he said he couldn't remember what the debt was for, what it started at, or what it amounts to now. "You don't recall what the debt was that you pay your entire paycheck to Henry S. Miller...?" Collier asks in a videotape of the deposition. "That's correct," replies Miller, who says more than 35 times during the session that he can't recall basic things about his personal finances. "I guess I get a salary from Pilgrim's Pride--beef, whatever it is." He says he spends money that "I borrow from family and friends and their companies," but he said he couldn't name anyone beyond his father. For a man at the head of such a large corporation, some of his answers strain credulity. For instance: Q: How much cash do you have on you? A: I don't know. Probably $50. Q: Where did you get it? A: Where did I get it? Well, I've just carried it around for some time. Q: That was not my question, sir. Where did you get the cash? A: I don't have a recollection, I use a little cash, you know. I just don't have a recollection. Miller also claims that contributions made in his name to politicians such as Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison are made with money "my wife or my dad gave...on my behalf." Collier later asks Miller again about his contributions over the past 10 years: "In each and every instance, those contributions were made in your name but not from your funds, correct?" "Yes," he answers. If that is true, those contributions would violate federal campaign-finance law. According to rules posted on the Federal Election Commission's Web site: "Contributions made in the name of another are prohibited." But Pronske insists that is not the case: "My interpretation is that his wife and father were the source of the funds, which became his." Beyond that, Miller's attempts to portray himself as all but penniless tie him to some pretty embarrassing explanations. He claims, for instance, that he sold his membership at the exclusive Preston Trail Golf Club to his children back in 1980, when they were teenagers. Apparently, the kiddos, one of whom is barred from belonging to the all-male club by virtue of the fact that she is female, bought the membership with money their grandfather gave them at birth. Of course Miller, not the kids, uses the membership. He's there nearly every day, playing cards with his buddies or hitting the meticulously groomed links. It's difficult to imagine that the immigrant laborers who mow the well-tended grounds at Preston Trail are worth more on paper than Miller, and get in more trouble if they fall behind on payments for their used pickups. Phil Hutchison, an owner of Stonehenge, the feds' collection partner, says: "Kind of reminds you of J.R...To us, it's obvious what he's doing. He's hiding behind his family, his businesses to escape living up to obligations to us and the taxpayer. "Most of the people we deal with spend at least some time trying to negotiate a settlement. That hasn't been the case with him. It's been a fight from day one." At several hearings scheduled for later this month, the dozens of legal issues that have opened up will be hashed out in the federal courthouse: Miller's memory lapses, Collier's home tour, maybe even how that money got in Miller's wallet. And, most likely, another year of cotillions, polo matches, and golf games will pass before much is done. Shifting assets, losing one's memory on the witness stand, playing dumb..."It's a way of doing it," says Collier. "But you don't usually see it from people of his standing. It's not what you expect from people who want status and respect. |
Developing . . . |
| Nazis marching in World War II |
| Given the number of times I've heard and read lately references such as the one at left to the fact that The Governor's Business Council appears to be one of the primary promoters of their lobbyist Sandy Kress for the next Texas education commissioner, let's take a look at current membership of The Governor's Business Council. The grey box at right traces its origins and purpose, with Ken Lay's and Enron's contributions below. |
| EDVANCE RESEARCH, INC. |
| THE COMMISSION FOR A COLLEGE READY TEXAS |
| Q: How is it that Edvance for whom CCRT chair Sandy |
| From Sep. 12, 2007 "CCRT Weekly Email" Meeting Information and Focus Group Minutes: Last Friday, the Commission held a focus group to receive feedback from higher education faculty and business leaders on college readiness standards. Business and higher education participants convened to discuss real-world implications of college and workforce readiness issues. If you were unable to attend, please take a look at the attached minutes of the meeting. The feedback and findings from the focus group will be shared at the Commission meeting in San Antonio on the 14th. During a Research and Reports Task Force call last week, Dean Nafziger offered the Edvance, Inc. website as a secure place to upload Commission documents for review. You may have noticed emails this week from Gay Lamey and Patrick Guerra of Edvance. They have given you the website.... and your own personal username and password. Currently there are no documents to review, but you will be sent an alert from “Commission for College Ready Texas” when they are uploaded, or when someone makes a comment. If you would like to change your alert setting, please email sara.weiss@tea.state.tx.us. |
| Kress lobbies is involved with the CCRT? Q: Would these focus groups (see below) be like the ones used by the 1997 TEKS- writing teams? With Delphi techniques? |
| THE GOVERNOR'S BUSINESS COUNCIL |
| Then-chair Tincy Miller at 2006 State Board of Education meeting (PHOTO--Susan Bushart) |
DUE DILIGENCE UPDATE: Tincy Miller and Vance Miller have been contacted for information. Further, the Dallas Observer has been contacted regarding the 1998 piece below; I have asked whether the Miller's have provided the Observer with factual information regarding any information believed to be incorrect or not factual. -- P.W. 09.13.07 |
| view first GBC chair Ken Lay's financial contributions (above). I say this in all sympathy: Realistically, any politician above the local school board level must be constantly on the prowl for new sources of money with which to fund the next election; as someone who likes the idea of elections in which we get to vote for our leaders, I do not have a solution for this. Look at George Soros and McCain-Feingold. At any rate, according to R.G. Ratcliffe, Sandy Kress was GBC's lobbyist. |
| CHECKS WRITTEN TO PEARSON ED. BY TEXAS TAXPAYERS VIA THE TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY FISCAL YEAR 1998* 768.97 1999 672.44 2000 33,512,789.47 2001 22,981,694.52 2002 61,319,897.28 2003 23,324,431.43 2004 138,978,751.36 2005 14,356,657.58 2006 242,073,438.48 2007 83,860,167.62 Grand total for Pearson Education $ 620,408,500.18 |
| CHECKS WRITTEN TO NCS PEARSON BY TEXAS TAXPAYERS VIA THE TEXAS EDUCATION AGENCY FISCAL YEAR 1998* 14,992,458.00 1999 34,029,583.00 2000 37,689,794.00 2001 44,534,502.00 2002 51,295,197.00 2003 53,316,475.00 2004 102,064,361.00 2005 122,439,506.00 2006 155,622,396.00 2007 187,230,868.10 Grand total for NCS Pearson $ 803,215,140.10 |
| Fair and balanced: Friends, I'm a conservative; here are two liberal commentaries: my.BarackObama. com/gGM7yZ and DailyKos who says, "Several large corporations and their lobbyists have profited from Bush’s NCLB by tapping billions of dollars in standardized testing and in 'supplemental education services' funds since its passage in 2001. They’re lining up now to expand their profit margins for the next six years as NCLB is being re- authorized. And the one man who stands to personally profit the most this year isn’t Bush himself, but advisor-turned-lobbyist Sandy Kress, the architect of Bush’s old high-stakes testing model in Texas and the overhaul of ESEA in 2001." |
| * Per TEA, due to a new accounting system in 1998, that year's data is not complete. |
| How many billions have U.S. taxpayers spent on Pearson edu-products including acccountability tests? The Texas Education Agency paid Pearson $1.423 billion between 1998 and 2007. |
| Oh, no! 'Deadbeat' Vance? In 1994, Miller was sued for $23 million by the feds for debts incurred during the S&L crisis of the 1980s. "While Miller had not filed for bankruptcy, in 1998 his attorney claimed that he had no ability to pay the debt, which then amounted to approximately $26 million. However, |
| Follow the money for a moment in history: In 2001, current Pearson lobbyist, Democrat, Sandy Kress helped craft the "No Child Left Behind" Act; he is widely credited as being its chief architect. During 2002, Pearson Education paid Akin Gump $360,000 to lobby for NCS Pearson. (SOURCE--OpenSecrets.org) More regarding Sandy's lobbying here. |
HOME
Q: Following the money, who directly benefited financially from No Child Left Behind?
A: Sandy Kress, called NCLB 'architect,' is also a paid lobbyist for Pearson, the British
education mega-corporation (see a few of their education entity logos at right); Pearson was
paid $1.423 billion by the Texas Education Agency during 1998-2007.
NOTE: This amount does not include direct payments to Pearson by any of Texas' 1,031 school
districts, or the other 49 states, or the United States Department of Education.
A: Sandy Kress, called NCLB 'architect,' is also a paid lobbyist for Pearson, the British
education mega-corporation (see a few of their education entity logos at right); Pearson was
paid $1.423 billion by the Texas Education Agency during 1998-2007.
NOTE: This amount does not include direct payments to Pearson by any of Texas' 1,031 school
districts, or the other 49 states, or the United States Department of Education.
Conservative commentary: Texans' $1.423 billion to Pearson via TEA (1998-2007)
acronyms in a sentence, as with this one above, my eyes tend
to glaze over. It doesn't help that the edu-groups seem
virtually undiscernible from each other, apparent almalgams
of business and cheerleaders for public education. Not only
are the groups difficult to distinguish, but also with each new
one it becomes harder and harder to tell where government
stops and business begins and vice versa; wouldn't this be
the classic definition of socialism?
to glaze over. It doesn't help that the edu-groups seem
virtually undiscernible from each other, apparent almalgams
of business and cheerleaders for public education. Not only
are the groups difficult to distinguish, but also with each new
one it becomes harder and harder to tell where government
stops and business begins and vice versa; wouldn't this be
the classic definition of socialism?