The real Common Core curriculum decision makers

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (NASDAQ:HMHC) is a global learning company dedicated to changing people’s lives by fostering passionate, curious learners. -- Business Wire

If you are wondering about how Common Core curriculum decisions are made and how agendas are set, this news might interest you.

From Edweek:

A major portion of Scholastic Corp.'s educational technology and services business will be purchased by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for $575 million in cash, in an agreement Scholastic announced today.

Scholastic's ed-tech business has been operating at a loss. In the last quarter reported, the company's ed-tech revenue declined 4 percent, to $34.3 million, while Scholastic's overall sales increased 2 percent in that quarter, according to results announced by the company on March 26. The ed-tech segment's operating loss increased by $1.7 million to a loss of $12.4 million, compared to an operating loss of $10.7 million in the prior year. 

The company attributed the decline mostly to lower math product sales and lower consulting revenues in its International Center for Leadership in Education unit. Sales of core literacy publishing product were essentially flat compared to the prior year; however, both new business and expansion sales of READ 180® stages, along with technology support services, were higher in the current quarter as compared to the prior year period, the company said.

Boston-based Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is buying up- everything in sight related to Common Core. They've already acquired Channel One and Curiosityville. HMH is one of the biggest text/testing publishers cashing in on the booming Common Core market, along with Pearson and McGraw-Hill.

Perarson, a British conglomerate, continues to tout itself on its website as the world’s leading education company that operates in 80 countries, employs 40,000 people and generates 60 percent of its sales in North America.

Scholastic Inc., which bought the Weekly Reader from Readers Digest in 2012 only to end its publication a short time later, has been on the ropes the past few years. 

Billions at stake as testing profiteers collide

Pearson is the "800-pound gorilla" in state testing. -- Barry Topol, the managing partner for the Assessment Solutions Group,

EdWeek reports:

Two of the biggest names in testing are locked in a dispute over one of the most coveted jewels in the K-12 market: the right to oversee a suite of assessments in California, a state with about one-eighth of the country's students.

$1.2 Billion Market

California is one of 18 states giving tests created by the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, a group of states that has designed exams aligned with the common-core standards.

Smarter Balanced is leaving the administration of those tests to individual states. California asked vendors to bid to administer its common-core exams in English/language arts and math, and for testing work in science and other subjects over the next three academic years, starting in 2015-16.

The overall market for summative assessment—typically defined as tests designed to measure student academic progress at the end of a school year or a course—stands at about $1.2 billion a year, said  a Danville, Calif.-based company that consults with states on testing. So a California contract potentially worth up to $80 million a year represents a big piece of that pie.

Feds looking for big fish in mother-of-all Chicago schools scandal

Rolling Over: Rauner claims it was Rahm, not his foundation, that brought SUPES into town and gave them a $20.5 million no-bid contract.

I told you...Once the feds start turning over rocks, there's a lot of things crawling around down there.

OK, BBB is toast. She's grabbed the money and ran. Left without a trace. Spending more time with the fam? Maybe she joined some secret underground group. No one seems to know. But she was small potatoes anyway.

Rahm is also MIA. He's become quiet as a mouse. Yes, he bought the election, but what did he really win? The city's credit rating is plummeting once more, making it almost impossible for him to continue borrowing against a gigantic mountain of debt, doing more debt-swaps, or solving the city's pension crisis.

Seems like every time there's a crisis, he ducks out of town and lets his underlings dangle in the wind. But Rahm is definitely scarred by all of this.

Now the feds seem to have set sights on the big boys in the world of power philanthropy, the Chicago Public Education Fund (CPEF). They're naming names. Subpoenas are flying and if they need a part-time server, I happen to be available.

The result has been exactly the one the feds wanted. Apply a little pressure and even Napa Valley Wine Club members like Rahm and Rauner will roll over on one another. Now Gov. Rauner, the Fund's biggest player and its former board president, is telling media, it was Rahm, not us (CPEF) that brought Solomon and SUPES into town.

"My experience with the public education fund has been mostly good. Although I will say this, the fund didn't make many of its own decisions as much as it was a facilitator for what the mayor or the schools or the leadership wanted to do," the governor said. 

No-bid contracts with kickbacks are no big deal in this town. It's like everyone has just discovered pay-to-play (the motto engraved over the mayor's office door on the 5th floor of City Hall. What's really behind the feds' invasion of Rahmville? Nobody I ask seems to know for sure. Lots of guesses though.

Rahm & Holder.

Is this Eric Holder's last hurrah, or what? Is revenge really a meal best served cold? (Think winter in Chicago).  It couldn't be something from way back in Rahm's White House days, could it? Remember Rahm telling him to STFU on gun control? Could it have something to do with being stonewalled by Arne Duncan in Louisiana?

Wasn't Holder just in town this summer, helping to kickstart Rahm Emanuel's re-election campaign, hailing the “amazing” turnaround in school safety? Obviously, he was doing a lot more than that.

Or is this the Obama administration making a preemptive strike on a Republican governor who seems bent on pushing the school system into bankruptcy and rewriting the state constitution? Will Illinois break another record for corruption by sending its fifth governor to prison? Or will Holder be content with naming the names of the entire Chicago ruling class before he backs off?

If you haven't done so already, check out Carol Felsenthal's piece in Chicago Mag. She writes:

Remember all the talk during the April 7 mayoral runoff of the 1 percent vs. the 99 percent? It would be difficult to assemble a board that screams 1 percent louder than CPEF’s—from the schools its members attended to jobs held to marriages made.

Among CPEF’s board members:

Ken Griffin, CEO of Citadel, hedge fund genius, and widely reported to be “the richest man in Illinois.”

Penny Pritzker, billionaire heir to the Pritizker fortune, former member of the CPS board, now an emeritus member of the CPEF board, which she once headed as chair.

Susan Crown, principal of the family business Henry Crown and Company and chairman of the Susan Crown Exchange, “a social investment organization” with a focus on education.

Mellody Hobson, president, Ariel Investments and wife of billionaire George Lucas.

Helen Zell, philanthropist, executive director, Zell Family Foundation, and wife of real estate billionaire Sam Zell.

Jana R. Schreuder, Northern Trust Company COO—the first woman in that position—and a past Teach for American advisory board member.

There are educators on CPEF’s board. They include:

Tony Smith, Rauner’s just-appointed superintendent of Illinois schools, formerly head of the school district in Oakland, California, although never a classroom teacher and a long-time advocate of charter schools.

Timothy Knowles, Director of the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs, chairman of the Urban Education Institute. Knowles is also a former deputy superintendent of the Boston Public Schools and the “founding director of Teach for America in New York City.

Laura Bilicic, former classroom teacher, the co-founder and former head of a New York City private school for children with “significant learning challenges.”

Penny Bender Sebring, a former high school teacher and current senior Research Associate at the University of Chicago and co-director of the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

But there's still some big names missing from this Rogue's Gallery of power philanthropists and corporate-style school reformers. For some reason, none in the press will dare say his name. But I'll give you a hint. He's Gary Solomon's old partner. He just ran a losing campaign for Lt. Governor on Pat Quinn's ticket. He recently was run out of Bridgeport, CT. And his initials are PV.

More to come on him. I promise.