Copies of emails released to LouisianaVoice by the Department of Education (DOE) under threat of litigation reveal an agency over which there is little or no oversight, where escalating costs of expensive programs appear to be of no concern to administrators and a department that appears to be flailing about in search of some direction.
The electronic communications also unveil a cozy relationship between DOE, Rupert Murdoch and his company, News Corp., which apparently will be provided personal information on Louisiana public school students for use by a company affiliated with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
News Corp. is the parent company of Fox News Network. In 2011, News Corp. was implicated in a major phone hacking scandal in which private telephone records were compromised.
Despite the relationship with a national news organization, the emails also reveal a decision by DOE and Dave “Lefty” Lefkowith, director of the Office of Portfolio, to “forget” about communicating with the media or public about departmental plans to launch the DOE’s Course Choice program next month.
Lefkowith has a professional history that links him to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the now-defunct Enron Corp. and an outfit called Azurix Corp., through which a Bush appointee—with help from Lefkowith—sought unsuccessfully to corner the market on Florida drinking water and to auction blocks of water to the highest bidders.
As director of the Office of Portfolio at $146,000 per year, he is in charge of the course choice program whereby private contractors and public institutions will be allowed to offer—and set the prices for— computer courses to Louisiana students.
On Jan. 2 of this year, White emailed Lefkowith at 6:19 p.m., writing:
“How we doing on communications? We have a huge launch in two months.”
“We just decided amongst ourselves: ‘Forget it,’” Lefkowith responded an hour later, at 7:20 p.m. “Problem with that?”
“Fair,” White responded one minute later.
But at 6:53 p.m., 34 minutes after White’s email to Lefkowith and 27 minutes before Lefkowith’s response, White emailed Ken Bradford, assistant superintendent for the department’s Office of Content: “Okay. Time to start the blitz, as we roll up to launch.”
There are other curious emails, including one on July 18, 2012 to White from his $145,000-a-year Chief of Staff Kunjan Narechania which touched on a variety of subjects:
“We need to talk about what to do with David,” she wrote in apparent reference to Lefkowith who joined the department two days after that email was written. It would appear from her comment that even though White had decided to bring Lefkowith, who had been working as a contract consultant, onboard full time, he was still unsure in what capacity Lefkowith would serve.
In another paragraph, Narechania said, “Charlotte Danielson (the Danielson Group of Princeton, N.J., an organization of consultants on educational practice, leadership and research) is being a pain again. Apparently some reporter interviewed her about us using a version of her rubric for our system. She said she thinks it’s a bad idea for us to use an abridged version of her rubric and that we should have piloted for a year. So lame.”
Attempts to contact Danielson were initially unsuccessful but she returned a call Wednesday evening to express surprise at the content of the email and to explain that the Louisiana DOE cherry-picked only a few components of her teacher evaluation system. “No one likes to be called names and I’m no exception,” she said. “I don’t know what they mean by referring to be as ‘a pain,’ or as ‘lame.’”
She explained that her organization specializes in the design of teacher evaluation systems. “We have 22 components to our rubric,” she said. “I understand the Louisiana Department of Education used only about five components. While I have no idea which components they used, I can say that you cannot draw a reasonable conclusion from using only a few components.”
Less than three weeks before Narechania’s email critical of Danielson, Erin Bendily, assistant deputy superintendent for departmental support and former education policy adviser to Gov. Bobby Jindal emailed White:
“I think we need to start with a very strong introduction and embed more CCSS (Common Core State Standards) alignment/integration throughout. This sounds harsh, but we should show that our current/old educator evaluation system is crap and the new system is stellar.”
A paragraph that could attract considerable attention among the media was one that said, “We’re going to send the TimesPic (New Orleans Times-Picayune) reporter to a Monday/Tuesday training in NOLA (New Orleans, LA).”
The reporter was not identified nor was there any explanation on what “training” would be provided—or if the reporter was simply being sent to cover in-house DOE training. If the latter was the case, it would nevertheless seem unusual for a state agency to assign or “send” an otherwise independent news reporter to cover an event held under its auspices.
It was the spate of emails scattered throughout the 119 pages of documents referencing the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC), a project of the Gates Foundation, however, that provided the link between the department and Murdoch and his News Corp. operation. Those emails confirmed the department’s intent to enter sensitive student and teacher information into a massive electronic data bank being built by Wireless Generation, a subsidiary of News Corp.
“Over the next few months, the Gates Foundation plans to turn over all this personal data to another, as yet unnamed corporation, headed by Iwan Streichenberger, former marketing director of a(n) (Atlanta) company called Promethean that sells whiteboard,” according to a news release by Class Size Matters, http://www.classsizematters.org/ a non-profit organization that advocates for class size reduction of New York City’s public schools.
Class Size Matters last month released a copy of a 68-page contract between SLC and the New York State Educational Department which said in part that there would be no guarantee that data would not be susceptible to intrusion or hacking, though “reasonable and appropriate measures” would be taken to protect information.
The Gates contract also allows for the unrestricted subcontracting of duties and obligations covered under the agreement.
Class Size Matters, in an internet posting last month, said besides New York, Phase I of SLC included school districts in North Carolina, Illinois, Colorado and Massachusetts.
“Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky and Louisiana are in Phase II, according to the Gates Foundation, (and) intend to start piloting the system in 2013,” Class Size Matters said. http://www.classsizematters.org/ny-8-other-states-plan-to-share-confidential-student-info-without-parental-consent/
As recently as 13 months ago, however, White professed ignorance of any move toward participating in the SLC program.
A Jan. 21, 2012 email to state school superintendents that included an invitation to an SLC “cross-state convening” prompted an inter-agency email from Jessica Tucker, DOE policy advisor, to White which asked, “Do we participate in this for real?”
“Ok, I know what it is,” White responded 90 minutes later, “but I don’t know if we are really invested since I haven’t heard anyone mention it.”
White, meanwhile, deleted Tucker’s name and immediately forwarded that same email to Vicky Thomas, a DOE executive assistant who responded the following day, a Sunday:
“Yes, the DOE is participating in this. I’m not sure if we are part of Phase I or II, but Erin & Jim Wilson (DOE chief information officer) have been working on this through the Gates Foundation. Paul did not attend these kinds of things, but would send staff.”
Erin and Paul were not immediately identified by last name or by title.
Despite White’s disavowal of any knowledge of SLC, an email exchange three months earlier, in September of 2011, when White still had not been formally appointed State Superintendent by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), would seem to indicate otherwise.
At 7:42 p.m. on Sept. 8, 2011, Peter Gorman, only a month into his new position as senior vice president of Wireless Generation, the newly-formed education division of News Corp., emailed White:
“If you are available for dinner on Wednesday night, I would love to take you and discuss Broad (presumably the Broad Superintendents Academy where White trained to become an education superintendent in 2010), school reform and other issues but no pressure on that either. I know how precious an evening with family, time at the gym, or just a little down time can be to recharge your batteries.”
White responded at 9:49 a.m.:
“Dude—you are my recharger! Dinner it is, of course. Then let’s visit some schools Thursday. I’m really looking forward to it.”
All of which brings us to this one simple question:
Is this flurry of email activity somehow related to a comment by Murdoch in 2010 on the enormous business opportunity in public education awaiting corporate America:
“When it comes to K through 12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S.”?
Perhaps this is a question that legislators should be asking.
Louisiana Voice 
Wow! Just another example of an idiot in way over his head tasked with the public’s welfare. But that’s Jindal for you. The brightest are too smart to associate with mind-numb bottom dwellers he needs to push his ignorant “pay me, not you” agendas. He prefers these sophomoric clowns (clones?) to push his “damn the public, get my buddies rich schemes.” It would be laughable if not so destructive to our state.
Explains why the public is not hearing the truth about this distruction of our state by our governor and his greedy cronies. In bed with the media??? It’s time for our elected legislators to wake up and do their job to protect our state from this “emperor with no clothes.” I hope the voters aren’t brain dead when it comes time to vote next time around. Our state is being sold off piece by piece to the highest bidder and our legislators stand by ignorantly whining as if they have nothing to do with it.
As a school administrator, I can’t believe what they are doing to destroy public education in our state. We will soon have a caste system here in Louisiana after the best educators leave education because of the disrespect inflicted upon them by our education department. Our schools will be taken over by for-profit businesses who take our taxpayer money and run. Teacher certification, school accreditation, accountability, etc., are no longer required for these voucher and virtual schools. How can parents make choices when they don’t have reliable information? Keep us in the dark until its too late.
By the time the public catches on, the dynamic duo of Jindal and White will be long gone, leaving us to pick up the pieces. How do you fix an entire generation of students whose chances for a quality education have passed them by because our legislators allowed laws to be passed that harm children and teachers? He has sold off our healthcare system, prison system, and now our school system. Maybe that was the plan all along??? Sigh…so goes politics in Louisiana.
Thanks for keeping us informed.
I’ll tell you why some of the public is not hearing the truth. Last summer I wanted to email my members (an education group) about the jindal recall petitions which were being circulated. I use Cox for my internet service. I tried sending out my email with http://www.recalljindal.com on it. It would not go through. Finally, I sent the message out by just removing the sentence with the web address to recalljindal. It went through. For several days, I tried to re-send out the message. Every time it was blocked and without it, it would go through. I complained to Cox on many different days. They “tried” to fix the problem and assured me it was not censorship. I know it was. If Cox, a communication giant, is bought or of the mindset that Jindal is doing a good job, how many other such communication businesses do the same thing?
This thing is bigger than we think with so much money behind it I just wonder if we will ever change the direction we are headed. It’s about privatization and making money…in another word–GREED.
GOOD JOB TOM!!! Once again, you bring the truth to light for the people of this state.
Regarding the content of this post: the unprofessional manner in which state business is being conducted is very troubling.
As a professional I would never use “lame,” “a pain” or “crap” so casually in business correspondence, even email.
This information is shocking and disturbing and if Governor Jindal doesn’t expect better of his HANDPICKED team, what does that say about him? About his level of commitment to this state? I’ll tell you what it says…. The truth.
BRAVO! I appreciate your doing what local (and otherwise) news media have failed to do, which is to uncover the truth. Thank you for helping us connect the dots.
BRAVO! Thank you for doing what local (and otherwise) news media have failed to do, which is to uncover the truth.
Now, it’s just a matter of connecting the dots.
Reblogged this on Crazycrawfish's Blog and commented:
Very nice, Tom. My favorite part is that Rupert Murdoch’s folks are “White’s” family and he feels so comfortable with them that he calls a senior VP in his education corporation, “Dude.”
…not to mention, his “recharger.”
Yeah, that recharger part was creepy. I almost felt a “you complete me. . .” Coming on. I’m kinda glad they withheld some of the emails. 🙂
Thank for your ongoing coverage. I wish there was something we could do to derail this juggernaut.
One thing you can do is to support electoral candidates at local, state and national levels who do not support corporate ed reform.
There is something we can do, Frank. Send an e-mail to John.white@la.gov and Kim.nesmith that they do not have permission to share your student’s personally identifable information under FERPA. Do not provide SSNs to school districts when enrolling your students/kids, they are not legally allowed to require them. Most schools don’t realize this so you will get pushback, but it’s true.
[…] Emails obtained by journalist and blogger Tom Aswell at Louisiana Voice suggest that Gov. Bobby Jindal and state Education chief John White have turned the Department of Education into a partisan political operation. […]
I HATE TO ASK THESE FOLKS TO DO OUR DIRTY WORK FOR US, BUT MAYBE, JUST MAYBE, THE ONLY WAY TO GET OUR LEGISLATORS’ ATTENTION IS FOR EVERY SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT, COLLEGE PRESIDENT, VO-TECH CHANCELOR, MEDICAL SCHOOL PRESIDENT, ETC. TO DEMAND THAT THINGS BE DONE THEIR WAY OR THAT THEY WILL ALL RESIGN EN MASSE. I KNOW THEY CAN’T ALL OR EVEN MANY DO THAT, BUT SHORT OF THAT, OUR LARGELY SPINELESS MEDIA WILL NEVER PRINT WHAT’S HAPPENING TO OUR ONCE SOMEWHAT DECENT (NEVER GREAT) STATE.
A substantial majority of our current legislators are controlled by the governor, so it is more important to get his attention than theirs. I think the Baton Rouge ADVOCATE attempts to balance its reporting. Some people think the paper is too soft on Governor Jindal and the way the state is being run – Other people have a completely opposite view. Education (and other state) officials now seem to accept that they must either follow orders explcitly (and quietly) or leave. They see no room for dissent, even if it includes proposing well-reasoned alternatives. Given a choice between having an income and bucking the system, wouldn’t almost anybody choose the former?
You’re absolutely correct Stephen but historically in situations like these it does take some courageous individual(s) to begin to effect change. So far some have tried (Fred Cerise) without result but I hope the general public is becoming aware of the state’s direction and hopefully there won’t be many more to fall on their swords until the radical change is demanded. I would not like to be one of the sacrificial lambs and I’m not in a position to be anyhow but perhaps maybe a few will be willing to stand up to the tin pot despot.
[…] response to litigation, the Louisiana Department of Education released a trove of emails that shows a department obsessed with public relations while flailing about to impose new rules nd […]
Here’s a detailed explanation of the Gates/Murdoch personal data exploitation axis discussed in the emails. It’s truly chilling in its scope.
“With $100M From The Gates Foundation & Others, inBloom Wants To Transform Education By Unleashing Its Data”
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/05/with-100m-from-the-gates-foundation-others-inbloom-wants-to-transform-education-by-unleashing-its-data/
“On top of that, nine states (representing over 11 million students) are currently participating in the development and pilot of its services, including Colorado, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York and North Carolina. Five of those states have already selected districts to be part of the pilot testing.”
[…] collaboration between the Gates Foundation and Rupert Murdoch to collect student data. Parents in Louisiana are worried about this. So should parents in New York, Massachusetts, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Colorado, […]
[…] or “fellow” (the latter is her designation on the LDOE employee release). Furthermore, this email release even has White’s former-TFA Chief of Staff Kunjan Narechania noting that recent LDOE hire and […]
[…] Deputy Superintendent David “Lefty” Lefkowith. In an email obtained by Louisiana Voice as part of a records request, Narechania writes the following to White on July 18, 2012. Louisiana Voice’s Tom Aswell […]
[…] Whoever controls the review process in DOE will determine the content of the reviews. Given the well-publicized politicization of the Dept. of Education, the review process could be done by political appointees rather than professional staff with […]
Wow!! Tom!! Excellent job. I was recently having the discussion some time ago with a fellow employee about how I believe that charter schools, the voucher programs, and education reform was a tool for very wealthy people to take over public education. I had read an article about how Mayor Bloomberg of NY had started to obtain technology contracts with charter schools. I read a lot of articles on federal corruption, war profiteering, and subjects of the like, but I always wondered how does that tie in to Louisisiana. You are the answer as to how that ties in. I never knew any of this information before reading your site.
[…] At first, Iwan and inBloom were avidly pursuing a relationship with John White and John White didn’t even know they existed when he first rolled into town. Before long though, over a few leisurely dinners, John was being wooed by Peter Gorman, Iwan’s Cyrano d’ Bergerac over at Wireless Generation (the authors of the inBloom database run by Iwan) the air beneath his wings, and his recharger. […]
[…] At first, Iwan and inBloom were avidly pursuing a relationship with John White and John White didn’t even know they existed when he first rolled into town. Before long though, over a few leisurely dinners, John was being wooed by Peter Gorman, Iwan’s Cyrano d’ Bergerac over at Wireless Generation (the authors of the inBloom database run by Iwan) the air beneath his wings, and his recharger. […]
[…] than a month; on or before February 20, 2013. (For excerpts from those fascinating emails see here and here.) Less than two months later, on April 19, 2013, John White announced he was pulling out […]