The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) for at least three years manipulated qualification requirements for several New Orleans charter schools so that they would qualify for millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a former LDOE employee who now works for a parish school district and who asked that his name not be revealed.
The employee told LouisianaVoice that the practice started under former Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek and continued at least in John White’s first year as superintendent.
He said the recipients were “four or five” schools in the Recovery School District in New Orleans and all were charter schools. “LDOE employees were told to manipulate the data to allow the schools to qualify for the federal grants and each of the schools was subsequently approved.”
He said the data were also skewed in some instances to block grant eligibility for other schools.
One criterion was that the school be a failing school, he said. “These were new charter schools, so they were not actually ‘failing’ schools, but we were directed to doctor the data to allow the schools to become eligible.” He did not name the charter schools that received the grants.
He said the other criterion was for “conditional” schools. He added that the federal Department of Education is moving toward making “conditional” the single criterion for grant eligibility.
The former LDOE employee said he did not recall the exact amounts awarded the schools but that the total for all four was “several millions of dollars.”
He also touched briefly on the current accusations that the refusal by LDOE employees of requests to adjust the LEAP and iLEAP scores for the RSD was at least partly to blame for the delay in releasing school test scores until Tuesday of this week (May 20).
“The department (LDOE) did that for schools all over the state last year,” he said.
He said there was no logical reason for the delay in releasing the test scores, a delay that has thrown some school districts into a state of chaos—particularly those that have already completed their school year. Schools in those districts still don’t know which students will be required to take courses during the summer to bring their grades up.
Students in other school districts who may have been told they were exempt from finals because of outstanding grades are now finding that they have to take finals after all.
An LDOE official, speaking for White, said despite the prevailing belief, there was no set schedule for the release of the test scores—even though educators and administrators across the state were in accord in the belief that the scores were to have been released last Friday.
“There was no reason for the delay,” the former LDOE employee said. “DRC (Data Recognition Corp., of Maple Grove, Minnesota) had everything done well in advance of last Friday. The test scores should have been released on time.”
DRC is the vendor under contract to LDOE for testing and test grading of the LEAP and iLEAP tests.
The firm presently has two contracts with the department totaling $111.7 million.
The first, Contract No. 603573, is for $66.5 million and runs from Sept. 1, 2003 through June 30, 2015. It calls for DRC to test grades three through nine in English, language arts, mathematic science and social studies, and to administer criterion referenced testing in grades three through seven and grade nine from Sept. 1, 2003 through June 30, 2008.
Contract 704708 is for $48.2 million and runs from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2015. That contract calls for DRC to provide support services related to LDOE’s current assessment program which includes the developing of test forms, printing, distributing and collecting materials, coring and reporting for LEAP, iLEAP and other standardized tests.
Louisiana Voice 
What? While the revelations may not be surprising, the source claiming to have been “directed” in his involvement is both surprising and disturbing.
Is your informant claiming to have falsified data towards defrauding the Federal Government? No wonder he does not want his name used.
…which is why he left the department for another job.
Why hasn’t someone gone to jail yet? Everything this administration is doing is criminal.
Louisiana law protecting employees against retaliation for refusing to participate in violations of state law do Nothing to protect employees against retaliation. And, there’s no law in Louisiana protecting employees from retaliation for not participating in violations against Federal law.
Systemic
I’m not sure the FBI office and U.S. Attorney in BR would pursue, either. No. Quite sure they wouldn’t.
How much in campaign contributions has DRC (Data Recognition Corp.) given to BESE, Legislature and Gov. Jindal? Wonder who their lobbyists are? $111 million in contracts from Louisiana in one year is impressive. Wonder what other states DRC has contracts with? Taking taxpayer money from public education is now big business, and the more tests, the more testing and data companies can circle around the taxpayer’s pockets.
The contracts were not for one year, but for 12 and four years, respectively—as noted in the story.
We also did a search for all political contributions by DRC, Data Recognition Corp., or by all officers and directors of the company and found none.
Of course unlimited contributions could have been made anonymously to any number of super PACs which could use the money to pay for political ads. Such contributions would never show up in a candidate’s campaign finance reports.
Why shouldn’t/wouldn’t the US Atty. and the FBI get involved? If Jindalmen cannot be put away for FRAUD, why not for lying to the FBI?
How the pendulum has swung from limited campaign contributions! We are witnessing groundwork for permanent control by the $ Party as even more campaign finance limits were recently removed while secrecy was increased. So far all state contracts under Jindal have been awarded on a pay to play basis.
The only way to kick corporate interests out of person-hood and reclaim our “government of the people” from fascists is for the pendulum to knock down a couple of Bush Supreme Court appointees.
Reblogged this on Crazy Crawfish's Blog and commented:
People need to familiarize themselves with this article and another one by Mercedes Schneider before I release my findings.
[…] Originally posted on Louisiana Voice: […]
The folks who doctored the data to include some charters and exclude traditional schools are still at the LDoE except one. That one is among the upper echelon at CCSSO – a mover and shaker among the Common Core proponents. One individual who refused is still there. Two individuals who refused are long gone. The feds did take exception to some of the grants to charters that were newly opened, but after the grants were awarded. No consequences for the LDoE. Maybe Jacob Landry took a little heat, don’t recall. The name Miller McCoy Charter rings a bell. These are known as SIG grants 1003(g).
I think some of this info appeared in CrazyCrawfish’s responders.
Oh, and DRC has been handling at least some of the testing duties for LA since …98-99 if not longer
[…] https://louisianavoice.com/2014/05/19/ldoe-under-pastorek-and-white-manipulated-data-for-grant-eligib… […]
[…] for several New Orleans Charter Schools so that they could get millions in federal grants. (https://louisianavoice.com/2014/05/19/ldoe-under-pastorek-and-white-manipulated-data-for-grant-eligib…😉 Even though these were brand new schools he instructed them to present the data to make them […]
[…] Manipulation Fraud: I verified this recent story (by Tom Aswell) about grant manipulation within the LDOE with some of my sources and it checked […]