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The state Department of Education this school year paid more than $12.7 million to independent education consulting companies to help revamp underperforming schools. But most of the money has gone to one mainland company that critics say has been largely ineffective.

That company, EdisonLearning, and other consultants visit the schools to provide professional development services, conduct regular benchmark assessments, build site capacity and help teachers interpret data — often forging a partnership that some Hawaii educators say has significantly boosted their students’ achievement.

But others criticize the arrangements, saying they send public money out of Hawaii to for-profit providers that have hardly enhanced student performance on state assessments. Of the five providers with which the state currently partners, one is local and one is not-for-profit.

“All of our [federal funding] goes to a private, for-profit company instead of the money going to supplies,” said Sarah Tochiki, a teacher at Chiefess Kamakahelei Middle School on Kauai. Kamakahelei Middle , meaning it receives federal funds earmarked for high-poverty schools.

Funding for the consultants comes from both federal and general funds, according to DOE spokesman Alex Da Silva. Annual federal funding through No Child Left Behind is based on census poverty data and fluctuates between $42 million and $47 million. The DOE’s operating budget for the 2012-13 fiscal year is $1.762 billion.

Kamakahelei Middle contracts with — an education solutions organization that currently partners with 391 school districts in 25 states. EdisonLearning accounts for the bulk of the state’s spending on “comprehensive restructuring service:” nearly $10.7 million for the 2012-13 fiscal year. That’s out of $12.7 million for all consultants.

Other providers include , , and , according to da Silva.

EdisonLearning has had its fair share of criticism, particularly in districts where the company actually manages — versus contracts with — schools. Critics in school districts such as and have also argued that EdisonLearning hardly boosted academic performance at their schools.

In Hawaii, student performance continues to , but more schools are meeting annual progress goals as outlined in (NCLB).

Fifty-three percent of the state’s 286 schools in the 2011-12 school year — including Kamakahelei Middle — targets, which in Hawaii are determined by performance on the Hawaii State Assessment. Still, that’s down from 59 percent of Hawaii schools the year before.

Hawaii’s partnership with the firms traces back to 2005 following a rocky start on requirements for NCLB, which was signed into law in 2001 by President George W. Bush as a reauthorized version of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

NCLB is part of a long-standing federal effort to provide funding and guidance to help school districts improve their lowest-performing schools, according to , chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based policy think tank . Chubb also founded and is a former chief education officer of EdisonLearning.

But NCLB, Chubb said, reflects a federal initiative to impose tougher requirements on school districts in a concerted effort to speed up academic progress and close the achievement gap. As many as 10 percent of schools nationwide are considered low-performing, according to Chubb.

The Act requires school districts to put schools that repeatedly fail to meet adequate yearly progress into a process called “restructuring.” Districts can choose to restructure sanctioned schools in one of several ways, including contracting with an outside organization, reopening the school as a charter school and replacing all or most of the school staff who are implicated in the school’s failure.

The Hawaii DOE and complex area superintendents settled on the first option. The state in 2004 received 10 applications from outside providers, according to education scholar Frederick Hess, who in 2009 published a on Hawaii’s restructuring strategy. Hawaii selected three of them: EdisonLearning, America’s Choice and Educational Testing Service.

“The basic idea [of that route] is that if the state or district after six or seven years had been unsuccessful, maybe it should enter into a partnership with someone with an outside perspective,” Chubb said, speaking generally about the decision to contract with a private firm. “But all options represent tough medicine.”

State Deputy Superintendent Ronn Nozoe said the state chose to partner with consultants in an effort to encourage collaboration and “develop interventions based on the data and needs of the school community.”

“This is in stark contrast to the ‘takeover’ model found in some districts in states other than Hawaii, in which consultants replace school staff,” he said in an email to Civil Beat. “Partnerships, on the other hand, allow us to focus on what’s working at individual schools and build internal capacity.”

Chubb agreed that while many districts have engaged in partnerships with outside consultants, most have opted for other aggressive self-improvement measures, such as removing all a school’s staff and administrators. He estimated that EdisonLearning is one of hundreds of private firms — both for-profit and not-for-profit — providing services to school districts across the country.

About a third of the state’s schools this school year are . All of those schools work with consultants as part of their improvement plan, according to da Silva, the DOE spokesman.

And Nozoe emphasized that complex area superintendents ultimately decide how to partner with the consultant and can design an improvement plan based on their own priorities and data needs. (The state consists of .)

EdisonLearning Gets Mixed Reviews

EdisonLearning’s 30 Hawaii-based consultants are currently working with 55 Hawaii schools in varying degrees, according to Babette Moreno, the company’s Hawaii regional general manager. Programs range from comprehensive services — getting visits from numerous consultants several times a week — to basic services, which could entail occasional assistance in benchmark fulfillment.

Comprehensive EdisonLearning services are concentrated at schools that demonstrate consistently low student achievement, including Kamakahelei Middle, Hilo Intermediate, Kalihi Elementary and Maui High School. The bulk of EdisonLearning’s partner schools are on the neighbor islands because they typically have less access to resources than do Oahu schools, Moreno said.

Still, partnerships with consultants such as EdisonLearning aren’t limited to sanctioned schools, according to da Silva. The firms work with any Hawaii school that opts for their services.

In fact, many of EdisonLearning’s partner schools have already exited restructuring, Moreno said.

Moreno pointed to data creation as one EdisonLearning focus that has benefitted partnering Hawaii schools — especially given the state’s initiative to . The firm forms data teams among teachers, training them to better track their students’ progress, she said.

“What we try to do is help teachers analyze how effective their instruction is being by how well kids have reacted” to the material, Moreno said.

But reception among teachers in schools contracting with outside consultants has varied, with many criticizing the partnerships as ineffective and a wasteful use of valuable Title I money.

Title I funds are awarded based on a formula per county. Schools ultimately decide how to distribute the funds after conducting needs assessments and formulating academic and financial plans. Schools can use their Title I monies to fund the partnerships, but the grant isn’t the only source of money for consultants.

Moreno acknowledged that EdisonLearning hasn’t been embraced at all schools and that some still resist the services.

“When we first got here eight years ago, it was a struggle,” said Moreno, whose background is in bilingual education services. “Now, because people understand what it is we’re doing … overall, we have a very positive relationship with our schools.”

Education Sector’s Chubb, who visited the islands several times while working for EdisonLearning, pointed to the “historical divide” between Hawaii and the mainland as a major challenge in any partnership between an outside organization and the state.

“But once you gain trust, it can be very positive,” he said, adding that he was surprised by how willing “teachers and principals were to embrace partnerships and change.”

At the beginning all of the consultants came from the mainland, but all recent hires are locals, according to Moreno.

But Tochiki said discontent has prevailed at Kamakahelei Middle. Monies that could’ve funded an additional teacher for the school’s struggling special education program instead went to EdisonLearning, she said.

Similar criticisms of private education partnerships have prevailed in other school districts. Among them is the Clark County school district in Las Vegas, Nevada, where seven elementary schools are actually being run by EdisonLearning, according to Las Vegas Sun education reporter Paul Takahashi.

The district has paid about $30 million from its per-pupil state funding to the firm, Takahashi told Civil Beat, adding that test scores have only slightly improved. Critics have lambasted the arrangement as an ill-intended effort to privatize the classroom using taxpayer dollars and enhance student performance using a “cookie-cutter approach.”

EdisonLearning’s Clark County schools serve large percentages of low-income and minority students, Takahashi said.

Too Much Testing?

Tochiki stressed that EdisonLearning contributes little but extra testing to her school — adding an extra burden and time constraint to teachers who are already under intense pressure to meet other testing requirements, she said.

EdisonLearning gives students regular formative assessments, meant to help teachers gauge student progress and determine whether they’re meeting academic benchmarks. Reading assessments are conducted monthly, and those for math, every two months.

Moreno said the assessments — which she emphasized aren’t tests — provide an invaluable tool for teachers who struggle to develop lesson plans that accommodate their students’ needs. The assessments follow checkpoints, allowing teachers to gauge what information their students are retaining.

“Formative assessment means that when you’re instructing, you’re watching how your instruction is affecting the kids,” Moreno said. But “a lot of schools don’t have a system in place to do that course correction … Teachers can use this data to massage their current plan.”

But Tochiki said the assessments are too time-consuming — they last 45 minutes, or a whole class period — and are counterproductive, especially since they’re aligned with the Hawaii Content and Performance Standards (HCPS) III and not Common Core.

Moreno said EdisonLearning is currently adjusting benchmarks to reflect Common Core, noting that only some grade levels teach the initiative’s curricula.

Some partnerships, however, have fared well at other schools, such as Maui Waena Intermediate.

“We were performing really poorly,” said Maui Waena Principal Jamie Yap. “We were hungry for change, looking for change.”

According to Yap, students in the 2005-6 school year scored 34 percent proficiency in reading and 13 percent proficiency in math. By the 2011-12 school year, scores rose to 69 percent and 61 percent, respectively.

Yap pointed to the data collection tool as a major factor in academic improvement.

“It helped form our instruction,” he said. “We’ve been looking at things and doing things differently because of that.”

Yap also speculated that the school’s partnership with EdisonLearning has been especially positive because the consultant structured the improvement plan a little differently than at other schools. The reading and math assessments, he said, are administered by science and social studies classroom teachers.

The arrangement divides the work so that students don’t miss out on their reading and math instruction, Yap said.

Yap suggested that EdisonLearning’s services work best when both sides accept the partnership as a collaboration. Yap encouraged teachers to embrace EdisonLearning from the get-go. The school first contracted with the firm in 2008.

“We run our own school — Edison doesn’t tell us how to run our school,” he said. “They helped us look at things to change.”

Deputy Superintendent Nozoe said the fact that schools and complexes continue to enter into partnerships attests to the strategy’s value.

But Chubb said school reform isn’t one-size-fits-all.

“Overall, what policymakers have found is that there are no improvement strategies that are consistently successful,” he said. “There’s no one strategy, no one company, no one consultant that will always work.”