Evan Vitale Consulting: School officials' consulting raises questions of transparency

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Besides the six-figure salary he earns as superintendent of high-achieving Stevenson High School District 125, Eric Twadell has an unusual perk in his contract: For up to two days a month, he can set aside his job with the one-school district to focus on his outside consulting work.

Like the two superintendents who preceded him — and like many other school administrators with ties to Stevenson or its feeder districts — Twadell writes books for Solution Tree, an Indiana-based publisher of educational materials. The company has a long, close relationship with Stevenson, located in northwest suburban Lincolnshire, and the educator who started the trend, longtime former schools chief Rick DuFour, has had a hand in dozens of books, DVDs and conferences the company has published or hosted.

It’s not uncommon for high-paid public school administrators from the Chicago suburbs to go into educational consulting after they retire.

Solution Tree represents another trend: that of current school officials who consult on the side. About 20 current educators in the Chicago area are listed on Solution Tree’s website as “presenters”; many have also written books for the company and, in some cases, have helped get Solution Tree materials into the hands of their school district colleagues, at taxpayer expense.

In fact, Solution Tree takes pride in contracting with school officials who write about their own district’s practices, which they must first show to be effective, said CEO Jeffrey Jones.

“They don’t get into this profession to make money,” he said. “Most do it because they are passionate and want to help other schools.”

Such outside work is often viewed as adding prestige to a district like Stevenson, whose high school this year was ranked the fifth-best in Illinois by U.S. News and World Report. The school even designates one day a month for visiting educators to tour it and learn the secrets of its success, charging $50 per head.

DuFour said Solution Tree represents a shift toward educational materials being written by educators and not just college professors.

Yet during an era when taxpayers demand more transparency and question administrative salaries, the outside work can raise questions about potential conflicts of interest and time spent away from an administrator’s primary job. Some question the benefit to students and faculty, and the ethics of a school district buying books written by its own employees, no matter how small the expense.

It’s also a practice that’s not entirely transparent.

While districts have to disclose any spending on Solution Tree products, the administrators who moonlight for the company are not required to reveal how much they earn from Solution Tree. A state law aimed at disclosing public employees’ potential conflicts of interest does not require school administrators to divulge any stake they have in companies that provide materials for faculty development.

“The underlying principle here is accountability to the public and transparency,” said C.K. Gunsalus, director of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics. “How much disclosure is there and how transparent is it and who oversees it?”

Solution Tree’s family tree

Solution Tree started in 1987 as National Educational Service, changed owners in 1998 and took on its current name in 2005. The company has expanded throughout the U.S. and the world, with offices in Canada, Australia and Saudi Arabia.

It offers professional expertise on a broad range of topics in education, some that reflect trends like “evidence-based” grading techniques. In 2013, Solution Tree landed a two-year contract with New Mexico to help educators implement Common Core standards.

Privately owned, it does not divulge information on its finances, Jones said.

Last month, Solution Tree published a new book, “Proficiency-Based Assessment,” by Twadell and three other Stevenson administrators, including Principal Troy Gobble.

They are among about 20 Chicago-area school officials, many with ties to Stevenson, who are contracted consultants with Solution Tree.

In at least one case, a Chicago-area school official who works as a Solution Tree consultant has signed off on district spending for the company’s products or services.

At Buffalo Grove’s Aptakisic Junior High, which feeds into Stevenson, Principal Jessica McIntyre in recent years has charged the district nearly $1,500 for books for faculty that she co-wrote with other educators, as well as books written by her father, Timothy Kanold, another former Stevenson superintendent.

In 2010, as assistant principal, McIntyre submitted invoices for 28 employees to attend a Solution Tree conference for $11,200.

Theresa Dunkin, superintendent for Aptakisic-Tripp School District 102, said she does not think the arrangement is a conflict of interest.

“There are board policies and procedures in place so that talented leaders and teachers, like Mrs. McIntyre, can write their own stories, and the rest of the world can benefit,” Dunkin said in an email. “In my opinion, great educational leaders are not doing enough writing.”

Solution Tree presenters find other ways to support each other. On Amazon.com, one of DuFour’s recent books, “In Praise of American Educators,” received 54 customer reviews, and every one received the highest possible five stars, with many reviewers using phrases like “a must read” and “an instant educational classic.” What the reviewers didn’t say is that nearly all of them are Solution Tree presenters themselves or have other ties to the company.

Conflicts of interest?

Because school officials like McIntyre are not required to publicly report their income from outside consulting, it’s unclear whether she profited from sales of the Solution Tree books to the district.

“As long as the school board thinks it’s a good idea, it’s no one’s business how much money (the consultants) earn,” said Jones, the Solution Tree CEO.

The Illinois Association of School Administrators does not track how many certified educators do professional consulting on the side, but “the practice is not unheard of,” spokesman Mike Chamness said in an email. He described consulting as a “good professional practice subject to individual contracts and school district policies and procedures.”

High-ranking school administrators are required to fill out economic interest statements with their district’s county government. But Stevenson officials say administrators are required to reveal compensation only in areas like “law, accounting, engineering, medicine, architecture, dentistry or clinical psychology.” State officials back that interpretation.

“We have dozens of teachers and administrators who write books, do consulting, private tutoring, teaching at other institutions … and many other jobs,” Stevenson spokesman Jim Conrey said. “We have never asked how much our teachers and administrators receive for work they do outside of Stevenson on their own personal time.”

Several Chicago-area school administrators declined to reveal how much they have earned from Solution Tree.

One official who was willing to disclose his Solution Tree compensation said it was relatively small. Nicholas Jay Myers, an assistant superintendent in Schaumburg School District 54, said he earned $3,772 in 2014 — and even less in the four prior years combined.

In 2012, Myers co-wrote a book with DuFour and DuFour’s wife, Becky, also a retired educator, based on a case study from Myers’ time as a principal. That same year, Myers was among seven District 54 employees who attended a Solution Tree conference in Minneapolis on new math standards.

Later that year, Myers was listed as District 54’s contact person for a $62,640 contract with Solution Tree to provide Common Core mathematics consulting to teachers throughout 2013. District 54’s contract with Solution Tree was to support 1,400 teachers as they implemented new state math standards, a district spokeswoman said.

The school district’s contract with Solution Tree was unrelated to Myers’ book, which was written on his own time, a school official said.

For many years, District 54 sponsored twice-yearly training conferences led by the DuFours, who, as independent consultants, charge about $15,000 for a two-day conference. To help cover those costs, the school district charged registration fees to educators from other area districts to attend.

Since publishing Rick DuFour’s book “PLC at Work” in 1998, Solution Tree has offered conferences centered around his techniques. PLCs — or “professional learning communities” — focus on changing school culture so that teachers work more collaboratively, discuss student learning and measure results.

“I am very familiar with Solution Tree because of the high quality they provide,” said Mary Jane Morris, director for the Illinois Education Association’s Center for Educational Innovation, which also provides professional development. “We have used them a lot for their conferences. They do have a very good reputation.”

‘Honor in being scholarly’

At Stevenson, officials have spent less than $15,000 over the past five years on services or materials purchased from Solution Tree — a minuscule amount within an annual $100 million budget, school board President Bruce Lubin noted.

Stevenson considers itself a “lighthouse” school district that others seek to emulate, largely because of the sustained use of DuFour’s professional learning communities model, Conrey said.

About 2,000 educators from around the country and beyond pay to visit the school every year to hear how the district uses the PLC concept, he said, calling it “independent from Solution Tree. We don’t sell any products.”

Solution Tree also pays Stevenson about $10,000 every year to lease its auditorium for a three-day conference. This year’s event, in August, focused on PLC methods and featured other Solution Tree authors.

“If you can’t show your book is beneficial, it’s not going anywhere,” DuFour said after his speech that day. “Educational books used to be written by professors. Now, more and more, books are written by practitioners. I would say in most professions there is honor in being recognized as scholarly.”

During his keynote address, DuFour, who announced he has lung cancer, urged educators to “act with a sense of urgency” to improve their schools.

The high school saw rapid enrollment and academic gains during DuFour’s tenure, beginning when he became principal in 1983. He was superintendent from 1991 to 2002, during which time the district received three prestigious Blue Ribbon awards. The district received a fourth Blue Ribbon award in 2004, when Kanold was superintendent.

“We like to think we are building on what Rick started here,” Conrey said.

Brian Schwartz, associate director for the Illinois Principals Association, said consulting by administrators is “really very much a matter that’s left to each district” but that many school officials don’t have time for outside work.

“A lot of times these consultant relationships work out very well, especially if you have a principal or superintendent who is an expert in a certain area,” he said.

lblack@tribpub.com

Twitter @LisaBChiTrib

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