Reading Horizons may go down on policy violations

October 13, 2015

Push has finally come to shove, and tonight, at the regularly scheduled Minneapolis school board meeting, a resolution regarding Reading Horizons will be presented to the public.

This is monumental. I don’t know exactly what the resolutions will say, but my guess is Reading Horizons will be shown the door, even though the Minneapolis Public Schools has already spent over $1 million on the Utah company. 

I have heard that Reading Horizons’ CEO was scheduled to appear at tonight’s board meeting, with the intention that he would apologize to Minneapolis employees and families, over the offensive and utterly confounding “Little Books” his company packaged up and sold to MPS.

Now, ominously, sources say the CEO will be at the meeting, but will not be publicly addressing anyone. 

If Reading Horizons gets sent back to Salt Lake City, it won’t be because of “Lazy Lucy” or the company’s apparent belief that Christopher Columbus discovered America, although that is reason enough in the eyes of many who’ve been tracking this story.

Instead, it will most likely be because MPS employees appear to have violated numerous policies regarding the Reading Horizons deal.

Here are two of the most obvious potential violations, committed in what MPS officials have described as a rush to provide explicit phonics instruction to every K-2 student in the district:

1304 Equity and Diversity

I. Purpose: “Every student deserves a respectful learning environment in which their

racial and ethnic diversity is valued and contributes to successful academic outcomes.

Minneapolis Public Schools is committed to identifying and correcting practices and

policies that perpetuate the achievement gap and institutional racism in all forms…”

“Adult behaviors must not contribute to achievement gaps or create barriers to success.”

II. Definitions: “”Institutional racism” means the collective failure of a public or private

organization to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of

their race, color, culture or ethnic origin which can be seen or detected in practices,

processes, systems, attitudes and behavior. It looks beyond individual acts of prejudice

to the systemic biases that may be built into institutions. These systemic biases

discriminate against and disadvantage people of color through unwitting prejudice,

ignorance, thoughtlessness or racial stereotyping.”

III. G. “The District shall promote the diversification of its vendor and supplier corps in

accordance with law and district policy.”

IV. I. “MPS Board of Directors, Superintendent and employees will work with students

and families to identify barriers to achievement and opportunities for academic success”

And this one:

3300 A Purchasing Principles and Responsibilities 
II. A. 6. All purchases of good [sic] and services shall consider the advantage of 
improving the district’s ability to do business with diverse vendors or providers, and the 
ability to engage the Minneapolis community in doing business with the district. Diversity 
of subcontractors and suppliers shall be considered under this value as well. 
IV. A. All employees of the District charged with making purchases of goods and services 
on behalf of the District shall follow the district procedures, and all applicable law and 
district policies for such purchases. Willful failure to do so may result in disciplinary action up
to and including termination of employment.

Here is, perhaps, further evidence of a purchasing policy violation. A Minneapolis parent requested a copy of the “Exhibit A” addendum to the purchase agreement between MPS and Reading Horizons. Emails between the parent and the district’s data request office indicate that district employees initially could not locate Exhibit A in their system, but eventually found it.

The document raised new alarm bells with the parent who requested it, for two reasons:  1) it was not signed by a Minneapolis employee, and 2) it looks like MPS has committed to a five-year deal with Reading Horizons, worth what appears to be $2.3 million, overall.

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These two policies, alone, would seem to provide enough ammunition for school board members looking for a  clean way out of the Reading Horizons disaster.

Meanwhile, district officials keep insisting that, despite the horrible upset Reading Horizons has caused for many community members, the company’s phonics curriculum is as good as gold, and too important to scrap. 

Who will win out, the community or district officials? Tonight’s board meeting should provide an answer to this.

One thought on “Reading Horizons may go down on policy violations

  1. Thank you, Sarah, for initiating the effort to save the MPS from a deal that was really bad for the district for a whole lot of reasons.

    I have experience with education software system implementation. This ‘agreement’ is not something that would benefit the district. The district should have required itemized costs so that the cost of modifications to quantities of ‘the goods’ could be determined. Specifically, how much is each set of books; how much is the software license; how much are training costs; how much does ‘support of Implementation Coaches’ cost and what specifically does it include?
    As written, this leaves a totally unacceptable number of open questions about the cost of support. Also, It is crazy in 2015 to agree to software license fees that are for more than a year. The district can require the license to not increase more than something like 5 or 10% per year, but it should also leave the option of reducing annual fees if possible and practical.
    This document says “I as a MPS administrator don’t want to be bothered with thinking about the costs of this curriculum, training, and support, so just send us whatever you have, and charge whatever you want for ongoing training and support, and the district won’t complain if the goods don’t work unless the district can prove that the program was ‘implemented with fidelity’ which presumes doing everything RH suggests for as many years as needed, or in other words, if the program doesn’t work it will be the district’s fault.”
    The MPS really needs to a much better job of acquiring new curriculum.

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