Education Leaders Council, a pro-Bush administration group that touts education reform as its priority, is collapsing amid mass resignation of national directors who say the group has “lost its moorings” as senior officers have mismanaged federally funded programs intended to improve academic achievement.
Four ELC directors resigned Monday, telling board Chairman Jim Horne, Florida’s education commissioner, in a letter: “We cannot continue to be associated with an entity that has lost its moorings and whose credibility has been seriously damaged by issues that could have been solved had action been taken in a timely and responsible manner.”
Those resigning were William F. Goodling, a retired 13-term Republican congressman from Pennsylvania and former chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee; William J. Moloney, Colorado’s education commissioner and former ELC chairman; Abigail Thernstrom, member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education and of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission; and Cheri Pierson Yecke, Minnesota’s education commissioner.
A fifth director, Henry L. Johnson, Mississippi’s superintendent of education, resigned Friday, and a sixth, Carlos A. Cervantes, a former member of the South Carolina state board of education, withdrew earlier.
In an e-mail yesterday, Mr. Cervantes said, “My enthusiastic participation in ELC was predicated on the belief that ELC could lead, activate and support a successful education transformation movement in this country.”
“Unfortunately, I no longer hold that belief,” he wrote.
In all, those resigning make up half of ELC’s 12-member board of directors.
The four directors who withdrew this week had pressed Lisa Graham Keegan, ELC’s $235,000-a-year chief executive officer, to resign from the board after auditors questioned the propriety of her board membership and employment status under an automatically renewable consulting agreement signed by former subordinate John Schilling. Mrs. Keegan hired Mr. Schilling as ELC’s $150,000-a-year chief of staff when she joined the council in June 2001.
Mr. Schilling had worked for Mrs. Keegan, formerly Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction, at the state education department in Phoenix.
Mrs. Keegan fired Mr. Schilling in July after the audit and during a management review directed by the board that found a host of management problems, including improper reporting of time spent by Mrs. Keegan and other ELC staff members on two federally funded projects.
The council had said that 14 highly compensated ELC staffers spent 19 percent of their time throughout 2003 on a $7.7-million Education Department contract to implement an alternative teacher-licensing program and 42 percent of their time on a $10 million school technology program funded by Congress called “Following the Leaders.”
But auditors concluded in May that the council had kept improper time sheets and their accounts of time spent on the federal projects could not be validated.
The problem had not been resolved by the time of the July management review, according to the directors who resigned.
Mrs. Keegan, who still lives in Arizona and comes to Washington only occasionally, resisted directors who wanted her to step off the board and return to a reform-advocacy role, Mr. Moloney said.
Last month, the ELC board appointed a five-member executive committee, including Mr. Moloney and Mrs. Yecke, to recommend management changes, which have been ignored, the Colorado commissioner said.
“We wanted a Washington-based CEO. Keegan had to leave the board; you just can’t have employees on the board. We wanted to reorganize ELC around its original advocacy mission, not have ELC revolve around one federal program.
“So nothing happened with that. We sent the recommendations over. There was no reply. They were just digging in. We gave them as much time as we could. There is just no there there,” Mr. Moloney said.
Mrs. Keegan and Mr. Horne did not respond to questions and requests for comment yesterday. Earlier this month, Mrs. Keegan told The Washington Times in an e-mail: “Education Leaders Council will no longer be responding to any of your inquiries.”
The four board members who resigned said ELC was “born with the hope of becoming a powerful voice for genuine education reform,” but with the latest departures, Mr. Horne is the only chief state school officer in the country who is a member of the council.
“ELC began with a noble intent and a clear mission. However, over time we have seen this opportunity squandered as ELC moved away from its core vision and thus lost its focus,” the former directors said.
“From the perspective of Minnesota and Colorado, ELC has failed to provide value to member states to a degree sufficient enough to warrant continued membership.
“Furthermore, management problems and other irregularities have recently come to light, but instead of proactively addressing these issues, the majority of current board members appear too ready to deny the existence of pressing issues or the severity of their impact.
“Promises have been made regarding changes, but no significant movement toward addressing critical issues has occurred,” the education leaders said.
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