Add new comment

The record Turnaround for Children Inc. won’t discuss By Ted Cohen In the latest of a string of rose-colored commentaries promoted by Turnaround for Children Inc., a piece by David Osher continues to tout a foundation that by all measure fails its own “proficiency” test but yet continues to make bogus claims of success with its students. It is not only important but necessary to present “the other side of the story.” Turnaround for Children Inc., is a private nonprofit group claiming to reform education in reaching at-risk youth by getting to the root of the alleged trauma that triggered their academic failures. But Turnaround is painfully sensitive to review by anyone other than those who will support the foundation’s vacuous claims of success. Test data of schools in Washington, D.C. and New York City in which Turnaround has spent millions of dollars “reforming education” reveal that Turnaround’s efforts have failed. Indeed, test scores in those two cities have plummeted in the aftermath of Turnaround’s interventions. Osher’s claims of achievement in South Bronx are just plain wrong. Baseless. The facts speak otherwise. Turnaround’s initial reformist foray began in Orange, N.J. But suddenly, Turnaround suspended that program. IRS records reveal that Turnaround was forced to return its Orange funding. But Turnaround officials failed to disclose to the IRS financial details required by law. The documents, a public record, also reveal that Turnaround was forced to return the remaining part of the grant that funded the program. “Management decided to terminate its three-school program earlier than planned,” Turnaround officials told the IRS. In their IRS filing, Turnaround officials blamed the short-lived program’s demise on what they vaguely described as a “shift in organizational priorities.” But officials failed to disclose what they meant by the change or who instigated it. Turnaround officials say they suspended their request for the remaining funding they were to receive for the Orange project, but they made no mention of the amount of funding they had already received and the amount they were still due. Turnaround officials issued a prepared statement defending their Orange pullout. “Our hope was to expand the partnership, to deliver a significant amount of professional development to teachers and to increase our engagement district-wide,” said Kate Felsen, vice president of communications. “Unfortunately, Orange Public Schools did not have the capacity to take on the professional development we had to offer during the 2011-12 year. For this reason, we ended our partnership amicably.” Though Turnaround proudly announced the Orange project in its September 2010 newsletter, there is no evidence on the organization’s web site that Turnaround officials ever notified the public of the program’s suspension. If Orange school officials are to blame for Turnaround’s failure in their schools, then they are apparently taking the accusations in stride. Orange Supt. Ronald Lee failed to respond to questions until he received a formal open-records request. He said, “Turnaround proposed to expand its program to a transformational model that encompassed academic, foundational and behavioral elements in the 2011-2012 school year. At the same time, the district was continuing or launching a number of significant initiatives to improve instruction and student outcomes. We mutually concluded that the district’s initiatives would require and deserved the full focus of the district staff principals and teachers. Therefore, we discontinued the program in Orange at that time to allow these innovations to take hold.” Felsen, too, will not go beyond her prepared statement. When asked who funded the Orange effort and who will be funding the Newark plan, Felsen replied, “You have my statement.” Now, Turnaround For Children is interviewing schools in Newark, N.J. for purposes of “exploring a partnership.” What is Turnaround and what is its proposed role in Newark? The best source for information would be Turnaround, right? Wrong. Turnaround has refused to provide information about its failed foray into Orange schools and whether that experience foretells problems in Newark. Newark and Nw Jersey schools officials will not discuss Turnaround for Children Inc. unless it is part of a discussion they design and they host. Attempts by journalists to procure information from this so-called “transparent” group known as Turnaround for Children Inc. have been met with silence.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.