Nearly a year ago, Mayor Vincent C. Gray hired the former chief of staff of Chicago public schools to clean up an education agency widely regarded as a dysfunctional mess.
D.C. State Superintendent of Education Hosanna Mahaley said she is up to the task. “I’m comfortable with chaos,” she said, “and I like turnarounds.”
(Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) - Washington Mayor-elect Vincent Gray, left, accompanied by Hosanna Mahaley, his nominee for the State Superintendent of Education, center, and Interim D.C. Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, speaks during a news conference in Washington, Dec. 22, 2010.
But questions are emerging about how much Mahaley has accomplished since taking over an office that has a $400 million budget and is meant to play a crucial supporting role in school reform. A top aide to Gray strongly defended Mahaley’s performance but acknowledged that the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, known as OSSE, has been plagued by problems since its creation in 2007.
“Let’s face it, things have been bumpy at best,” said De’Shawn Wright, deputy mayor for education. “Hosanna inherited a troubled agency and a daunting challenge. I’m pleased with the important progress that has been made but recognize there is much more work to be done.”
Last month, an agency employee was fired after it was alleged that she had approved as much as $200,000 in fraudulent payments to a transportation company operated by a friend.
The agency planned a series of town hall meetings in connection with a bid to secure a waiver from parts of the federal No Child Left Behind law, but the schedule collapsed because the public received little or no advance notice and dates conflicted with other community events. A Nov. 10 town hall at Oyster-Adams Bilingual School in Northwest Washington drew one resident. Subsequent meetings were canceled. An agency spokesman said they will be rescheduled for January.
Mahaley has left several senior positions unfilled for much of the year and has missed five out of nine D.C. State Board of Education meetings since taking office Jan. 10, including four of the past five. The elected board advises the superintendent and sets policies on such matters as graduation requirements and teacher certification.
As a mayoral appointee, Mahaley does not report to the board. But her predecessor, Kerri Briggs, made a point of attending the meetings. Briggs missed three of 18 in her tenure.
“I didn’t think my presence was valued or needed,” Mahaley said in an interview last week.
Board members disagreed.
“Where’s Waldo?” asked Mary Lord (Ward 2). “I think Hosanna is great, but she’s been kind of absent.”
Lord and others in the government and the education community also said it is difficult to get basic information from the agency in a timely manner. “You can’t find who’s in charge of anything,” Lord said.
This year, Mahaley has taken week-long trips to Brazil and China for conferences to explore teaching methods. The trips, sponsored by the nonprofit Council of Chief State School Officers, were not made at public expense.
But the mid-September Brazil conference was paid for by a grant from the Pearson Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the giant textbook and educational testing company. The company won an $860,000 contract from the agency in September 2010 — three months before Mahaley’s appointment — to provide alternative standardized tests for students with significant cognitive challenges, according to OSSE officials. A $700,000 option under the contract was renewed for this school year.
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