In the ongoing saga of school reform, accountability, and standardized testing, the next step in the story is for the Colorado Department of Education to hire an entity to lead the messy political troop appointed to the task force to study the k-12 accountability system. Here’s a review of the consultants’ proposals and their experiences with education policy. For anyone interested in how much money these consultants bring in, the proposals range from $80 to $250 per hour.

The task force will take two years to decide on changes or no-changes to the current school accountability system based primarily on the one-shot snapshot standardized test system. A majority of task-force members lean hard to pro-standardized testing as the main measure of accountability. That puts bias into the mix.

Which of the consultants are most likely to hold up to the pressures?

Keystone Policy Center led by Christine Scanlon is clearly in the pro-reform column. Scanlon was House sponsor of SB10-191 written with the new mayor of Denver, Mike Johnston, to put teachers in the standardized test box. That is, she wrote the legislation that this task force is now examining. Van Schoales is one of her named facilitators. He’s the guy who tweeted about the four members of the State Board of Education who voted against allowing another pro-reformer to conduct “academic” research on Denver Public School’s “portfolio” system of managing traditional and charter schools. His critique of the four Democrats went like this, and this is not a paraphrase, “Are we in Afghanistan?”

Keystone Policy Center ticked NO on questions related to conflict of interest. Really. Let’s remove Keystone Policy Center from the list, and as the Lord High Executioner Ko-Ko sang in the Mikado, they never will be missed.

Confluence Policy and Strategy Group is run by Berrick Abramsom, formerly of Keystone Policy Center. Its RFP refers to the Group’s “team,” but the Confluence website has only one person identified: Berrick Abramson. This is not uncommon as many consulting entities build teams on the fly from associates with various areas of expertise. The proposal doesn’t identify these additional team members so it’s difficult to assess the degree of competence related to the task force’s requirements. That opacity gets this group off the list.

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Education First is another pro-standardized test, pro-charter, pro-education reform outfit. It’s from Chicago. This is their education experience: “As a national strategy and policy organization with unique and deep expertise in education improvement and reform, we bring to our clients the experience of working with over 20 large districts, over 40 states, nearly 30 foundations and dozens of nonprofit partners.”

The key words here are “education improvement and reform.” The firm has worked for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the leaders of the reform charge that lobbed incendiaries at public school teachers for more than a decade. Ed First’s work for Gates includes a “multi-state due diligence to inform the Foundation on its investments in teacher effectiveness…” Gates investments in teacher effectiveness gave us our notoriously cumbersome, unresponsive, punitive standardized CMAS tests that are the focus of the task force. Education First says it’s a neutral arbiter. Seriously. Ed First is off the list.

Slalom is a company with international reach. Here in Colorado, it’s worked with the Department of Labor, CDE and Gary Venture Fund. Gary Venture Fund, recently led by the current mayor of Denver, has the same relationship to education reform as Christine Scanlon. Mayor Johnston sponsored and mostly wrote SB10-191. This may not be entirely fair to discount Slalom for its work for ed reformers, but the political appointments to the task force weren’t fair either. So let’s take Slalom off the list as too close to the education reform movement and not sufficiently neutral to do this job.

Advancing Dynamic Solutions from Castle Rock is primarily concerned with school finance rather than school accountability and standardized testing. Afton Partners from Chicago has a similar focus with an additional emphasis on charter school finance. They may be okay policy-wise, but if other entities can provide closer knowledge of the critical issues while demonstrating neutrality, that pushes these two entities down the list.

Periscope Theory and Allied Agenda, both women-owned consulting groups from Colorado, could easily team up to do the work on facilitating the accountability task force. They bring different expertise but a similar orientation: building trust with multidisciplinary individuals and building “cross sectional relationships.” Since the task force is comprised of individuals with different, even contradictory beliefs about education policy, the consulting leaders will have to somehow bridge those opposing points of view if common ground and legislative initiatives will become possible. The two enterprises stay on the list, but they will have their hands full.

NORC associated with the University of Chicago brings solid bona fides. It’s worked in the education field for decades but has maintained its objective perspective reporting on challenging information in a reasoned and analytical manner. Their work reveals no push in one direction or the other on the uses of standardized tests for accountability purposes. Their reports display a plain, direct, no-nonsense presentation style. NORC stays on the list.

In objective times, an RFP review such as this would be unnecessary. But in these political times, it’s important to know from whence consultants come to know where results may go.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.