Frank DeStefano Background

Criticized city school official resigns

By Sara Neufeld
Sun reporter
Originally published September 20, 2006
A controversial Baltimore schools administrator has resigned from his job, school officials confirmed yesterday.Frank DeStefano left his position as deputy chief academic officer, the No. 2 academic official overseeing city middle and high schools. His resignation was effective Friday, said school system spokeswoman Edie House.

Last school year, DeStefano made headlines when he lowered the admissions standards at some of the city's elite high schools. He also was instrumental in selecting a middle school language arts curriculum that drew so much criticism that the system scrapped it midyear.DeStefano could not be reached for comment yesterday.City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke - who told The Sun in May that DeStefano was consistently "the root of the problem" when she ran into trouble with the school system - said yesterday that she hopes the system will move past his work in Baltimore and focus on academic priorities."It's time for us to get back to basics and to move forward," she said.DeStefano's supporters called him visionary and innovative. But he was also at the center of conflict during his years as a regional superintendent in Brooklyn, N.Y., from 1997 through early 2001. He resigned there amid allegations of financial mismanagement and a dictatorial leadership style.

After leaving New York, DeStefano worked as a consultant for the Fund for Educational Excellence in Baltimore under former executive director Bonnie S. Copeland, then followed Copeland to the city school system when she became chief executive officer in 2003. Copeland stepped down in July.During DeStefano's tenure in Baltimore, the school board entered into two contracts, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the Institute for Learning, a think tank founded by his mentor and with which he had long been associated.In the summer of 2005, the system adopted the language arts curriculum Studio Course, produced by an employee of the institute. The curriculum was scrapped in February, two months after The Sun reported on inadequate teacher training, insufficient classroom materials and children reading magazines such as CosmoGirl! with tips on making out. ..

Trouble follows schools official
DeStefano is often focus of controversy
By Sara Neufeld
Sun reporter
Originally published May 28, 2006
This school year, Frank DeStefano has been the common denominator in some of the Baltimore school system's most fractious issues.He was instrumental in the selection of a middle school language arts curriculum so controversial that the system scrapped it midyear. And he lowered the admissions standards at elite high schools.

The system's No. 2 academic official, DeStefano said he has merely been carrying out the vision of the city's top school leaders. Schools chief Bonnie S. Copeland has called him "an implementer."But interviews with DeStefano's current and former colleagues tell the story of an educator who has bounced from one dispute to the next, who has overseen discredited programs and who has relied on friendships with influential people to succeed.

Copeland hired DeStefano to oversee city high schools three years ago, though he had no experience in high schools and was driven out of a previous job in New York City amid allegations of financial mismanagement and a dictatorial leadership style. In picking him, Copeland passed up a qualified internal candidate recommended by an interview committee.Today, DeStefano makes $135,200 a year, one of the 10-highest salaries in the school system, but he does not have any type of education certification in Maryland. Also, the city school board has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts to organizations run by his friends and associates, a Sun review has found. One of those contracts was for Studio Course, the middle school language arts curriculum, which DeStefano helped recommend to the board.

Many who know DeStefano said substance as well as style is the source of their concern."Frank is a very powerful person in the Baltimore City public schools," said City Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke, an advocate on several education issues. "And time after time when I'm running into trouble, it's Frank that's at the root of the problem...

In 2000, the New York media were reporting extensively on problems with DeStefano's leadership in District 15 in Brooklyn, one of 32 community school districts in New York City. He had racked up a $1 million deficit, resulting in the elimination of a reading program in some schools and the layoff of dozens of teacher's aides. He vastly exceeded guidelines for spending on food and hotels at conferences. He spent $57,249 over three years on a car service, telling auditors he could not take public transportation or drive to work because of a severe case of "sleep asthenia" that caused him to fall asleep spontaneously. The problem was, the newspapers reported, the disease "sleep asthenia" does not exist. (The single term "asthenia" is defined by Webster's as "a lack or loss of bodily strength.")In addition, DeStefano's signature reform of breaking up middle schools was foundering. In December 2000, the New York Post reported that the district was proposing to close or consolidate five of the small, themed academies he created because of high staff turnover and disappointing academic results.

While DeStefano said it was his choice to leave New York, Bob Bell, a former District 15 school board member, said he was given the "gentleman's option" to resign or be fired."The reputation his tenure had was a reign of terror," Bell said. "It was unilateral and dictatorial. ... He'd show up at a school and go into a classroom and decide if he liked it. And sometimes a person would get fired. He fired principals who were long-standing and had good records."Learning of DeStefano's position in Baltimore, Bell said, "My God, he does bounce back."

DeStefano spent the year after his departure from New York as the principal of a charter elementary school in Lantana, Fla. Then in 2002, Copeland hired him for the Fund in Baltimore as the "superintendent in residence." Copeland said he came recommended by officials including then-Baltimore schools Chief Executive Officer Carmen V. Russo, who also previously worked in New York.But Russo said she didn't meet DeStefano until after he had started working in Baltimore at the Fund. "I don't recall ever recommending him for anything," she said in a recent interview.In 2003, in the first months after Copeland was picked to head Baltimore's school system, she sought to bring DeStefano along.At the time, a committee was interviewing candidates to oversee the city's high schools. It recommended James Scofield, the principal at Northwestern High School, for the permanent job. In a majority African-American school system, the committee had found a well-regarded African-American candidate.But about an hour before the school board was scheduled to vote on Scofield's appointment, people involved in the process said, Copeland pulled the item from the agenda. Instead, at a later meeting, she asked the board to appoint DeStefano.In an interview, Copeland said DeStefano was recommended to her by Cassandra Jones, her first chief academic officer.But Jones vehemently denied doing so. "That is nonsense," she said, adding she has never even seen DeStefano's resume. She said Copeland bypassed the screening process to hire DeStefano. When DeStefano started in Baltimore, he admitted to his staff that he had a lot to learn. He had not been in a high school since he was a student at a Catholic, all-boys institution. (He went on to get a bachelor's degree at Brooklyn College in 1977 and a master's degree at the University of Miami in 1978.) He had worked as a special-education teacher, an art teacher, an assistant principal and a principal, but always in elementary schools.DeStefano still does not have his certification in Maryland. "I was never asked to," he said. "I submitted all my papers."State law requires administrators -- including assistant and associate superintendents or those in an "equivalent position" -- to be certified. But because the Baltimore school system uses business titles rather than education titles, state officials said they do not know if the city's top administrators are subject to that requirement. After inquiries from The Sun, they said they are researching the issue.Asked if she was concerned about DeStefano's New York controversies when she hired him, Copeland replied: "I don't have a take on that situation."She said she was "not particularly" worried that DeStefano lacked high school experience, "because we had seen the growth, particularly in the middle schools" he oversaw in New York.As in Brooklyn's middle schools, the results of Baltimore's high school reform have been mixed. The graduation rate increased last year to its highest rate in a decade, 59 percent, but standardized test scores remain very low.At some high schools with high graduation rates and low test scores, teachers have said that students who don't deserve diplomas are getting them anyway. DeStefano made waves in 2004 when he allowed failing high school students to retake their final exams. System officials said that practice has been discontinued.That same year, the Baltimore school system entered into a two-year, $557,358 contract with the Institute for Learning, a think tank at the University of Pittsburgh. The Annie E. Casey Foundation paid $223,978 to cover the first year, and the system is paying $333,380 this school year. The purpose of the contract, officials said, is to work on principals' leadership development and literacy instruction in secondary schools.

The institute was founded in 1995 by Alvarado, the former New York chancellor, and Lauren Resnick, its current director. Though DeStefano has been associated with the group from its founding, and it did millions of dollars of work for New York City schools while he was there, he and institute officials said it was Copeland who negotiated the contract in Baltimore. DeStefano acknowledged, though, that "it didn't hurt that I've had a relationship with Lauren for years and years and years."DeStefano's deputy superintendent in New York, Joanna Maccario, now works for the institute. Though DeStefano does not directly benefit from the city's contract, it does include $20,358 for him to travel to and from Pittsburgh for training, and it specifies that Maccario is the institute's liaison with the school system.

DeStefano and institute officials downplay the significance of a string of e-mails, obtained by The Sun through a Public Information Act request, in which it appears that Maccario was recommending Studio Course to DeStefano as a new language arts curriculum for city middle schools. Studio's founder, Sally Mentor Hay, is a longtime associate of DeStefano and now works for the Institute for Learning. On June 9, Maccario wrote to DeStefano that she was "in contact with Sally Mentor Hay about the fit of Studio" in Baltimore schools. That evening, she forwarded to him e-mails from Mentor Hay and another institute fellow, who wrote that Studio is "an exemplary example of literacy/language arts curriculum" that embodies the institute's philosophy.Studio puts grammar, spelling and other conventions aside while using teen magazines to engage children in reading and writing. It has a track record in only one other city, Denver, where reading and writing test scores have not gone up.Maccario said, in an interview, that the institute does not recommend particular curricula to school systems, but it does outline the features that its officials believe a curriculum should have. "I didn't know anything about Studio that I could offer any kind of comment on it," she said.The city school board approved the use of Studio in July at a cost of at least $2 million. In December, The Sun reported on inadequate teacher training, insufficient classroom materials and children reading magazines such as CosmoGirl! with tips on making out.Within two months, Copeland decided to replace Studio as the city's primary language arts curriculum, and school board chairman Brian D. Morris promised that people would be held responsible for the mistakes.A month later, DeStefano found himself in the thick of another controversy, with the news that half of the freshmen admitted for this fall to the city's elite Western High School had not met previously established admissions standards. In addition, some of the most qualified applicants were not admitted to another top school, Polytechnic Institute.DeStefano's critics wondered whether he was trying to divert the best students to the small high schools he created in attempt to raise test scores there. He said he was faced with a shortage of qualified applicants.He decided to lower the bar at Western without consulting the school's principal, Landa McLaurin, who has since announced her retirement. DeStefano said at the time that he had called McLaurin, but "she didn't return the call."Jill Levy, the president of the principals union for New York City schools, said that move was consistent with DeStefano's behavior in Brooklyn. "Our experience was that he did not respect his principals' opinions, and when the chips were down, he turned around and blamed them for things he was responsible for," said Levy.Clarke, the Baltimore councilwoman, said she found herself recently telling a group of residents, "We're just going to have to survive until Frank finds another job."Copeland, however, maintained that her chief academic officer -- not DeStefano -- is the person calling the shots. She said she didn't understand why The Sun would write about him."There is a chain of command," she said. "It's not to take anything away from Frank."


Published: July 25, 2001

By ABBY GOODNOUGH, KAREN W. ARENSON, LYNETTE HOLLOWAY, KATHLEEN CARROLL AND ALLISON FASS
New York Times
New Superintendent in District 15
Community School Board 15 in Brooklyn has appointed CARMEN FARINA as superintendent. Chancellor Levy selected Mrs. Farina as interim superintendent in February after the previous superintendent, FRANK DESTEFANO, left under fire from parents unhappy with his management style and with District 15's financial condition.
Mrs. Farina was formerly principal of the high-achieving Public School 6 on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. District 15 board members selected her from a list of five candidates.
''Already she has begun to turn around some of our middle schools,'' said Mark G. Peters, a board member.