Leslie Wilson's work as a behind-the-scenes bureaucrat may involve statistical analysis and minutiae that would put most of the world to sleep, but she has suddenly become one of the most powerful people in the Maryland State Department of Education, sometimes more sought-after than her boss, Nancy S. Grasmick.
Wilson is the assistant state superintendent for assessment, a lively woman who keeps track of student test scores and is now a magnet for contractors seeking work in a tough economy.
So many people wanted to speak with Wilson this past fall that she stopped answering the phone or responding to e-mails from some of them. That's because she has money to give away, and in the world of education, it's the biggest pot of money consultants have seen in years. Everyone wants a bit of it.
Wilson has federal stimulus money to hand out, about one-third of the $125 million that the state education department received from Race to the Top, a competition held for federal stimulus funds last year. So dozens of people representing for-profit companies, colleges and universities, and nonprofits will go to great lengths to get her time.
"Everyone came out of the woodwork, fast and furious, when [they] heard we were going to have a procurement," she said.
They call her. They e-mail her. They approach her at conferences. They enlist friends to act as emissaries to ask for a private meeting. One vendor even decided to use a connection with Grasmick; another contractor approached her saying it wasn't to talk about "business."
She has a few words for all of them: Don't get near me.
Speaking to contractors who want a piece of the federal largesse might disqualify them from bidding on the projects, she said. And that means that the state might miss out on awarding a contract to the best firm to do the job or to a firm that can do it more cheaply than another.
"They understand, but they don't want to abide by it," said Wilson, who added that the contractors are a varied group. "People who you have never heard of and people who should know better."
The frenzy in interest from contractors is happening all across the country, caused by the unprecedented size and scope of the nearly $100 billion federal stimulus effort. Thursday was the second anniversary of President Barack Obama signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the heart of the stimulus effort, into law.
"Some are calling it 'No Consultant Left Behind,'" said Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank based in Washington.
The list of contractors who have expressed an interest in applying in Maryland is pages and pages long.
They are as large and well-known as Schoolnet, a New York-based software technology company that has contracts in one-third of the major urban school systems in America, and as small as Age of Awareness, a one-woman shop looking for a grant.
The difficulty of the tasks at hand make education-consulting a lucrative enterprise. Those in the field say it is typical for an individual expert to make between $1,500 and $5,000 a day, depending on one's level of expertise.
"There's a sense of confusion and anxiety," said Scott Joftus, director of the Race to the Top Technical Assistance Network, a stimulus-funded contractor that is aiding states and districts in implementing their bold plans.
The scramble reflects the scope of the states' ambitions. "There's a lot of money being thrown into the system at the same time to create changes that have never been done before," Joftus said. "States have promised a ridiculous amount of change."
The Race to the Top funds were given to states that promised to enact the Obama administration's reform agenda. In the state's efforts to win its $250 million share, Maryland education officials and lawmakers made significant reforms in the rules governing teacher tenure and evaluations, agreed to overhaul failing schools and pledged to develop a new system for collecting student data. Maryland learned last summer that it was one of the states with a winning application.
The awarding of the technology contracts is likely to take place over the next year, but it is so complex that Wilson said the state has first asked contractors to tell officials what services they can provide. So the state sent out a "request for information." Based on the responses, the state is writing technical guidelines, which companies will use to bid on the work.
The money may be spent on providing professional development for teachers, creating a website for teachers and building the state's capacity to keep longitudinal data to make better education policy decisions, among other things.
Most of the information about student test data lies in the local school districts' databases, but soon the state will be able to transfer it to its own data storage. In the end, the state will store millions of pieces of information about all Maryland students, including their grades, courses, teachers and schools from year to year.
So one day, the state will be able to examine, for instance, whether students whose teachers got degrees from Towson University have better success than those with degrees from the Johns Hopkins University. Or it might decide to compare reading programs used in different school systems for special education students.
The issues that could be examined are endless.
So companies like Schoolnet and Performance Matters, both software firms that make products for local school systems, are interested in getting a piece of the action.
Performance Matters, a Florida-based company, has products used in 11 of Maryland's 24 school systems and says it would like to expand.
Woody Dilaha, a co-founder and president, said the company has been keeping track of business opportunities in all the states that have won the Race to the Top competition, including Maryland. Dilaha said he isn't sure right now what work in Maryland the company might bid on.
"It has been pretty clear to us that we are not to speak to the state," he said. So, for now, his company is watching the state's website for information.
And Wilson is fine with that arrangement. "I don't go to receptions they sponsor. It can't look like anyone who works with [school districts] had any advantage," she said about Performance Matters.
Dilaha said the company has a new product called FAST, or Formative Action System for Teacher Effectiveness, that could help school systems with teacher evaluations, a hot-button education issue because the teacher evaluation system will be changing across the state beginning next year.
Schoolnet also has a software system for teacher evaluations. Jonathon Harber, CEO of Schoolnet, said his company has mostly worked with urban districts across the country, and not as much with states. But company officials usually try to get a foot in the door by meeting state technology officers like Wilson at conferences.
Wendy Johnson, founder and president of Age of Awareness, said she is a "one-person organization" and had no idea whom to speak to about contracts or which ones she might be able to bid on. She said she is interested in getting a grant that might help her continue running after-school programs for middle-schoolers who are at risk and need help understanding how to get into college.
The federal government's stimulus effort was designed to persuade states to take on complex improvements. Convinced they have an important role to play, many consultants fear that in a time of severe economic hardship, there will be less patience than usual for the missteps that inevitably accompany innovation.
"If we get 50 percent of this right, I think that's a success," said Joftus, the Race to the Top technical assistance director. "My concern is that the public will see this as a 50 percent failure rate. If that happens, there's going to be a huge backlash."
Andrew Brownstein from the Hechinger/Education Writers Association project contributed to this article. He writes about federal education policy for Thompson Publishing Group.
The Baltimore Sun was one of 36 news outlets in 27 states that took part in a collaboration with The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit news outlet, and the Education Writers Association to examine the impact thus far of the historic influx of federal stimulus money for education, including the competition known as Race to the Top. Interviewing scores of students, teachers, researchers and education officials at all levels of government, participating reporters set out to determine how the nation's schools are spending the money and whether the changes it sparks are likely to last. To read more stories from the project on subjects such as job creation and innovation grants, go to baltimoresun.com.