Following the example of organizations in health care, social services and both early and higher education, some districts are experimenting with outcomes-based contracting, paying vendors, at least in part, for improvements in student learning. That’s the closest one can get to a money-back guarantee in education. 

Tutoring is particularly well-suited to outcomes-based contracting, since boosting achievement is its raison d’etre. Contracts that pay more when students show academic growth — and pay less when they don’t ― incentivize tutoring companies to produce results and save public money when they fall short.

Two districts that are part of a pilot project led by the Southern Education Foundation — Florida’s Duval County Public Schools and Ector County Independent School District in west Texas — offer informative examples of different approaches to outcomes-based contracting with tutoring providers.

Officials in Duval County, a sprawling, 128,000-student district covering greater Jacksonville, realized that 5,000 ninth-graders each year were starting high school in a low-level, pre-algebra course due to poor outcomes in middle school. So they invested about $2 million in federal COVID recovery funds in an outcomes-based contract with a vendor that delivered three, 30-minute sessions per week of math tutoring to struggling eighth-graders at nine middle schools. 

Duval County’s vendor, FEV Tutor, in partnership with Edmentum, earns a base fee of $800 per tutored student. If a student hits an established midyear growth target, the vendor receives an additional $530. If that student then hits an established end-of-year growth target, the district pays another $700. Finally, if the student also scores proficient or above on the state assessment, the provider earns a $420 bonus. 

Both sides of the deal came into play last year, according to Jasmine Walker, Duval County’s former director of K-12 math, who joined the foundation to help other districts launch outcomes-based contracts. Of the 451 students that FEV Tutor worked with between January and May, 42% achieved at least the growth that was expected under the contract. That meant Duval ended up paying 57% of potential performance fees. As a result, FEV Tutor left nearly $70,000 in bonuses on the table — money Duval could reinvest in more tutoring or a different intervention for struggling students.

Ector County, which serves predominantly Latino students in the oil-rich Permian Basin, took a different approach. Its outcomes-based contracts pay two providers, Air Tutors and FEV Tutor, a base fee of $25 per completed session with each student. If a student shows improvement on the NWEA MAP assessment equivalent to more than one year’s growth in a school year, the district raises its per-session pay to $27.50. As student growth increases, pay can rise further.

But if a student loses ground, the vendor loses money. If a student who made gains regresses below the 49th percentile on the benchmark test, the per-session pay declines to $22.50. If the student regresses below the 40th percentile, per-session pay drops to $21.25.

Tracking each student’s progress is a laborious task that consumes much of High-Impact Tutoring Manager Carina Escajeda’s time toward the end of the school year. But it ensures that vendors make a real difference in student achievement.

Ector County’s providers are comfortable with baking incentives and penalties into their contracts. “We believe in what we do at Air Tutors,” says Hasan Ali, the company’s founder and CEO. â€śWe don’t mind putting our money where our mouth is because we are confident with our results.”  

They have been impressive: 50% of Ector County students who scored below grade level on the previous year’s state assessment and received at least 20 hours of tutoring scored at grade level or higher after one year. And about 30% of students tutored in math scored in the 66^th percentile or higher on the standardized Northwest Education Association’s MAP exam after one year, reflecting more growth than would be expected in a school year.  

“When we think about the public, this shows that we’re being responsible with funding, that we’re tying it to student outcomes and our district’s strategic plan,” says Walker.

School districts have been slow to embrace contracts that tie pay to performance, in part because contracting officers in how to develop them. But as local education leaders work to sustain tutoring and other promising post-COVID programs as federal funding for the work winds down, outcomes-based contracting can help ensure they get the best return on their investment and help build a culture of performance in public education.

“An investigative team from FBI Jacksonville executed a court-authorized search warrant today in furtherance of a federal investigation,” an agency spokesperson told the Florida Times-Union. “Because the investigation is ongoing, details about the search are not being released at this time.”

Local news reported that the investigation involves the . The presence of IRS agents at the raid supports this.

Union officers would not comment but released a statement that read, “We continue to be focused on upholding our mission of supporting our members and the students we serve. We are fully cooperating with authorities and anticipate a full and thorough assessment of the facts. To respect the integrity of the process, we will not discuss any further details.”

News crews spotted prominent Florida criminal defense attorney at the scene, but he would not reveal the nature of the investigation or whom he was representing.

With everyone involved mum, media outlets have followed suit. There hasn’t been a single update since the raid occurred.

Now, a raid is not itself evidence that a crime has been committed. It only shows that the FBI and IRS received enough information to convince a judge that further investigation was warranted. The presence of federal agents means the situation was beyond the scope of local law enforcement.

But the union’s finances aren’t a complete cipher. All unions and other tax-exempt organizations are required to file an annual disclosure report with the IRS. The covers the 2021-22 school year. It contains nothing that indicates criminal activity, though there is at least one curiosity.

I don’t have a definitive number for how many members the union has, though suggest it is in the vicinity of 7,500. The Duval union reported collecting more than $5 million in revenue in 2021-22, though that number is a little deceiving, since almost $2.8 million of it was forwarded to state and national union affiliates.

That left about $2.2 million for the local to run its operations. Its staff is small. The allows no more than seven people to be released to work for the union. It appears that is the number .

The union has two elected officers. The president, Terrie Brady, has held that position since 1999, and her executive vice president, Ruby George, since at least 2004-05.

That year, the union paid them $114,000 and $101,000, respectively.

Since then, their pay has fluctuated wildly. Brady’s salary ranged from $160,000 in 2006-07 to more than $326,000 in 2019-20. She received $251,868 in 2021-22.

George’s salary had a similar trajectory, though not always parallel to Brady’s. She received $134,000 in 2018-19 but almost $327,000 the following year.

It’s unusual for union officers’ pay to rise and fall that dramatically, unless they are constantly deferring compensation for tax purposes and then collecting it in later years. That may be the case here. But the amounts involved are also unusual.

For example, Brady’s taxable compensation for 2021-22 greatly exceeded the amounts paid to the presidents of United Teachers Los Angeles ($140,000), the Chicago Teachers Union ($155,000) and even that of the largest teachers union in Florida, the United Teachers of Dade ($217,000).

Duval Teachers United is similar in size to two other Florida teachers union locals, the Orange County Classroom Teachers Association and the Palm Beach County Classroom Teachers Association. Their presidents made $127,000 and $152,000, respectively, last year.

The largest local affiliates of the Florida Education Association have a of problems with the law and their own parent unions. The state and national unions have not commented on the Duval raid, but neither have they initiated a trusteeship over the local, as far as I can tell.

“There’s more to come, I’m sure.”

Mike Antonucci’s Union Report appears most Wednesdays; see the full archive.