Nate Levenson: Advising Louisiana Classrooms from His Wealth of Nonexperience.
The Louisiana Department of Education (LDE) is spending millions for advice from a man with no education degrees, no classroom experience, and no site-level administrative experience: Nate Levenson.
Through LDE contracts with two companies, Levenson’s advice includes delivery of special education services.
Levenson holds no special education credentials, including any in special education law.
And yet, in the name of a lower bottom line that purportedly maximizes testing outcomes and other metrics of end-all meaning in the education reform business, LDE has and continues to shell out major money to an education businessman who can never hold a single conversation informed by his time as a teacher or administrator at a K12 school.
Some Levenson Background
Levenson’s LDE contracts are through two companies: District Management Group (DMG) and New Solutions K12.
In 2004, John J-H Kim founded DMG (originally called District Management Council), which Kim describes on his LinkedIn bio as a company “that combines the most effective education best practices with proven management techniques to produce measurable, sustainable improvements that help schools and students thrive.”
Kim has no professional background or degrees in education. Even so, according to his LinkedIn bio, in 2011 he became co-chair of the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP) at Harvard Business School.
Public education leadership at a business school.
The business of education: very ed-reform.
Let’s bring in Levenson:
In 2009, Kim and Nathan Levenson co-founded District and Community Partners, LLC. Kim shut down this Massachusetts business in 2012, apparently merging District and Community Partners with DMG in Delaware oon December 31, 2011.
In 2010, according to his LinkedIn bio, Levenson joined Kim’s DMG as “managing director” until December 2020 and then as “senior adviser” until December 2021, at which time Levenson “retired” from DMG. During his year as “senior adviser” at DMG, in 2021, Levenson founded New Solutions K12, and on his LinkedIn bio lists himself as its “president.”
According to its website, New Solutions K12 presumes to advise districts about special education as well as intervention, scheduling, social and behavioral support, and “strategic budgeting” (including “cost effective special education”).
As of this writing, Levenson has these books to sell related to special education, scheduling, and budgeting.
As previously noted, Levenson has no K12 classroom teaching experience and no experience in school-level administration. However, in 2003, Levenson was catapulted into the role of assistant superintendent of a small Massachusetts district, Harvard Public Schools, for two years and then had three years of a troubled tenure as superintendent of Arlington Public Schools (APS) (Massachusetts). Levenson resigned as APS superintendent in August 2008.
(NOTE ADDED 07/31/23: In the litigation following Levenson’s Arlington resignation, a 2010 Motion to Dismiss notes that an Arlington teacher, “In a …School Committee meeting… ‘reported that Levenson had never been appointed as Assistant Superintendent of the Harvard Public Schools as he had claimed on his resume,’” [page 8]; this teacher “revealed that Levenson had not been the Assistant Superintendent of Harvard Public Schools” [page 33] and “that Levenson engaged in misconduct by misrepresenting his qualifications during the [Arlington] hiring process” [page 34]. This information is discussed in the context of whether or not such qualifies at protected speech in the 2010 Motion to Dismiss linked below.)
Before Levenson jumped into school superintendency, he identified himself as “owner” of North American Industries, Inc., from 1987 to 2001. In another LinkedIn bio, another Levenson, Jay Levenson identifies himself as having been “president and owner” of North American Industries from 1986 to 2010.
North American Industries was formed in July 1969 by Audrey Levenson, Rose Levenson, and James Albert “to buy, sell, manufacture and otherwise deal in any and all types of equipment and to do any and all acts permissible under chapter 156B of General laws of Massachusetts.”
In 2008, North American Industries became NAI Cranes, LLC, and dropped its registration in Massachusetts and moved its registration to Delaware.
Though it seems that Nathan Levenson ended up with North American Industries because it was a family business, the business had nothing to do with K12 education.
Levenson and Louisiana
In October 2020, in his capacity as DMG managing director, Levenson solicited a professional development contract with superintendent Cade Brumley’s LDE, for roughly $47K. In the opening of the proposal, Levenson cites a “100 day listening tour” by the state superintendent. The proposal supposedly addresses findings from the “listening tour”:
What jumps out at me from this proposal is Levenson’s bio information for its emptiness as concerns any school-site-level direct experience to support his expensive suggestions.
That site-experience-bereft resume should have ended it right there. In soliciting a five-figure contract with LDE, one would think that bio info for the star representative of the soliciting company would surely include credentials and firsthand experience directly connected to K12 classrooms and administration, including the special education classroom.
Levenson has none of this. However, what he does have is a prior working association with Brumley. It seems that experience (not site-level experience, or special education certification and experience) is leverage enough.
Prior to his time as Louisiana state superintendent, Brumley was superintendent of Jefferson Parish Schools. When he arrived there in 2018, DMG had already been hired by Jefferson Parish to advise on scheduling. According to DMG, Brumley also hired DMG for advice on special education costs. In its “Raising Achievement” article, DMG considers the “results” of its consultation in state report card metrics– while giving Brumley glowing credit, of course.
Levenson has his LDE foot in the door. And forget five figures. Six and seven are more like it.
In April 2021, LDE did end up contracting with DMG for deliverables due November 2021; though BESE president Sandy Holloway did not sign the contract until April 26, 2021, LDE notified DMG via email on March 04, 2021 (the day after Brumley signed the contract). The contract total was $640K, certainly exceeding the $50K that required Holloway’s signature.
But there’s more:
Between May and November 2022, LDOE contracted with Levenson’s New Solutions K12 in four separate contracts for a combined cost of over $2.1M:
Some more details on the four LDE-New Solutions K12 contracts:
Only one of the four contracts includes superintendent and state board of ed signatures. Links to all four contracts are below.
Thje $1M contract that ends in 2024 is for “Educational Guidance Services” and “provides for the development and sharing of specific best practices for improving scheduling and staffing.”
Levenson has never worked as school-site-level administration or in school district human resources, yet LDOE is willing to fork over a million dollars for his advice on scheduling and staffing.
The $3,500 contract was for a 2022 Louisiana Teacher Leader Summit presentation entitled, “”Reimagine, Renew and Recommit to High Quality Special Education in Louisiana.”
It seems that Levenson’s presentation is based upon this “special education playbook,” which begins with, “do not circulate,” and ends with, “yes, it’s legal.”
Levenson has zero classroom experience and no special education certifications or experience, but he is in the education business, and he has a lot of thoughts on how a school (which he has never run) should go about conducting special education (which he has never taught).
Here is Levenson’s full, “Special Education Playbook for Louisiana System Leaders.”
I invite readers with actual school-level special education experience to scrutinize the suggestions in Levenson’s business product.
I wonder than no system leader questioned why the state should pay $73K for special education “best practices” to someone with no firsthand knowledge of special education– in and of itself not fiscal “best practice” on the part of LDE.
I looked for the promised section about “yes, it’s legal,” but did not find any direct addressing about what could concern those with actual, authentic special education credentials and experience as skirting the “illegal.”
Even so, legal advice for his own “yes, it’s legal” special education advice does matter to Levenson, so much so that on March 23, 2022, he asked LDE if he might borrow (“subcontract”) with yet another LDE contractor, Federal Education Group, for that Louisiana special education “playbook”:
On July 27, 2023, I submitted a public records request for “Any and all amended or supplemental contracts between LDE and Federal Education Group to specifically enable Federal Education Group to subcontract with New Solutions K12 as per the request of Nathan Levenson of New Solutions K12 in the attached email dated March 23, 2022, from Levenson to Meredith Jordan and other LDE officials.” I have not yet had a response but will update this post once I do. (UPDATE 07/31/23: LDE writes, “…the Department has searched its files and found it is not in possession of responsive records.”)
I want to know who is footing the bill for Levenson to gain this legal advice. It seems that the email’s “amend the contract” language suggests that Louisiana taxpayers are footing a “do me a favor” bill for a subcontracting services that Levenson’s company should be paying for as part of New Solutions K12’s selling special education advice to the state of Louisiana.
All of this contracting and subcontracting and enriching the undercredentialed in the name of a lower bottom line.
One of the October 2020 proposal points for DMG’s “comprehensive plan for improvement” involved “maximizing the impact of special education spending” (see opening of this section).
With “maximizing” special ed spending in mind, consider this advice about gifted education from a District Management Council (future DMG) document, “Spending Money Wisely: Getting the Most from School District Budgets” (Levenson is first author):
Some programs, like Gifted and Talented, seem very successful because so many students in these programs have high grades and test scores and matriculate to college at high rates. But many gifted students are likely to succeed regardless of such programs. The key is to figure out which programs contribute to student success; instinct is usually not enough.
In a world of tight resources, persistent achievement gaps, and rising expectations, a rigorous system of academic return on investment (A-ROI) is a powerful lever to make the wisest use of limited funds. By providing information on effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, the A-ROI approach can help districts determine which programs to terminate and which programs to expand. The district can save millions of dollars being spent on less-effective programs, and can redirect these funds to more effective programs and thereby raise student achievement.
So, since gifted kids score well on tests anyway, why spend money on a gifted program, amIright?
Return on investment (ROI) is a business concept, and in education reform, the payout is in test scores, not quality of life or breadth of experience, and certanly not in the joy of learning for learning’s sake. Therefore, education businesses like Levenson’s measure the worth of programs based upon the potential for test scores to rise.
Of course, the great waste of money is in spending thousands and even millions to hire a consultant with no direct experience in what he is advising to advise and advise again.
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My thanks to Kathleen Cannino for providing numerous documents for this post.
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deutsch29: Mercedes Schneider's Blog 
The new class of ed consultants should henceforth be known as eduscammers.
Just a note of clarification – Harvard Public Schools has no connection at all with Harvard University. Harvard, MA is a small town in the western part of the state.
Prostiticians (sic) are simply performing the servileces the Corporate Sector is paying them to perform. They aim to convert Public Education into a tax-endowed private‑profit industry on the model of Defense, Big Oil, and the like — because that is the sweetest of the sweetheart deals anyone can imagine.
Corporate interests do not care where the money goes so long as it does not go to the “Competition”, in this case Public Education. Anything they can do to weaken Public Education works for them, even if it seems like a terrible waste of money to us. We’ll never understand what they do if we don’t understand they have a totally different end game than supporting, much less improving the Public Sector and Democracy in general.
Looking at the playbook (admittedly, without a great deal of analysis, my immediate response was “well, duh!” Administrators know this. Teachers, certainly, know this. Stagger the remedial teachers’ schedules…what an innovative idea! Problems arise, though, when the remedial teacher, or whatever they are called, is pulled to do lunch duty, or to substitute, and the kids whose class is cancelled go days and days without their extra help. And these are the kids who need the most consistency. Easy to lay all this stuff out…the kids need this and that…but almost impossible to carry these wonderful ideas, which have been around for decades, out in our present chaotic, underfunded public education environment…