Tomorrow (January 10th, 9 a.m.) the Hartford Board of Education will hold a Committee of the Whole meeting where they will conduct their version of “vetting” third-party partnerships before writing a check.  The focus of this meeting will be on a contract proposal for The Princeton Review.

The Princeton Review is a subsidiary of TPR Education, LLC (doing business as “The Princeton Review”), which is controlled by Primavera Holdings Ltd, “a firm owned by Chinese nationals with a principal place of business in Hong Kong China.”  Do your test prep people look like your students?

The Princeton Review (not affiliated with Princeton University), is a 40-year-old company which makes its cash by tutoring high school kids on college readiness tests, such as the SAT.  They claim that they coach “students on unconventional strategies to crack” the SAT ®,” and “96% of students improved their grades.”  As stated, “improved their grades,” not passed the SAT.  Can we call improving their grades tantamount to cracking the SAT?  Don’t think so.

However, they are so confident that through the use of their “unconventional strategies” in preparing students to take the SAT, student scores will “improve,” so they offer a money-back guarantee:

“The Princeton Review Guarantee.  We guarantee that you will get a higher test score, or get your money back!*”

Last school year, Bulkeley High School used a portion of the funds allotted to them by the district to bring in The Princeton Review for the tutoring of 90 students for 50 hours.  Based on documents made available by HPS, this appears to be The Princeton Review’s first foray into Hartford Public Schools.  How much cracking of the SAT went on at Bulkeley High School?

According to EdSight (see the document here), only 26 students at BHS, which is 11% of those participating in one of the plethora of college readiness tests and which includes the SAT, met benchmark for their test of choice.  Only 26 students, which is 6 more than the year prior.  The folks from Princeton Review worked with 90 BHS students.  Refund, please!

However, Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez was so happy with the results that this year, tomorrow, she is looking to get approval from the BOE to issue The Princeton Review a district check, which I assume means that kids in other Hartford high schools will be tutored with “unconventional strategies” so that they too can “crack the SAT.”

What do they have to lose; there is a money back guarantee!