UA's Former White Hat Executive's Curious Resume

Last week, I wrote about Todd Rickel -- the University of Akron's newest vice provost who is charged with re-shaping the university. I detailed how during Rickel's time as the head of White Hat Management's academic operation, he oversaw some of the worst performing charter schools in the state and country.

Well, something very interesting just showed up: Rickel has two different resumes posted at the University of Akron (if one disappears, I'll post them for you to see).

No biggie, right? People update their resumes all the time. One is from his application for the job he ended up getting. The second is an updated version.

Except here's a weird thing with Rickel's: He now claims he spoke at two conventions he never mentioned speaking at in his application resume. And he no longer claims to have been a speaker at conventions he mentioned in the application.

In his application, he claimed to have made 2 presentations in 2012 and one in 2013. They were three concurrent panel sessions at 3 different conferences. In 2012, he claimed to have made a presentation at the United States Distance Learning Association's (USDLA) National Conference ("Technology, Retention and Sustainability in Practice") and the annual convention for the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) ("Higher Education Partnerships: Mutual benefits across two and four year institutions"). In 2013, he claimed to have presented at the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Academic Resource Conference ("The Sustainable University").

Prior to 2012, he hadn't made an academic presentation since 2003 when he did one at the University of Phoenix where he has worked off and on for several years, and several at Kent State -- his alma mater where he had taught as an adjunct. In other words, he had no experience presenting at a major convention or conference outside of places where he was employed.

Which is what makes his updated resume ("last updated 14 February 2015") so interesting. On his new resume, he claims he spoke at 3 conferences in 2012. Nothing in 2013. The conferences were the WASC Academic Resource Conference in 2012, the USDLA conference and the Community College Baccalaureate Association's 12th Annual International Conference.

The panels he claimed to have led were completely different too. The WASC panel was "Partnering without Tears: Co-Sourcing for Student Success and Mutual Profit". The USDLA panel was "Beyond Facebook: Creating the NextGen Social Media Communities of the 21st Century". The CCBA plenary panel was "Community College Baccalaureate Degree Inflation: Careful What You Wish For."

The only conference he claimed to be at in both resumes was the 2012 USDLA conference, but the sessions were completely different.

Looking at it now, if one were applying to turn around a university with retention and financial challenges like UA, wouldn't having the sessions mentioned on his application resume -- about retention, sustainability, and partnering -- sound a lot better than stuff about community colleges and Facebook and mutual profit?

I looked online to see if I could find the conferences' agendas. They had been wiped from the organizations' sites. I couldn't even find them in the Wayback Machine. I'm sure there are more tech savvy people than I who are out there and can find these things better than I.

I'm just wondering why he didn't mention them all in the application? Wouldn't you want to show that you led 6 rather than 3 sessions at national conventions since 2012? I mean in both resumes, he mentioned he was part of Kent State's sail club. It's not like he's making editorial decisions in other parts of the resume.

Usually when you update a resume it's to add current achievements that happened after the application resume. It's not to change which three convention sessions you gave, or switch up where you gave these completely different panel sessions.

I don't know if there's any funny stuff going on here. But it sure begs a few questions about why these changes were made -- questions Rickel should answer so that the UA community can be assured that the man helping re-shape the university has done what he claims.

Because, as mentioned in my earlier post, his background at White Hat was anything but stellar for kids' academic performance.

Should University of Akron Put Faith in Former White Hat Executive?

For those of you who aren't aware, there are major changes happening at the University of Akron. From potential name changes to mission shifts, it appears the same university that produced the CEO of Goodyear (Charles Pilliod), perhaps the most influential rock band of the last 15 years (the Black Keys), the author of New York Times bestsellers (Michael Buckley) and comedian George Wallace needs to change the way it does business.

Amid all this discussion is a forgotten fact: Ohio (like many states) has dramatically divested itself from higher education over the last 20 years, just as its leaders have given lip service to the idea that we need to boost our academic attainment. For example, when I first went off to college in the 1990-1991 school year, Ohio spent $1.2 billion providing state support of instruction for the state's higher education institutions. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the equivalent of $2.2 billion this year. Instead, the amount was $1.8 billion. During the 2000s, the University of Akron saw its per pupil subsidy drop by nearly 25%. So could the drop in state aid be contributing to our state's universities' financial woes?

Perhaps.

Anyway, while I'm not opposed to changing things, I deeply question how new University of Akron President Scott Scarborough could put so much faith in Todd Rickel -- the  vice provost and executive dean of the College of Applied Science and Technology. 

It is Rickel, who calls himself an "Education Futurist" on his LinkedIn page, that causes me the greatest deal of pause. Why? Because, according to his resume posted at the UA website (and his LinkedIn page), he was the "Chief Learning Officer" for White Hat Management at the apex of that company's dominance of Ohio's charter school sector in the mid-2000s. He also served as the company's Executive Vice President of Life Skills High Schools and its Vice President of the company's Distance Education Group -- overseeing Ohio's worst online school (it had the lowest Performance Index Score of any online school last year), the Ohio Distance and Electronic Learning Academy (OHDELA).

During his time at White Hat, the company was receiving $110 million a year, on average, from Ohio taxpayers. Meanwhile, the schools' performance -- for which Rickel was directly responsible -- was dreadful.

When Rickel was at White Hat, the state did not have an A-F report card system. It had a very similar scale though: Excellent, Effective, Continuous Improvement, Academic Watch and Academic Emergency. Excellent was like an A, Emergency like an F.

Well, here's how White Hat schools performed under Rickel's leadership:

As you can see, White Hat had a far higher percentage of Academic Emergency ratings than even Ohio's urban school districts. They had exactly 1 Excellent rating and 2 Effective ratings.

And you can see that Ohio's local public school districts smoked Rickel's schools overall.

Looking at different metrics doesn't help Rickel's case much either.

Look at his schools' Performance Index Scores. The PI measures proficiency test success. And as you can see, the average PI score of 50 in White Hat schools is 1/3 lower than urban districts and about 1/2 as good as districts overall. 

To give you an idea of what a score of 50 means, it would require that about 68% of students score in the basic range and 32% score in the below basic range on state proficiency tests. Those two categories are the two below proficiency categories Ohio uses to calculate its Performance Index Score.

 Annual Yearly Progress also demonstrates Rickel's failure at White Hat to close achievement gaps and serve traditionally underserved students.

White Hat was failing to meet AYP at a 90% clip during Rickel's tenure. That is frankly horrendous. Not saying the 70% rate in Ohio's urban districts is great, but it is nearly 25% smaller.

And under his tutelage, Life Skills began earning its well-earned moniker of worst-performing charter school group in the state. Life Skills High Schools -- a dropout recovery chain -- routinely received the worst Performance Index scores in the state. That is until the state stopped using PI to hold dropout recovery schools accountable. Under Rickel, they were no different.

Why do I bring this up? Because it is Rickel who is now telling folks at the University of Akron how to deliver their education experience. That's right. The people who educated some of the best minds in the region and country are being told what to do by a guy who ran several of the worst performing K-12 schools in the state.

And UA is paying Rickel $295,000 a year to do it -- the highest salary of three new administrators brought in by Scarborough in February.

Why would a respectable university turn over these major decisions to a guy with this background of educational failure? 

Simple. Look at who runs White Hat. David Brennan. Brennan has an endowed chair at the University of Akron School of Law (where I graduated in 2005) and has been the state's most prolific campaign contributor over the last three decades to state lawmakers (all but 1 of his donations have gone to Ohio Republicans). 

There is little question that in the Akron area -- where Brennan is from -- he remains a powerful influence, though his power statewide seems to be waning as William Lager, who runs the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, picks up the mantle of Ohio charter school political king maker.

All I'm saying is if you're going to turn over the reins of change to someone, would it be someone with Rickel's history? 

But at least I think I've figured out why he calls himself an "education futurist". Given his past failings, I suppose his interest in future gazing is understandable.