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The Record ‘N..J. education officials take steps to boost remedial help for students’
Njspotlight.com ‘Temporary Replacements?’ …but for how long?
Trentonian editorial: Chris Christie & Bret Schundler were destined for a blowup
Njspotlight.com ‘Race to the Top Consultant Earned $500,000 for Two Failed Bids’
Star Ledger, ‘N.J. Democrats push for hearing on Race to the Top error, despite Christie's call to move on’
The Record ‘N..J. education officials take steps to boost remedial help for students’
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Last updated: Wednesday September 1, 2010, 10:56 PM
BY LESLIE BRODY
The Record
STAFF WRITER
After finding “disturbing” evidence that some New Jersey teens who didn’t possess simple math skills received passing grades in Algebra II and Calculus courses, education department officials said Wednesday they planned new steps to make sure that struggling students get more remedial help fast.
In a report on thousands of seniors denied diplomas this year because they flunked graduation exams, assistant education commissioner Willa Spicer wrote it was “dispiriting” to find there were students whose records showed “failure after failure” in Algebra 1 or English 1 who never had the right courses or tutoring.
Spicer said the department had to hold schools more accountable. It will require students who fail 8th grade state tests (called NJ ASK) to get immediate remedial help and tell schools to document their actions.
“To ensure that intervention plans are not allowed to collect dust, districts will be required to keep a complete record of progress for each of these at-risk students,” her report said.
The report was sparked by the failure of more than 10,000 seniors in the last school year to pass a last-chance graduation exam, known as the Alternative High School Assessment. The test replaced an earlier version that was lambasted for being too easy, but critics said the new exam was not piloted properly and its first year results should be scrapped.
Department officials said Wednesday that at least 3,000 students have not yet proven they should graduate — a significantly bigger group than in past years. They are being invited to take the test again in October. Some may be eligible to enroll for a second senior year.
Students were given multiple opportunities to pass the traditional graduation exam and AHSA, or to substitute the SAT or other standardized tests. The department also allowed schools to present students’ portfolios of class projects and homework to prove they deserved diplomas.
Spicer’s report said poring over those portfolios revealed that some students were getting passing grades they didn’t deserve, while others were getting no extra help. Further, some students couldn’t get their schools to give their portfolios to state officials to show they should graduate.
“We had parents in tears because they could not get anyone to review matters at the school,” Spicer wrote. “Clearly, for the sake of these children and their families, changes need to be made.”
Spicer said her office has set up a committee to consider whether to give diplomas to immigrant students who come to high school without English language fluency and so have a hard time passing language arts exams but do appear to be making rapid progress.
Stan Karp of the Education Law Center said he was glad to see the department aiming to develop better ways for students to show they met graduation requirements by presenting portfolios. The department’s measures are a "potential step forward but many issues still need to be addressed," he said.
The department also announced that all students starting ninth-grade this fall will need to pass an end-of-course assessment in biology to graduate. The department had previously deciding on the biology requirement, and piloted the exam, but had not been certain whether it would apply to incoming tenth-graders too. Spicer said incoming freshmen will be the first group under the new mandate.
E-mail: brody@northjersey.com
Njspotlight.com ‘Temporary Replacements?’ …but for how long?
Governor names Rochelle Hendricks, Gregg Edwards and Andrew Smarick to head NJ Department of Education -- but for how long?
By John Mooney, September 2 in Education |Post a Comment
At least for the time being, they are the new power trio of the New Jersey Department of Education, guiding it as it seeks to move beyond the Race to the Top debacle.
Related Links
With the firing last week of state Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, Gov. Chris Christie appointed a new acting commissioner from the ranks of the department and named his policy director to be her chief of staff.
Already in the building, but only for a month, is a conservative analyst from Washington, D.C. who was to be named Schundler’s deputy but now is already on the short list to succeed him as the next education commissioner. .
Until that next commissioner is appointed it makes for an intriguing sharing of authority, as a host of education issues continue to swirl around the state, with or without a commissioner in place.
Rochelle Hendricks, acting commissioner
At her first state Board of Education meeting as the head of the department, Rochelle Hendricks faced more reporters than had probably attended all of the last year’s state board meetings. Combined.
But standing before the klieg lights and microphones, the assistant commissioner thrown into the top job didn’t flinch, saying the department would proceed with its work overseeing the state’s 2,500 schools.
“The leadership is actually somewhat stable, several of us who are veterans in the department, still here, still carrying the torch,” Hendricks said. “But the other piece of that. Is we are very committed to the reform agenda that Governor Christie has outlined, and we’re ready to step and make sure that agenda is implemented.”
The comments speak to Hendricks’ standing in the department, even before the Schundler’s ouster over the failed bid for federal Race to the Top funding. Seen as well-liked, calm and effective, she was, some said yesterday, the right person for these challenging times.
First hired in 1987, Hendricks has been most connected with the state’s charter school movement, directing the charter school office and overseeing it as assistant commissioner. But she has also served in a variety of positions overseeing such diverse areas as vocational education, policy and planning and professional development.
Still, she was a notable promotion under Schundler, getting the title as assistant commissioner for school innovation and effectiveness, in charge of Schundler’s -- and Christie’s -- pet issues of charter schools and school choice, including the controversial Opportunity Scholarship Act.
Gregg Edwards, chief of staff
Schundler might have done well to have someone like Gregg Edwards as his chief of staff from the start of his brief tenure.
A long-time Republican staffer in the state, Edwards has been a fixture in policy and government circles for more than two decades. He was executive director of the State Senate and chief of staff to former U.S. Rep Bob Franks, before becoming founding president of the Center for Policy Research of New Jersey.
With the new Republican administration, Edwards was named as Christie’s policy director in charge of all policy initiatives. He always said he would take a special interest in education after many years of pressing for school reform.
That interest is now critical, since through Schundler’s brief stay, Christie’s office didn’t appear to have the same active role in the education department as previous governors, whose appointed staffer often worked almost full-time coordinating policy between the governor and the commissioner.
That certainly ends with Edwards now in the building, and lobbyists and others watching from the outside said he will provide a stable hand after the tumult of the last few weeks.
“He brings the importance of the governor’s office to the department,” said Lynne Strickland, a longtime lobbyist and head of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. “He will help get the department back on track, and make sure the work gets done that needs to be done.”
Andrew Smarick, deputy commissioner
Smarick is the newcomer in the group, moving to the department only a month ago to serve as Schundler’s deputy but bringing with him a long paper – and video – trail about his views on school reform.
In his short time here, Smarick was seen as taking a key role in the state’s ill-fated Race to the Top application, serving on the team that conducted the pivotal interview in Washington, D.C. last month.
He is now rumored in media accounts as a strong candidate to take Schundler’s role, although the state board yesterday balked at officially naming him deputy, putting some of that in doubt.
Smarick has made a national name as an analyst and commentator with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and American Enterpise Institute, conservative think-tanks in Washington.
A founder of a charter school in Maryland, he has been a strong advocate of charter schools and school choice, and has written extensively of the plight of inner-city parochial schools. He may be most controversial in his views that failing schools should be shuttered and reopened anew.
“We’ve tried drastic fixes of the most chronically underperforming schools before and they generally haven’t worked,” Smarick wrote in a blog for the American Enterprise Institute in 2009. “The for-profit sector has also found that its lowest performers seldom go from the very bottom to the top. Hence my advocacy for closures and new starts.”
He was writing specifically about new federal grants -- apart from the Race to the Top -- that are steered to turnaround efforts for state’s lowest-performing schools. New Jersey has 12 such schools under the program, slated to spend more than $45 million in the next three years.
Still, in the same entry, he acknowledged the program has moved ahead, and his final words spoke to what some describe as his collaborative and inquisitive approach.
“The die is cast, I’ve lost, and we’re about to pursue school turnarounds with vigor,” he said. “My hope now is that the [federal] department undertakes an evaluation of this effort … so we can learn from this massive investment and be better positioned in the future to address the nation’s lowest-performing schools.”
TRENTONIAN EDITORIAL: Chris Christie & Bret Schundler were destined for a blowup
We harbored hopes that Bret Schundler’s tenure as New Jersey’s commissioner of education would be a national beacon leading the way to reform of America’s overpriced, under-performing public schools.
In the back of our minds, though, we had fears that the relationship between the former Jersey City mayor and the governor who installed him at the top of the state Department of Education would soon crash and burn.
Alas, that’s what just happened.
Creative and bold — but also obstinate and impulsive — Schundler perhaps is simply not suitably wired for a subordinate position.
Besides which, he has always been better at generating ideas than implementing them.
As for the obstinate part, we’d say the Gov. Chris Christie had already staked that role out for himself.
Schundler’s downfall was a goof-up on a state application for “Race to the Top” federal funds. He omitted required data from the application. That was a $400 million flub. No small snafu.
Compounding the error, he was slow to own up to his mistake, initially putting up a smokescreen of malarky to evade responsibility. He did, finally, own up, however.
Hopefully Schundler will find a role to play in education reform outside government. His creativity and enthusiasm would be a great loss to the cause if he didn’t.
Meanwhile, other bigwigs in the Christie administration are on notice that the boss wasn’t just just exercising his vocal cords when he pledged that officials in his administration would be held accountable for their actions.
Footnote: Consistent with that pledge, the governor should hold himself accountable and apologize for shooting his mouth off too quickly in railing against the Obama administration when Schundler’s error of omission first came to light.
The Record ‘N..J. education officials take steps to boost remedial help for students’
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Last updated: Wednesday September 1, 2010, 10:56 PM
BY LESLIE BRODY
The Record
STAFF WRITER
After finding “disturbing” evidence that some New Jersey teens who didn’t possess simple math skills received passing grades in Algebra II and Calculus courses, education department officials said Wednesday they planned new steps to make sure that struggling students get more remedial help fast.
In a report on thousands of seniors denied diplomas this year because they flunked graduation exams, assistant education commissioner Willa Spicer wrote it was “dispiriting” to find there were students whose records showed “failure after failure” in Algebra 1 or English 1 who never had the right courses or tutoring.
Spicer said the department had to hold schools more accountable. It will require students who fail 8th grade state tests (called NJ ASK) to get immediate remedial help and tell schools to document their actions.
“To ensure that intervention plans are not allowed to collect dust, districts will be required to keep a complete record of progress for each of these at-risk students,” her report said.
The report was sparked by the failure of more than 10,000 seniors in the last school year to pass a last-chance graduation exam, known as the Alternative High School Assessment. The test replaced an earlier version that was lambasted for being too easy, but critics said the new exam was not piloted properly and its first year results should be scrapped.
Department officials said Wednesday that at least 3,000 students have not yet proven they should graduate — a significantly bigger group than in past years. They are being invited to take the test again in October. Some may be eligible to enroll for a second senior year.
Students were given multiple opportunities to pass the traditional graduation exam and AHSA, or to substitute the SAT or other standardized tests. The department also allowed schools to present students’ portfolios of class projects and homework to prove they deserved diplomas.
Spicer’s report said poring over those portfolios revealed that some students were getting passing grades they didn’t deserve, while others were getting no extra help. Further, some students couldn’t get their schools to give their portfolios to state officials to show they should graduate.
“We had parents in tears because they could not get anyone to review matters at the school,” Spicer wrote. “Clearly, for the sake of these children and their families, changes need to be made.”
Spicer said her office has set up a committee to consider whether to give diplomas to immigrant students who come to high school without English language fluency and so have a hard time passing language arts exams but do appear to be making rapid progress.
Stan Karp of the Education Law Center said he was glad to see the department aiming to develop better ways for students to show they met graduation requirements by presenting portfolios. The department’s measures are a "potential step forward but many issues still need to be addressed," he said.
The department also announced that all students starting ninth-grade this fall will need to pass an end-of-course assessment in biology to graduate. The department had previously deciding on the biology requirement, and piloted the exam, but had not been certain whether it would apply to incoming tenth-graders too. Spicer said incoming freshmen will be the first group under the new mandate.
E-mail: brody@northjersey.com
Njspotlight.com ‘Temporary Replacements?’ …but for how long?
Governor names Rochelle Hendricks, Gregg Edwards and Andrew Smarick to head NJ Department of Education -- but for how long?
By John Mooney, September 2 in Education |Post a Comment
At least for the time being, they are the new power trio of the New Jersey Department of Education, guiding it as it seeks to move beyond the Race to the Top debacle.
Related Links
With the firing last week of state Education Commissioner Bret Schundler, Gov. Chris Christie appointed a new acting commissioner from the ranks of the department and named his policy director to be her chief of staff.
Already in the building, but only for a month, is a conservative analyst from Washington, D.C. who was to be named Schundler’s deputy but now is already on the short list to succeed him as the next education commissioner. .
Until that next commissioner is appointed it makes for an intriguing sharing of authority, as a host of education issues continue to swirl around the state, with or without a commissioner in place.
Rochelle Hendricks, acting commissioner
At her first state Board of Education meeting as the head of the department, Rochelle Hendricks faced more reporters than had probably attended all of the last year’s state board meetings. Combined.
But standing before the klieg lights and microphones, the assistant commissioner thrown into the top job didn’t flinch, saying the department would proceed with its work overseeing the state’s 2,500 schools.
“The leadership is actually somewhat stable, several of us who are veterans in the department, still here, still carrying the torch,” Hendricks said. “But the other piece of that. Is we are very committed to the reform agenda that Governor Christie has outlined, and we’re ready to step and make sure that agenda is implemented.”
The comments speak to Hendricks’ standing in the department, even before the Schundler’s ouster over the failed bid for federal Race to the Top funding. Seen as well-liked, calm and effective, she was, some said yesterday, the right person for these challenging times.
First hired in 1987, Hendricks has been most connected with the state’s charter school movement, directing the charter school office and overseeing it as assistant commissioner. But she has also served in a variety of positions overseeing such diverse areas as vocational education, policy and planning and professional development.
Still, she was a notable promotion under Schundler, getting the title as assistant commissioner for school innovation and effectiveness, in charge of Schundler’s -- and Christie’s -- pet issues of charter schools and school choice, including the controversial Opportunity Scholarship Act.
Gregg Edwards, chief of staff
Schundler might have done well to have someone like Gregg Edwards as his chief of staff from the start of his brief tenure.
A long-time Republican staffer in the state, Edwards has been a fixture in policy and government circles for more than two decades. He was executive director of the State Senate and chief of staff to former U.S. Rep Bob Franks, before becoming founding president of the Center for Policy Research of New Jersey.
With the new Republican administration, Edwards was named as Christie’s policy director in charge of all policy initiatives. He always said he would take a special interest in education after many years of pressing for school reform.
That interest is now critical, since through Schundler’s brief stay, Christie’s office didn’t appear to have the same active role in the education department as previous governors, whose appointed staffer often worked almost full-time coordinating policy between the governor and the commissioner.
That certainly ends with Edwards now in the building, and lobbyists and others watching from the outside said he will provide a stable hand after the tumult of the last few weeks.
“He brings the importance of the governor’s office to the department,” said Lynne Strickland, a longtime lobbyist and head of the Garden State Coalition of Schools. “He will help get the department back on track, and make sure the work gets done that needs to be done.”
Andrew Smarick, deputy commissioner
Smarick is the newcomer in the group, moving to the department only a month ago to serve as Schundler’s deputy but bringing with him a long paper – and video – trail about his views on school reform.
In his short time here, Smarick was seen as taking a key role in the state’s ill-fated Race to the Top application, serving on the team that conducted the pivotal interview in Washington, D.C. last month.
He is now rumored in media accounts as a strong candidate to take Schundler’s role, although the state board yesterday balked at officially naming him deputy, putting some of that in doubt.
Smarick has made a national name as an analyst and commentator with the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and American Enterpise Institute, conservative think-tanks in Washington.
A founder of a charter school in Maryland, he has been a strong advocate of charter schools and school choice, and has written extensively of the plight of inner-city parochial schools. He may be most controversial in his views that failing schools should be shuttered and reopened anew.
“We’ve tried drastic fixes of the most chronically underperforming schools before and they generally haven’t worked,” Smarick wrote in a blog for the American Enterprise Institute in 2009. “The for-profit sector has also found that its lowest performers seldom go from the very bottom to the top. Hence my advocacy for closures and new starts.”
He was writing specifically about new federal grants -- apart from the Race to the Top -- that are steered to turnaround efforts for state’s lowest-performing schools. New Jersey has 12 such schools under the program, slated to spend more than $45 million in the next three years.
Still, in the same entry, he acknowledged the program has moved ahead, and his final words spoke to what some describe as his collaborative and inquisitive approach.
“The die is cast, I’ve lost, and we’re about to pursue school turnarounds with vigor,” he said. “My hope now is that the [federal] department undertakes an evaluation of this effort … so we can learn from this massive investment and be better positioned in the future to address the nation’s lowest-performing schools.”
TRENTONIAN EDITORIAL: Chris Christie & Bret Schundler were destined for a blowup
We harbored hopes that Bret Schundler’s tenure as New Jersey’s commissioner of education would be a national beacon leading the way to reform of America’s overpriced, under-performing public schools.
In the back of our minds, though, we had fears that the relationship between the former Jersey City mayor and the governor who installed him at the top of the state Department of Education would soon crash and burn.
Alas, that’s what just happened.
Creative and bold — but also obstinate and impulsive — Schundler perhaps is simply not suitably wired for a subordinate position.
Besides which, he has always been better at generating ideas than implementing them.
As for the obstinate part, we’d say the Gov. Chris Christie had already staked that role out for himself.
Schundler’s downfall was a goof-up on a state application for “Race to the Top” federal funds. He omitted required data from the application. That was a $400 million flub. No small snafu.
Compounding the error, he was slow to own up to his mistake, initially putting up a smokescreen of malarky to evade responsibility. He did, finally, own up, however.
Hopefully Schundler will find a role to play in education reform outside government. His creativity and enthusiasm would be a great loss to the cause if he didn’t.
Meanwhile, other bigwigs in the Christie administration are on notice that the boss wasn’t just just exercising his vocal cords when he pledged that officials in his administration would be held accountable for their actions.
Footnote: Consistent with that pledge, the governor should hold himself accountable and apologize for shooting his mouth off too quickly in railing against the Obama administration when Schundler’s error of omission first came to light.
Njspotlight.com ‘Race to the Top Consultant Earned $500,000 for Two Failed Bids’
State Department of Education discloses new information about Wireless Generation
, September 1 in Education |1 Comment
Shedding more light on the private side of public education, additional details came out yesterday on New Jersey’s hiring of a Brooklyn consultant in its controversial -- and unsuccessful -- applications for Race to the Top money.
The firm’s fees now total more than $500,000.
Under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, the state Department of Education released new information on how Wireless Generation Inc. was first hired in December 2010 under former Gov. Jon Corzine’s administration. The contract was awarded after a hurried bid process to meet Race to the Top’s first-round January deadline.
Under the original contract, Wireless was paid $335,000, the highest of four bids for the work, according to the state. The lowest bid was less than half that amount at $145,500.
“Although Wireless was not the lowest bidder, the department’s evaluation committee scored the company’s bid higher than any other,” read a statement from Alan Guenther, the department’s spokesman.
A Clear Plan of Action
“The committee also said Wireless presented a clear, 25-day work plan to complete the application, and the company was willing to commit additional staff to finish the application without additional cost.”
Participants actually bid twice, with the first bids thrown out when Gov. Chris Christie’s transition teamput a freeze on all new contracts and then opened them again for the Race to the Top bid.
New Jersey failed to make the list of finalists in the first round, in which only two states ultimately won.
Wireless Generation was rehired by now-former state Education Commissioner Bret Schundler for the second round. Under that contract, the consultant was paid $179,750 for the application itself, and another $9,500 for advising the state’s oral presentation in August. The latter service was billed at $950 per day, according to the latest records.
A Losing Bid
New Jersey was among the finalists in the second round, but narrowly lost that bid as well, touching off a swirl of controversy. Christie fired Schundler last week over the miscommunications as to what went wrong.
Wireless Generation officials initially kept quiet about its role in the process, referring all questions to the state Department of Education.
Yesterday, it provided more details about its consulting work, which focuses on education technology but also supplies consulting about education reform initiatives, such as those included in the Race to the Top application.
“The company is highly respected for its proven expertise in educational data, technology and reform -- among the key elements prioritized by Race to the Top,” read the lengthy background statement furnished by the company.
Aligned with Institute for Learning
The statement said that Wireless also worked on the application with the Institute for Learning (IFL) at the University of Pittsburgh. The IFL is led by Lauren Resnick, a nationally prominent education psychologist and researcher.
“The combined expertise of Wireless Generation, IFL, and the New Jersey Department of Education resulted in a highly competitive Race to the Top application,” the statement said.
According to documents provided earlier in the week, the company also was to be retained by the state for up to three years if New Jersey won the application.
The continued work was “to ensure that the project delivers the results that the United State Department of Education seeks, including data collection and analysis,” read the state’s waiver of competitive bidding rules.
Six-Figure Fees
Agreements for consultants to stay on once grant applications are completed are not unusual. Nor are the six-figure fees that Wireless Generation collected, said several consultants, who say company fees can be as high as $3,000 - 4,000 a day in some cases.
“With local money drying up, if you are a consultant right now, you follow where the grant money is, and that’s almost entirely in state and federal government,” said Richard Ten Eyck, a former New Jersey assistant commissioner and now an education consultant, although he said not with the state.
“Race to the Top, school improvement grants, these are all complicated enough applications that many states were looking for assistance,” he said.
Overall, the state education department spends tens of millions of dollars every year on professional services, according to New Jersey Department of Treasury’s website, YourMoney.NJ.gov.
In fiscal 2009 alone, it listed more than $35 million in professional services. One firm collected more than $6 million.
Star Ledger, ‘N.J. Democrats push for hearing on Race to the Top error, despite Christie's call to move on’
Published: Wednesday, September 01, 2010, 8:00 AM
Lisa Fleisher/Statehouse Bureau
TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie Tuesday declared an end to the controversy over the state’s failed attempt for Race to the Top funding — saying the mystery of the fatal error had been solved — and called on top Democrats to cancel hearings on the controversial issue.
Democrats resisted, saying lingering questions remain about the error and the role of a consultant hired by the state to help complete the application for up to $400 million in federal education funding.
The Christie administration did not respond to requests for documents proving the error had been made by former Education Commissioner Bret Schundler. However, Schundler, who was fired last Friday, acknowledged he "must have" made the error. He said he learned the state had a draft of the application with edits, in his handwriting, that remove budget information federal officials had requested.
At a press conference in Morris County Tuesday, Christie said Schundler’s admission should close the book on the matter.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
• Gov. Chris Christie says it's 'time to move on' from Race to the Top error
• Fired N.J. education chief Bret Schundler says he made 'Race to the Top' error
• Future of N.J. school reform remains uncertain without federal funds, permanent education chief
• Tom Moran: Christie faces ugly political ramifications of 'Race to the Top' error, Schundler firing
• Schundler requested firing instead of resignation so he can collect unemployment
• Gov. Chris Christie fires N.J. schools chief Bret Schundler
• Gov. Christie blames Washington bureaucracy for state's failed 'Race to the Top' application
"There’s really no enduring mysteries left in this," he said. "We now know who made the mistake, we know how he made the mistake, we know when he made the mistake. And so it’s time now to move on."
The Republican governor also brushed aside demands by Democrats to apologize to the Obama administration, saying he stands by his criticism that the application rules are too rigid. Instead, he chastised Democrats, telling them to cancel their planned hearings and address the real matters affecting the state, like property taxes.
Christie said there is one clear lesson from last week’s fiasco: "Don’t lie to the governor," he said. "That’s the message."
The governor has maintained Schundler misled him about the state’s attempt to correct an error on the Race to the Top application during a presentation last month before peer judges in Washington, D.C.
Christie has said publicly the judges would not let the state correct the error. But a video released by the U.S. Department of Education contradicted those claims and showed the state did not try to correct the mistake.
The error was committed on a five-point question. The state provided school funding data for 2011 instead of 2008 and 2009, the years requested. The mistake cost New Jersey 4.8 points on the 500-point application.
In the end, New Jersey missed out on the funding by 3 points. Nine states and the District of Columbia were awarded more than $3.3 billion in Race to the Top funds, which reward states for aggressive and new approaches to improving schools.
Schundler has said he warned Christie not to say New Jersey tried to correct the error — which would have been against the rules — and produced e-mails from conversations last Tuesday in which he told the governor’s staff he did not provide new information to the judges.
But Tuesday, Christie said Schundler’s story was "the exact opposite" on Wednesday morning. He said Schundler told him he had "updated the panel at the hearing that he complied with the requirements of the question."
"It is, I think, pretty clear at this point that the truth wasn’t told," Christie said. "As governor, all you can do with cabinet officers is ask them questions and rely upon the fact that they’re going to give you the straight answers."
Schundler declined to comment Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Assemblyman Patrick Diegnan (D-Middlesex) said a hearing was still necessary to determine why, among other things, a consultant that was paid almost $180,000 for its work on the application did not catch the mistake.
The consultant, Wireless Generation, was paid $524,250 for work on two rounds of the federal competition, state contracts show.
"Let’s disclose all the documents, all the supporting documents, anything that was handwritten or marked up," he said. "Let’s have a thorough review of them, and then we’ll be able to turn the page and move on."
Sen. Barbara Buono (D-Middlesex) said her chamber would move forward with a hearing.
"We’re not going to sweep this under the rug just because it’s politically expedient for the governor," Buono, the majority leader, said in a statement.
Staff writers Jessica Calefati and Matt Friedman contributed to this report.
