Washington, DC, Teachers Institute subject of controversy

As an elementary school principal in Washington, Sheila Ford had to adapt to the haphazard D.C. public school bureaucracy. So when she decided to retire in 2005 and help start a nonprofit organization to train teachers, it didn’t shock her that school officials authorized nearly $3 million for her Teachers Institute on a single day, shortly after she made a half-hour presentation. Nor was she surprised when she picked up the first check—for $1 million—and there was no contract laying out the agreement.

When Ford went back for documentation, she received a single-page expense voucher. “We didn’t know—what should we do with this? What do you call this?” said Richard Spigler, the institute’s chairman. “The issue to us was, it is not a contract. What are we going to do?”

The institute considered giving back the money but ultimately kept it and went ahead training DC schoolteachers in a new method of reading and writing instruction. The organization, which has two employees and operates rent-free out of the attic of a school building, has received more than $5.5 million from the DC schools since mid-2005. Read more in The Washington Post.