This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

What can outsiders do to help the weakest public schools improve? That question is still to be answered under a Utah law that requires the lowest-performing 3 percent of schools to bring in private consultants to tell them how to get better.

But one thing is already known at this point: The law has been good for the consultants.

In March 2015, the Utah Legislature passed a bill sponsored by Senate President Wayne Niederhauser that allocated $8 million to hire education consultants to train and mentor administrators. Those schools in the bottom 3 percent (as defined by test scores) would have three years to improve enough to jump one letter grade in the state grading system. Those that didn't improve faced the possibility of closing or conversion to a charter school. The consultants were paid half up front to foster improvement, with the other half coming after three years if the school indeed climbs a letter grade.

This was the brainchild of Brad Smith, the Utah schools superintendent who was brought in two years ago as a disruptor of the education establishment, only to leave 15 months later. Smith, a champion of bringing private-sector economics to public education, set up the contracts such that the state would cover the consultants' costs for any school falling in that bottom 3 percent.

But whoever did the analysis on that contract evidently failed to consider a very important factor: the same schools won't be in the bottom 3 percent each year. Even with a little luck, a school that was in the bottom 3 percent one year can manage to climb to the fourth percentile the next. That means another school will find itself in the bottom 3 percent, thereby triggering a payment to a consultant to go help that school.

That "churn" in the bottom 3 percent has effectively eaten up the $8 million before the first schools in the program are even halfway through.

It's worth noting that none of this turnaround money goes to pay for more teachers, buy new technology or other direct expenditures at the school. Not one penny has actually gone to the schools. It goes to consultants who presumably have to come up with turnaround plans that don't require any additional funding — because there isn't any associated with the turnaround law. This whole thing is based on the notion that turning around the worst schools just requires good advice.

Is that true? It looks like we're going to have to come up with more millions before that question is answered.