Timothy Noah, a senior editor of The New Republic, has written a stunning expose of charter school corruption. He begins with Arizona, where the laws are so lax that self-dealing by charter executives is the rule, not the exception. Noah points out that 90 percent of charter operators are exempt from state laws requiring competitive bidding. The state has never withdrawn an exemption.
Noah bases his observations about Arizona’s Wild West of charters on investigative reporting by Anne Ryman of the Arizona Republic.
He quotes from Ryman’s article:
“The schools’ purchases from their own officials,” Ryman writes, “range from curriculum and business consulting to land leases and transportation services. A handful of non-profit schools outsource most of their operations to a board member’s for-profit company.” A nonprofit called Great Hearts Academies runs 15 Arizona charter schools. Since 2009, according to Ryman, the schools have purchased $987,995 in books from Educational Sales Co., whose chairman, Daniel Sauer, is a Great Hearts officer. And that doesn’t count additional book purchases made directly by parents. Six of the Great Hearts schools have links on their Web sites for parents who wish to make such purchases. The links are, of course, to Educational Sales Co. Since 2007 Sauer has donated $50,400 to Great Hearts. You can call that philanthropy, or you can call that an investment on which Sauer’s company received a return of more than 1800 percent. I’m not sure even Russian oligarchs typically get that much on the back end.
Oh, yes, Great Hearts Academy. This is the same Arizona-based outfit that has been turned down four times by the Metro Nashville school board because it did not have a diversity plan. Because of its rejection of Great Hearts, the Nashville schools were fined $3.4 million by Tennessee’s TFA state commissioner of education Kevin Huffman. Huffman and the governor really, really want Great Hearts in Nashville and apparently they “won’t back down” until Great Hearts has at least three or four campuses in Nashville, regardless of what the school board says. The governor and legislature are set to pass an ALEC-model law to create a commission to overrule local school boards that have the nerve to turn down a charter school.
By the way, Great Hearts Academy just got permission to open charters in San Antonio.
Noah notes corruption in Ohio and California charters, including the Adelanto Charter School, which was shut down. It will now be replaced the the nation’s very first parent trigger charter, also in Adelanto, California, which was selected by only 50 parents in a school that enrolls more than 600 children.
Keep writing, Timothy Noah.
So taxpayers might not get their money’s worth because of an interlocking directorate in K-12 education. Sounds familiar:
http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_4_my_public.html
Anything more recent than 1997?
Bestor’s interlocking directorate is (at least) in its 60th year:
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/2000/Schools/sch10.htm
For those who would prefer Dewey to Bestor, Dewey’s critique of school governance deficiencies is over a century old.
Good examples (Montgomery County, MD) and wise thinkers (David Mathews, Robert P. Strauss) go unheeded.
A more recent example of an entire community coming up short:
“If we are going to hold ourselves to a higher standard in terms of being motivated and engaged, can’t we hold our parents and the schools to the same high standards?” -Student in Bridgeport, CT
See: Helping Students Succeed: Communities Confront the Achievement Gap
“60 Minutes” on TV exposed a chain of charter schools where the teachers kick back 40% to the school. It is also a source of work visas. The English teacher could not be understood.
It is not a level playing field. It is school choice. No unfunded mandates like ESL, Driver Education etc. It is a system designed to fail. Watch “Zeitgeost” documentary 15 minutes just before the end for more schools designed to fail.
I know there is a lot about money. But the real greed is power.
Why accumulate billions and billions. You can only eat so much. You can only have so many buildings. It is the love of power.
I think that was Gulen.
I remember seeing it on 60 Minutes too, especially the part about the English teacher. (btw, nice name!)
There should be no self-dealing as outlined here. It is both the appearance and substance of corruption. I do not condone it. State law must be enacted to prevent it. As a side not this same kind of corruption was epidemic in the Detroit School System. It’s what got it an emergency manager. If the charters don’t reject that sort of corruption they will earn the same bad reputation as the big city schools run by monopoly Democrat politicians and unions.
No, the Detroit schools suffered far more from racial segregation and poverty than from petty corruption. Michigan abandoned the children of Detroit.
Diane,
If you know Noah please tell him to come to Detroit to reveal what is happening in charters. Our major newspapers and media channels have done a poor job of informing the public. It’s unbelievable. Someone needs to start profiling each and every charter and showing how money is spent and how the CEO and family are living. I think the public would be surprised by what was revealed.
I must admit that over the years as I have worked in more unionized schools, I have seen the work rules taken to idiotic extremes. I carried a printer cartridge from my room to the designated recycling location to the amazement of office staff. I wasn’t supposed to do that! I watched a teacher told he couldn’t tutor students in detention during his planning period because it was against union work rules. A principal mopped up vomit because the janitor had an inviolate lunch hour. I would have mopped it if I knew where to get the supplies, but health and work safety rules probably dictated otherwise. I have also seen the other side, when the administration tried to take my only planning time for hall duty when I was carrying extra class and team responsibilities because of vague (according to them) contract wording. Idiotic but true. A custodian got a reprimand for not keeping the floors mopped dry during the winter. I slipped and fell, but was fine. I was required to fill out some sort of report (workman’s comp?) and only found out later that he received an official reprimand. He was the only custodian on duty on a snowy winter morning in a school of over 400 students with multiple entrances. It was nobody’s fault, it was an accident. The only time I had to ask for union support, it led to my contract not being renewed (non-tenured teachers have no rights). I probably should have filed a grievance to leave a paper trail, but I was still naive enough to believe that other people would have the decency to do what was right.
I know there are even more egregious sins on both sides, and I also know that there are schools where sanity reigns. The real issue is whether we believe in the importance of a public school system. Do we believe in democracy or not. I really don’t see the possibility of a democratic society without public education. Even with all of its flaws do we want to turn education over to the free market economy?
The first part of your post definitely describes different union circumstances than what we have in TN. Of course TN is a “right to work” state.
Your error is conflating political democracy with the public school system. One does not depend on the other. Rather, the public school system, qua system, makes people think that their happiness and freedom depends on government monopoly education. It doesn’t. Freedom and happiness does depend on knowledge and competence, but that has been supplied to the elites of this culture since its beginning by private schools. Look at Bush and Obama and Romney, Republican and Democrat presidents and candidate, all generated by the private education system. The best and brightest have always sought education in the free market, i.e. the private, non-unionized, diverse, dispersed, informal private education system. It’s record of delivery of results is superior. As it spreads to the whole nation, I suspect that record will go down, but that’s just natural, in the sense that the more people who take the SAT, the more the mean moves south. The CB had to renorm the SAT sometime ago to account for the expansion of the test to a more general population. I gather from your rhetorical question that you think the answer should be “NO,” that we do not want to turn education over to the free market economy. My question is do we really want to turn education over to a government monopoly? Your thoughts.
There are good and bad private schools, as well as good and bad private schools. Private schools aren’t all cut from the same cloth; being private doesn’t automatically make them good. I’ve dealt with both public and private schools by the way.
Considering teaching as a profession, I wish there would be no need for unions… BUT, I understand why they are necessary. (For example, a few years ago a bill requiring training for teachers to administer insulin shots to students was opposed by the union, especially since it was an attempt to avoid hiring school nurses.) By the way, I’m no longer a member of any union; I’m indifferent.
As far as unions go, teachers’ unions aren’t nearly as powerful as the news media suggests. People don’t seem to realize that unions don’t hire, evaluate, or tenure teachers; school systems do.
Falstaff, I am not conflating political democracy with the public school system rather I am protesting against conflating capitalism with education. I see the current attempt by many of the wealthiest members of society to decide how education should be delivered as decidedly non-democratic. Their disdain for educators is obvious; their disdain for the “common man” is obvious. As a society, we decided that providing for public education was important in order to create an educated public ready to fully participate in a democratic society. I am not interested in turning this country into an oligarchy controlled by wealthy capitalists whose obvious attempts to garner more and more of the wealth of this country for themselves and turn the bulk of the populace into “human capital’ should be repugnant to anyone who calls the United States home.
That the public schools have utterly failed in their mission is evident to me from the most recent election in which the majority preferred the Santa Clause and Socialism candidate to the candidate of individual responsibility, freedom, and work. I am not interested in turning this country into a single party statist institution controlled by wealthy political bureaucrats choosing economic winners and losers whose obvious attempts to garner for themselves more and more of the power and wealth of this country and to turn the bulk of the populace into submissive and dutiful slaves and peons who must look to the government for any smidgeon of handout to sustain their lives should be repugnant to anyone who understands the uniqueness of American freedom and purports to call the United States her home. Venezuela under Chavez is your true philosophical home, and Argentina, and Greece, and France, and the old USSR, and especially Cuba. You are a retired teacher and look to the members of Party to protect your pension. Well, the counter revolution is coming, friend Bolsheviki, so save your pennies. Party functionaries will no longer be able to live off the “fatta” the taxpayers and productive people. There is NO public sector. Everything depends on profitable businesses. You can’t be anti-capitalist without starving yourself. Verb. Sap.
Aren’t you the one who was on your fainting couch just a few days ago about “insults” and “name-calling”? Yet here you are slinging around “friend Bolsheviki” to someone who disagrees with you. Again, so typical.
I won’t even bother knocking down the ridiculous strawman you’ve built there.
BTW, wasn’t “the Santa Clause” that movie with Tim Allen?
I’m not name calling. I’m just calling things by their right names. Refute me if you can. If you won’t engage, then acknowledge that I have won the field. I MAY be wrong about all these matters, but scornful contempt for someone whose views you disagree with is not an argument.
“I’m just calling things by their right names.”
Fine. Then in that vein, I’m calling you an asshole.
You’re funny. That would imply that what issues from my metaphorical mouth is s***. What a gagging thought! At the moment I can’t think of any appropriate rejoinder, except perhaps that you don’t seem to be a politically serious person if that’s all you can think of to call me. Not even a runny, explosively diarrhetic, pus-filled, worm ridden, corruption issuing a**hole?
Summarizing Falstaff’s rant: “Amerika love it or leave it, you f….ng commie pinko faggot”.
Summarizing Duane Swaker’s reply: “You are a homophobic nazi.” Such sophisticated disputation, Duane! I faint in admiration at the power of your logic. Typical, though. If you can’t answer the argument, call names as loudly as possibly. It’s a gratification to me to have brought out the worst in you for everyone to see.
We don’t think too highly of you…just so you know. You bring out the worst in you and without any help.
Excuse me for thinking that you were interested in honest debate. That we have two dominant parties is a strong indication that there will always be a need for an honest exchange of ideas. I was raised a Republican, financially conservative and socially moderate. I believe in a strong work ethic, but I also believe in a level playing field, in which a strong public school system plays a central role. I also believe in trying to give back as much if not more than I take; when I am dead and gone, I want there to be a decent world left behind. I don’t see those ideals particularly well expressed in today’s climate by either party.
I could agree with you completely if I know what the cliche metaphor “a level playing field” really meant in practical policy terms. If it is possible, I too support a definition of “equity” leaning in that direction. If it is NOT possible, then I have to dismiss it as foolish utopianism. We would all like to leave a better world behind for our grandchildren. How are we doing???
I think a corruption of social rhetoric is part of the problem, of which our host here, Diane Ravitch is one of the most flagrant practitioners. By your measure of language violence, she is one of the least serious of disputants. The violence of my hyperbolic expression is intended to break through the anti-capitalist cant.
What I fear is that your conception of “honest debate” means we can’t really look at the root causes.
It is most likely pointless to banter with you. However, may I point out that it is obvious you are a legend in your own mind. Happy Turkey Day!
You are absolutely clueless about what is going on in privatized charter schools. They are the con of all cons. I know because I have worked in two. If you want to scam the public and line your pockets full of tax dollars become a CEO of a charter. You appoint the board of flunkies and don’t have to reveal your salary to the public. You can hire your unqualified family members and get the protection of bought out politicians. Diane knows what is going on because she has made connections with teachers all over the country. How many have you interviewed?
Quoting falstaff35: “You are a retired teacher and look to the members of Party to protect your pension.”
I think 2old2tch deserves more respect. We pay into teacher retirement, and it isn’t optional by the way.
Now… back to my Obama Gift Bag that I received for my vote! (If you haven’t received yours yet, look up Jon Stewart.)
Thank you, Joe. Yes, we have paid in 9.4% every year, but since the state has been “borrowing” their share for decades they are now trying to blame teachers for the huge unfunded balance they have built up. Not only do teachers pay taxes for government services but we pay again with our earned pension benefit on which the government has defaulted. I will be okay, but since we do not get social security, there are many teachers who are justifiably scared.
Note Falstaff35’s threats. This is the face of the “loyal” opposition. Make money or die!
May the TNR article lead to a serious wake call for the neolibs and faux-libs who have fallen in love with Rhee, charters and the ensuing reform/privatization movement. I remember them publishing an article/editorial recently (2012) that was none too friendly to teachers. I wish I could remember it off the top of my head. It was within the last year. (Sorry- Holiday memory loss/overload. If I remember it I’ll post it later.)
But, it’s all about the children, so that makes it okay, right?
Money talks and b***s*** walks, as my mom has always said.
To falstaff:
It is most likely pointless to banter with you. However, may I point out that it is obvious you are a legend in your own mind. Happy Turkey Day!
🙂
Gobble…Gobble!
“The violence of my hyperbolic expression is intended to break through the anti-capitalist cant. ” You are kidding, right?
In any case, I can’t find where I expressed anti-capitalist cant. Is it anti-capitalist cant to say that I don’t want our schools or our government run by wealthy capitalists? While mutually dependent, government and the economy are separate entities. And, judging from the poor performance of both democratic and republican administrations, I don’t want our government running the education system either. Power and money seem to make people think they have some special mandate to direct whatever they so choose. Good management always relies on two-way communication and mutual respect. In the recent educational “reform” movement, most of the stakeholders have been ignored.
Level playing field…? In absolute terms, probably impossible, but that is no reason not to aim for equity. We can’t protect children from all of life’s traumas, but we can certainly provide a better safety net. More cliches, I know, but they take up less room. All definitions are open to negotiation.
“What I fear is that your conception of “honest debate” means we can’t really look at the root causes.”
Really? I’ll admit to frustration, sarcasm and occasional outrage coloring my comments. I try very hard not to obstruct discussion of the issues.
Well, said, tch. Perhaps we can begin again. How is wealth created in a society?
A conservative voice would best avoid hyperbole, which is apparently understood to be belligerence. 2old2tch and Joe can certainly engage in productive dialog–but respect ought be cultivated. It’s one thing to admit you might be wrong; it’s something more to set the coax a constructive correction from a critic.
Moreover, the hyperbole invites cheap shots from folks who can’t take the time for a more considered dialog.
Disengage 2old2tch…don’t take the bait and waste your time. Happy Thanksgiving.
Yes, Linda. Although I doubt it would be a waste of time because I do enjoy the exercise, I am being led to drink from waters that, I suspect, may have hidden depths. My, my, I am sounding quite teacherish! Sorry, Falstaff35. Another time.
AZ education is recognized as being 49th or 50th in per pupil spending. To paraphrase Grover Norquist, if the state legislators could drown public education in the bathtub, they would. That’s why they throw money at charter schools. Some legislators make big money sponsoring laws that make them big money. http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/opinions/articles/2012/03/05/20120305taxpayer-money-senate-finance.html
Entrepreneurial enterprise is valued above all else here in Randland.
Ignore the neoliberal trolls who spew debunked and discredited ideas about public education and lie about private schools, which aren’t any better and are often worse. Charter schools ARE private schools but with taxpayers footing the bill.
I live in Arizona, am a certified teacher who came from a civilized state, and have taught in four different charter schools here. These are public schools often being run like private schools. There is an infamous one here that gets away with having an entrance exam in order to weed out all but the best of the best. Consequently, this school is consistently ranked by US News and World Report as a top-notch school when, in reality, the students are the kind of children who could be taught by a monkey with a textbook.
Arizona, backward in every way possible, was ripe for the picking. I have seen staffs comprised of high school graduate teachers who bought their degrees online and took not one college level course. I have taught in a school whose principal took federal money for a nutrition program and bought a Jaguar and, yes, this and other criminal activities were documented by several people and reported to the Arizona charter school board. What did the board do? They wrung their hands, took copies of the documentation, and did nothing. The schools are still operating.
Come to Arizona if you want to rip off the taxpayer.