Thanks to blogger TeacherKen for drawing my attention to this startling story about a failed voucher school in Milwaukee.
A small religious school called LifeSkills Academy closed “in the dead of night” in December, after collecting $200,000 in taxpayer funds for the year. It became a voucher school in 2008 and had collected some 2 million dollars since then. By the time it closed, its enrollment had dwindled to only 66 students.
In the 2012-2013 school year, only one of its 66 students was proficient in reading or math.
Recall that Governor Scott Walker wants more voucher schools in Wisconsin.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am shocked. And yet, I am not.
I hope this school is not representative of the rest. Pathetic, and a total ripoff of taxpayers’ money. Poor students!
It gets worse:
“A husband and wife running a private Milwaukee voucher school that abruptly closed last month — after accepting a total of more than $2.3 million in taxpayer money — now live in a gated community in Florida by the beach, records show.
Records show Taron and Rodney Monroe started a new private Christian school this year in Daytona Beach. While the school in Milwaukee was running on fumes, they were telling Florida friends they had experience getting government grants for religious schools.”
and
“Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction records show LifeSkills was nearly booted from the voucher program in 2010-’11 because the Monroes were listed as school administrators but didn’t have bachelor’s degrees — a program requirement that went into effect in 2010.
Once Taron Monroe hustled to get hers and the state was convinced that Rodney Monroe was no longer in a teaching or administrative position, the taxpayer money continued flowing, according to the DPI.
John Johnson, DPI spokesman, said Wednesday that the department’s authority over voucher schools, which are all private and predominantly religious, is limited.
There’s nothing in state law that allows DPI to take action against a private school because of low academic performance or because of a school leader’s personal finances, Johnson said.”
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/leaders-of-closed-milwaukee-voucher-school-are-now-in-florida-b99185323z1-240384541.html
Isn’t this illegal in SOME way? It certainly illegal and immoral, not mention unethical.
The mind boggles – it wasn’t until 2010 that someone had the brilliant idea that maybe people running schools should have at least a bachelor’s?
It isn’t illegal, and it isn’t even unusual in Wisconsin. Twenty-five years of this garbage education in the name of choice. Our wonderful governor is expanding the program at every opportunity.
I was surprised to see the BA requirement was added in WI, so I looked it up and it turns out that it applies only to private schools that are in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. It does not apply to other private schools in WI.
That’s not atypical, because although regulations vary by state, in locations like Illinois, there’s no degree requirement at all for being a teacher or administrator at K-12 private schools. IL has basically the same requirements for K-12 private schools as for home schooling, and a 1950 IL Supreme Court ruling indicated that teachers there must be “competent,” but competency was not defined, such as by educational qualifications or experience, which is why virtually anyone with a heartbeat is permitted to do it.
Goes to show that these entities are businesses and no centers of learning. Why don’t they just buy a franchise restaurant? Less hassle. Oh, I get it. More money for less work.
Well, at least those 66 remaining kids were not trapped in a traditionally zoned, failing public school.
😉
Ang: don’t be surprised if this is spun by the charterites/privatizers as an example of how “traditional public schools” are “failing our kids.”
And the “obvious” solution? More vouchers, more charters, less regulation.
Makes ₵ent¢, right?
$tudent $ucce$$ anyone?
😎
The magic of the market place, eh!
School grades are rigged. Don’t believe it and don’t believe the rhetoric.
Dang! Don’t ya just want to rush out and get some of that religious education for your children? They may not be able to read the Bible, but they sure will fear the Lord. I wonder if they learned how to count shekels? Apparently, the Monroes did.
In many cases the term “Hustler Voucher School” would be redundant.
TAGO!
Now they’re running a school for disabled kids:
“For parents of students with disabilities in Wisconsin, the Florida version of special needs vouchers has loomed large as a cautionary tale. In June 2011, the Miami New Times reported “McKay Scholarship Program Sparks Cottage Industry of Fraud and Chaos.” The article related appalling accounts of schools held in strip malls, with inexperienced teachers and no curriculum or materials. Fraud runs rampant, with almost no oversight or accountability from the state. The vouchers, concluded the reporter, were “like a perverse science experiment, using disabled school kids as lab rats and funded by nine figures in taxpayer cash.”
“On a directory of McKay scholarship program private schools on the Florida Department of Education web site, LifeSkills Academy is listed as a McKay school in the Volusia school district, serving disability-types of Emotional/Behavioral Disability, Specific Learning Disability, Gifted, and Intellectual Disability.”
I would be careful, however, and double check, because LifeSkills Academies in OHIO are known as rip-off CHARTER schools for at-risk teenagers.
Maybe they just borrowed the name. Or it’s all the same company. A franchisee or something. Who knows.
Milwaukee has had vouchers for 24 years. One would think ed reformers would get better at seating private boards to govern them.
It’s the same people. Taron & Rodney Monroe are their names; Taron is listed as the principal of the LifeSkills Academy of Dayton, FL in the McKay schools directory.
I’d love to see a piece in the Wisconsin paper about how Milwaukee public schools are doing under Governor Walker’s reforms. Presumably that’s where the 66 from this closed school are going.
Better, worse, are there still public schools open at all in that city?
How about public schools in Wisconsin, generally, under reform?
It’s remarkable to me how public school kids seem to have simply disappeared in all these reform districts, cities and states. There’s never any mention of them.
These reforms affect ENTIRE districts, cities and states, and that includes students in existing public schools. How is the laissez-faire approach to publicly-funded ed working out for those kids and their schools?
I thought maybe Secretary Duncan had checked in on Milwaukee public schools under reform, but no. He visited a miracle charter with Governor Walker where they congratulated each other on how their great reforms:
http://washingtonexaminer.com/u-s-secretary-of-education-arne-duncan-visits-milwaukee-school/video/gm-4826818
Oh, well. Maybe next time.
The language of ed reform is really telling, too.
Here’s the Columbus Dispatch, which has been an absolute cheerleader for any and all ed reform experiments calling for more regulation of charter schools.
They write: “Weed Out The Bad Bets”
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2013/12/02/weed-out-the-bad-bets.html
I love how all these clowns use phony CEO-talk to refer to public schools and children.
They really, really believe that public schools are a business.
They WANT public schools to be a business. That is ALL the deformers know. There is a lot of meanness and misinformation coming from the DEFORMERS. Maybe they really hate kids and themselves?
The deeper you dig, the worse it gets:
The Florida iteration of LifeSkills Academy got itself approved to take McKay special needs vouchers. In other words, the grift was continuing at the expense of particularly vulnerable students.
From the blog of Stop Special Needs Vouchers Wisconsin:
Operators of Failed WI Voucher School Move to Florida, Open Special Needs Voucher School
http://stopspecialneedsvouchers.blogspot.com/2014/01/operators-of-failed-wi-voucher-school.html
It’s worth noting that the Monroes have opened a new school in Florida. I’m not sure why the Florida folks are paying more attention this. http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20140128/NEWS/140129466/1040?Title=Owners-of-failed-school-trying-again-in-Daytona#gsc.tab=0