Lori Higgins reported in the Detroit Free Press on Monday that the State Board of Education was debating new rules to make charter schools more transparent and accountable. Most charters in the state operate for profit and don’t believe in opening up their operations to prying eyes. We will see how this turns out.
She wrote:
“The State Board of Education on Tuesday is set to debate a proposal to call on the Legislature to adopt comprehensive changes to the state’s charter school law that addresses transparency, accountability and educational quality.
Among the recommendations:
■ Require management companies that run charter schools to make public the same information traditional public schools must make public — including salaries, benefits and contracts.
■ Bar a company from serving as both a charter school’s management company and landlord
.
■ Require an open bidding process for contracted services.
■ Prohibit authorizers from unilaterally removing charter board members.
■ Reinstitute a “cap” that allows high-performing charter schools and operators to replicate and expand, while precluding poor-performing charters from replicating and expanding.
■ Hold authorizers accountable for the academic performance of their charters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Good for them. I wish them luck.
This is how bad it’s gotten in Ohio:
“The nonprofit groups supporting White Hat add that if the legislature had intended public dollars to remain transparent in charter-school management companies, then it would have legislated so 17 years ago when the schools were created.
“And tellingly, the legislature did not define the [management] fees as public money or otherwise restrict management companies’ rights to purchase property,” wrote an attorney for the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education, a charter-school advocacy group. “Management companies are private and the money they are paid is private, just as with any other vendor that provides services to a school or some other public entity. Property purchased by a management company thus belongs to it, not anyone else.”
Summit Academy and White Hat have accumulated significant assets by receiving money transferred from local school districts.
The two companies collected $110,837,594 last year, according to the Ohio Department of Education. County records indicate Summit Academy owns at least half of the 27 schools it manages in Ohio. These properties are worth more than $7 million.
IRS tax fillings show Summit Academy has grown its total assets from $10,541,324 in 2010 to $17,372,299 in 2013.
While Summit Academy puts its name on property deeds, White Hat uses affiliated for-profit companies to purchase its school properties, then charges the school boards rent, the amount of which is not public record.”
Charter school management companies are claiming
1. they own every asset (real estate, equipment, everything) associated with the charter school, although everything was purchased with public money
2. the public has absolutely no right to any record kept by the contractor/management company
It’s going to the Ohio supreme court, which is great, because the public will finally find out just how outrageous this has gotten and how our lawmakers have been completely captured. Every investment the public puts into a charter school becomes the property of the management company. We don’t own these schools, although we paid for them. They’re privately owned. We get zero ownership interest. I’d love to ask the Wall Streeters who are backing the privatization of public schools if they would accept this deal- publicly-funded but the public has no ownership interest.
Not one of them would accept that deal, because it’s a horrible cheat and a rip-off.
http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/several-nonprofit-groups-backing-white-hat-management-in-charter-school-supreme-court-case-1.512277
Thanks for keeping on top of this. The fraud is unbelievable, longstanding, and largely a byproduct of the court ruling in Clevland years ago. I am not optimistic but the outcome will be. I hope I am wrong and that some sanity is restored to this version of the giant sucking sound about which Ross Perot spoke in connection with NAFTA.
It should not be in a court. The fact that is IS in a court, that these are private litigants and that was their only recourse, is itself a real indictment of state government.
This is the job of the legislature and the executive branch. They are supposed to write and then interpret public education law. The fact that they have “relinquished” this to the private sector is outrageous and irresponsible and a real scary preview of what this will look like when they privatize the whole system.
To get a hearing or recourse or transparency on public funds that went to a (supposedly) “public school” these people had to sue. Are we all supposed to sue our individual charter school management companies? Who has the resources for that? Which individuals? This case has been going on for five years. They’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars and endless hours to determine things like “who holds title?” and “where did the money go?”
Ain’t relinquishment grand! The deep-pocketed litigant will win against the public every time. Yeah, this is real “progressive”. Why don’t they just seize public assets outright and get it over with? They have NO process in place outside a court. They may as well just seize the assets.
Also, oral arguments at the state supreme court are streamed online.
If you want to, you can watch the charter management companies battle the charter parents in court, but you still won’t be able to see the charter books to see where all your money went unless the parents win 🙂
http://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/videostream/
Chiara: thank you for the information.
It makes it crystal clear why the leading charterites/privatizers loathe and fear anything even remotely resembling the limited transparency we associate with public schools.
And it underscores that charter schools ≠ public schools.
A very dead, very old and very Roman guy knew the types involved in this sort of enterprise:
“For greed all nature is too little.” [Lucius Annaeus Seneca]
BTW, whatever happened to the Roman Empire of his time and its cage busting innovative disruptions? Did everything turn out ok?
😏
If you really want to weep, look at the bios of the people who work for the Ohio Coalition for Quality Education (they are the people arguing against transparency in the lawsuit).
A huge number of them are former state representatives or state dept of ed people.
They leave public employment and immediately start lobbying their colleagues in the statehouse and state government. It’s a revolving door. It must be hard to tell the lobbyists from the lawmakers in Columbus. They’re the same people.
http://www.ocqe.org/
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx >sigh< just a naïve fool here, but how about a taxpayer lawsuit? "Taxation without representation", does that still mean anything? Seems just plain crazy wrong to me that state legislators can break such a public trust by simply passing a law that essentially says 'sorry, pay up & shut up, we're stealing your dough.'
Michigan is long overdue for an overhaul of its charter schools. Let’s see how many of them survive when they are forced to become accountable to the state board of education and the people of Michigan. This should have happened long ago before for profit companies got their claws into our taxpayer dollars. We also need a new governor who will restore funds taken away from public schools. Education needs to be the number one priority in our state.
I’d like the public universities that are listed to explain why they went along with this. I hope they weren’t going along with it because they get a get a percentage of each student’s allotted stipend as the “authorizer”.
How much are they making on this? What is it they do to justify these fees they’re paid? They’re publicly-funded too. I’d like to know why they had to be called to account by a newspaper.
Sorry, Charter Schools are a SHAM!
When sports stars, movie stars, and foreign interests,,,not to mention the politicians and people like Gates support Charter Schools…well, look at the source. OY!
Agree, time to work on over turning charter laws in each state. 8 states still don’t have charter laws.
Breaking news!!!!
Potential major cheating scandal in Dallas under Broad sup mike miles’ watch: http://educationblog.dallasnews.com/2014/08/something-wrong-in-staar-results-at-dallas-isds-umphrey-lee-elementary.html/
All these seem like reasonable recommendations. I hope they pass.
The Atlantic has a good piece on the Turkish charter chains:
“One of their most troubling characteristics is that they don’t have a great track record when it comes to financial and legal transparency. In Utah, a financial probe launched by the Utah Schools Charter Board found the Beehive Science and Technology Academy, a Gülen-run charter school, to be nearly $350,000 in debt. Furthermore, as the Deseret News reported, the school’s administrators seemed to be reserving coveted jobs for their own countrymen and women: “In a time of teacher layoffs, Beehive has recruited a high percentage of teachers from overseas, mainly Turkey.”
Even more unnervingly, the school’s money—public funds from the local community—was being donated to Gülen-affiliated organizations and used to pay the cost of bringing teachers to Utah from Turkey. To illustrate the level of fiscal mismanagement, the school spent about 50 cents to pay the immigration costs of foreign teachers for every dollar that it spent on textbooks. In 2010, after being the first charter school in Utah history to be shuttered, Beehive appealed the decision and was reopened the same year.”
I’m not sure it will matter. The same story was on 60 Minutes years ago and not a peep since.
They must be hugely politically connected.
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/08/120-american-charter-schools-and-one-secretive-turkish-cleric/375923/
“A Gülen organization controls the real estate companies that own their schools. They charge rent to their own schools and tax-payers foot the bill. They refuse to answer public records requests, falsify attendance records, and cheat on standardized tests. Yet, Ohio continues to grant them charters to operate.” He added, “It doesn’t hurt that the Gülen organization is politically active and treats state politicians to lavish trips abroad.” But overall, he said, “this Wild West atmosphere of few regulations creates incestuous relationships among politicians, vendors, and schools. Charter schools like Gülen’s give generously. In return, they are allowed to keep their saloons open and serve whatever they want. The only way to save the charter school system is to start over again by using the model of effective public schools.”
Hah! They have to adopt the methods of effective public schools! Good for him.
Talk about a rebel 🙂
That’s like…blasphemy.
Good to see.
I think NC passed some similar stuff; so that’s good. (but not the cap—just stuff about accountability)
Dr. Ravitch,
Please turn your microscope on DISD, the Home Rule Charter movement, and Mike Miles. We are dying down here.
Thanks.
To DISD, send me articles.
I don’t know what articles you need. The local media is always pro Mike Miles (another Broad trained superintendent with little teaching experience). The mayor of Dallas and many members of the Board of Trustees support Miles and the home rule charter movement publicly. He was superintendent in Harrison County Colorado for two years prior to coming here. The best site I can direct you to is a blog established by teachers. It covers the gamut of issues here: teacher churn, VAM, home rule charter, ad infinitum. Please let me know what else you require and I’ll do my best to get it to you.
Please see: http://www.disdblog.com/
Count on the hedge fund lobby spending millions to kill this bill—they will spend whatever it takes.
Charters are public schools when they want tax dollars, so why don’t they want to follow the same regulations as public school? I don’t understand why these measures have to be debated.
Concerned,
These measures seem fine, but in general charter schools (and choice schools in general) can get by with less regulation. Some public school regulations serve to substitute for a families ability to choose schools. If a student can choose between schools, those regulations are unnecessary. Some public school regulations are meant to protect the local government from the political influence that the government can use by virtue of being the largest employer in the city. If the power to hire, fire, and determine salaries is dispersed to each building, that concern is much lower and some of the regulations can be eliminated.
Concerned Mon, (Not TE)
The information at the other end of the following links may provide the “real” answer t6o why private sector charter schools want to keep things opaque and without legal restraint and accountability.
“The report draws upon news reports, criminal complaints and more to detail how, in just 15 of the 42 states that have charter schools, charter operators have used school funds illegally to buy personal luxuries for themselves, support their other businesses, and more.”
http://integrityineducation.org/charter-fraud/
http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/05/charter-schools-gone-wild-study-finds-widespread-fraud-mismanagement-and-waste/
One company held four board meetings in other counties that covered 20 of their charter schools at one meeting. Their charter school in Orange County received a school grade of F, and their applications to open three more were denied by OCPS, but the company has appealed to the State. There has never been enough money for the schools, and now, not only do we have an expensive parallel school system, but it 10 includes many management companies turning a profit.
Click to access LWV+Final+Report+Statewide+Study+1-3.pdf
Charter schools in Ohio are closing at record rates, and taxpayers are being left holding the bill. “$1.4 billion has been spent since 2005 through school year 2012-2013 on charter schools that have never gotten any higher grade than an F or a D,” Collins said.
http://www.nbc4i.com/story/24778722/nbc4-investigates-taxpayers-left-holding-bill-for-charter-schools
The embattled charter school, opened in 2007 by longtime activist Fredrica Bey, had been on probation for more than a year. The school is also facing a complaint by the U.S. Attorney’s office which contends Bey took $345,325 in federal grant money earmarked for programs to keep “at-risk” youths off of the streets and instead used it used it to pay bills for the Women In Support of the Million Man March, a non-profit community group she started in 1995.
http://charterschoolscandals.blogspot.com/
When state investigators demanded last year to see personal tax returns filed by Eddie Calderon-Melendez, the founder and chief executive of a troubled network of charter high schools in Brooklyn, he produced them. One problem, according to the investigators, was that those state tax returns were falsified and had never been filed.
State educators are seeking criminal charges against the executives of a charter school operation after an audit found they had misused at least $25.6 million in public education money, including $2.6 million for personal expenses.
http://brockton.massteacher.org/charter_schools/california_csfraud.html
Here’s how it works: A for-profit educational management organization “helps” the nonprofit board write the charter application. Once the charter is granted, the nonprofit board hires the same EMO to operate the charter school. The charter school pays the EMO sizable fees to “manage” the schools – those fees added up to over $15.7 million taxpayer dollars for one EMO in Eastern North Carolina over the past five years.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/06/3511351/how-savvy-companies-can-use-nc.html#storylink=cpy
http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/01/06/3511351/how-savvy-companies-can-use-nc.html
The Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday announced it had charged charter school operator UNO with defrauding investors in a $37.5 million bond offering for school construction work by failing to disclose conflicts of interest.
This is just an example. There’s more. A lot more.
Lloyd,
Thanks for the list.
You are welcome. And this morning, we read about the $1-billion, opaque Charter school fiasco in Michigan that the GOP defends.
Why is this debate addressing ONLY charter schools? YOU are our STATE Board of Education…. wouldn’t it be in the best interest of all of our children for you to set standards for all schools? In the best interest of our children make the standards reasonable. Also, make them easy to measure so that the teachers can focus on the children; not your ridiculous, cumbersome, and inaccurate standards.
Be the leaders you present yourself to be – fix this broken system – trying to force only Charter Schools to improve is only another political move that will cause more time and money to be ultimately lost. Please do the right thing and focus on the children. Put our teachers back in the role they were meant to do- teach. End this crazy rollercoaster we are on that puts all educators in the position of defending their jobs – and their pay – which is focusing energy away from the children.
I am troubled that you are focusing on charter schools – which would not exist at all if you would have taken good care of the Michigan Education System years ago.
I am not interested in hearing about failing Charter Schools from a Board that has been governing education in our state with failing schools everywhere…. how can you fix Charter Schools if you can’t fix your own?
My colleague Eileen Weiser and I have made this point (albeit more tactfully) in meetings for the last two years.
Dianna Hilgendorf:
It is so easy to throw around the “F” word (failure) without providing the evidence that proves it so.
I think you are assuming that the public schools are failing based on cherry-picked claims by the corporate education reform movement that manufactured this so called crises in the first place.
The real failure has nothing to do with most teachers or the public schools but with a country/government that won’t do what’s necessary to overcome poverty and introduce children to books through a national early childhood education program.
There’s mountains of evidence that the fake reformers avoid like it was Ebola that proves the schools are not failing, and that, for the most part, poverty is the primary culprit. In fact, when we avoid manipulating data and cherry-picking facts, the evidence strongly proves that the public schools have been on a steady, slow, upward movement improving as it goes regardless of the endless war on public education from the corporate reform movement that doesn’t have anything to do with reform but with profit and wealth growth for a few.
In fact, most of the public schools managed to keep improving regardless of budget cuts and buildings that were aging and falling apart.
Much of what the Board majority called for was already in statute but they acted so hastily that they failed to consider all the implications of what they adopted.
Lloyd Lofthouse:
Maybe you have never been in a city school and observed a host of rats scurry by undaunted by your presence. I have.
If the majority of schools are improving and education is better for the children in those schools, and schools are feeding, clothing, etc… in impoverished districts – then how can they be failing? Because in schools across this nation politics and agendas by leaders within the system are focused more on their own personal gain than educating children.
Public schools have been sited often for misappropriation of school dollars – not just a problem in charter schools.
Public schools often have problems with open disclosure of what they are planning to do and make political moves to achieve goals that have nothing to do with educating children. My own suburb district board and others within the system have been caught in such outlandish behavior over the years – and it has been reported in the local paper. Money is lost – never to be found. Misappropriated, stolen, and the like. Public schools are hardly transparent. And they are very manipulative – all at the expense of children.
I am not a school teacher. I have many friends who are teachers. I have reared 3 children through their educations – and now have an adopted child who is in elementary school. My son is getting a decent education, but I see his teachers do things that don’t make sense and in the end it is evident they are working around a political system designed to make public schools fail. Maneuvering through a system like playing a chess game – not exactly what I had in mind as a tax payer.
Somewhere along the way we have lost touch with the real important issue here – teachers need to be able to teach at their best – in and environment that promotes a safe and healthy teaching environment. They cannot do that in buildings that crumble and are dirty. Our system currently doesn’t allow for school funds to work towards that end. A huge failure that should have been changed 50 years ago.
School boards are scary. People have been elected to school boards that do not send their children to public schools. Why would someone who has no vested interest in educating their own children in the public school want to sit on a school board? People seek seats on the school board that never cared in any previous activity to be involved in the school system. I have seen school boards directly vote and put policies in place that are in direct conflict of the children in that district. Is there a way that this can be fixed?
I don’t believe that charter schools should be allowed to take tax dollars and misuse them – however, if the public schools can – than we should allow the charter schools. Regardless, regulations for schools should address all schools – public, private, and charter. Why have a blanket set of regulations? For the children.
As Dr. Richard Zeile says “Much of what the Board majority called for was already in statute but they acted so hastily that they failed to consider all the implications of what they adopted.” Duh, there is always accountability with grant money – can State representatives can send a committee to investigate – and people can get criminally charged for misuse of public funds. I wish the same would be true with our public school system.
All of the logistics of how a charter school is put together and how the state board had a knee jerk reaction is exactly the point of what is happening here…. where is the concern for education and children? I do not see the merit in what the board is doing, the school boards in all districts, administrators, etc. Everyone is focused on how to politically maneuver through and get their way – none of it applies to educating children. Like the failing city schools – our entire educational system needs to have more than another band aid piled upon the numerous band aids already in place. Are we going to wait for all public schools to have open enrollment and charter schools popping up across the nation – in every district? Or admit that there is a huge failure here – stop worrying about how it all happened and get back to basics in the public schools…. educating children. Why is the State of Michigan PUBLIC school board worried about what the charter schools are doing wrong? It is similar to the neighbor who has a wooden fenced yard but can’t quit peering over to see what the neighbors are doing… nosey. If they focused on getting better they could put the charter schools out of business and settle the issue altogether.
I am so frustrated over all of the politics in my own district at this upcoming election and the next I am voting for any challenger of an incumbent. Until the school board has a completely new group of people in those chairs.
To the Michigan Board of Education: Go back to educating children, get in shape, work hard to do the right thing for Michigan children, walk the halls of Detroit Schools, Pontiac Schools, Flint Schools, Saginaw Schools. Look at the faces of the children and teachers in those districts and then tell me about how Charter Schools are doing this and that wrong. As a parent – and if unfortunate to live in a city district – I would send my children to a Charter School hell before I would continue in the City School. Half an education is better than no education at all. Fix your failing schools because they are failing the children worse than the Charter Schools – yes someone is making some serious coin educating children on a tax dollar – is that worse? You want the dollars back so you can have the dollars in the Public School districts – it is your fault in the first place that the money is lost to you. Do the right thing and you will win it back because the parents in the districts want to bring the children back – but they will not if you are not on your game. Your game is educating children. You will not beat Charter Schools by finding fault – you can only win by being better.
You said, “Maybe you have never been in a city school and observed a host of rats scurry by undaunted by your presence. I have.”
Where I taught, the varmints were much bigger than rats—possums, raccoons and rats lived in the crawl space above the classroom where I taught for the last 10 of 30 years. The possums fell into an open cell and died trapped in the wall between my room and the next. The stench was so bad, I had to move my students to the library to teach while the district came in and cut open the wall to get rid of the dead animals. Previous to that, I taught out of a portable that, at one time, had dead cats in the crawl space. In addition, the roof leaked. On rainy days, it was common to have carpets that turned into sponges and we had to cover the computers with plastic tarps to protect them from all the water coming through form the roof while the worse leaks had trash cans to catch as much water as possible.
And that’s not even mentioning the graffiti patrol every morning at 6:00 AM when the custodians went around on an electric cart with paint to paint over the nightly graffiti. On top of that were the shootings as rival gangs continued their war. The first school I taught at after my year long, full time internship with a master teacher, it was so dangerous, they had concertina, razor wire on the roof to keep the gangs off because they would use axes to chop their way into the buildings. It wasn’t uncommon to arrive on campus (it was an elementary school and I taught 5th grade_ to discover bullet holes in the doors and the lights for the teacher parking lot shot out once again with the parking lot littered with glass.
I witnessed one drive by shooting from my classroom doorway and heard another behind closed doors while working late with students one night.
The previous two paragraphs are the tip of the iceberg. I go into more detail on my blog and my memoir.
Yes, school boards can be scary, but an active, organized local teacher’s unions can often offset the scary members who have an agenda that has nothing to do with children. Teachers organize with parents to support the school board candidates who have the children’s interests. Where I taught, the local union was actively working with engaged parents to elect the best candidates for the school board.
To put your experiences into perspective, I suggest you buy “The Teacher Wars, A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession” by Dana Goldstein. The book is scheduled by Doubleday to come out September 2.
Greed, religion and politics are the problem. Teachers are not the problem. The teacher unions are not the problem. No one is perfect so there will always be a few examples that can be used to demonize teachers and their unions. But Bill Gates, Obama’s Machiavellian Common Core testing agenda to rank and yank teachers and close public schools, and corporate education reform is not the answer.
As for beating out the Charter school by being better, the public schools have already achieved that goal before NCLB, Obama’s Race to the Top and the Machiavellian Common Core crap. Two recent studies—funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—a few years apart out of Stanford University found that most Charter schools perform worse or the same as the public schools and only a small number of Charter schools appear to be better but when those schools are examined closer to find out why they perform better, we discover that they have restrictive admission policies, quickly get rid of kids who are at risk and/or are difficult to teach so the few successful Charters end up with the best, easiest to teach children who have supportive parents. For instance, the KIPP chain was found to have dumped 60 percent of the black boys who lived in poverty, because they were the most difficult, at risk kids to teach.