Ohio is a happy state for the for-profit charter industry. They make huge profits regardless of school performance.
Stephen Dyer reminds us of the great financial success of David Brennan of White Hat, the state’s largest charter chain.
“Now we know what White Hat Management is all about. There was always a pretty strong indication that White Hat was about making money, not educating children.
“After all, when you get exactly 1 A on a state report card and have 72 opportunities to get an A, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.
“When you’ve collected more than $1 billion in taxpayer money without having to make a single appearance before a legislative committee, as White Hat founder David Brennan has been able to do, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.
“When you contribute more than $4 million to politicians, you’re probably not in the game for the same reasons most educators are.
“But then we got the news last week that Brennan’s White Hat Management was going to sell off their least profitable, “highest performing”, and most at-risk for closure schools to a group run by K12, Inc.’s founder Ron Packard. That’s right, the same guy who gave us the Ohio Virtual Academy and all its “success.”
“But White Hat will keep its cash cow online school, OHDELA, which has the worst performance index score of any statewide E-School — and that’s saying something, given how abjectly horrible Ohio’s statewide E-Schools perform. Its performance index score actually dropped more than 4% from four years ago, the only statewide E-School to see such a precipitous drop. Again, that’s saying something.”
Do you think the day will come when legislators will demand real accountabilility from charter operators? When they will stop giving away hundreds of million or billions to failed charter operators?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have repeatedly stated that the corporate media’s bottom line is making money, not educating. When money supplants people in importance, when education becomes just a vehicle for making money, when corporate controlled media supplies the “truths” which people must accept
How long can people exist as people. A pile of money exists but what good is a bag of gold in the middle of a desert?
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Question: How did the Gulen Charter Schools get such a stronghold in Ohio? I don’t GET IT!
Gulen is a religious school. What about the separation between church and state. Gulen Charter Schools frighten me as does any religious school getting $$$$$ from public funds meant for public education.
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Yvonne, free trips for legislators to Turkey. Campaign contributions. Carefully cultivating friends in high places.
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Thank you, Diane! I needed to read your response. So once again it’s about the perks and $$$$$.
I asked the question because I am astonished (not in a good way) about a university professor in this country who is actually promoting Gulen Charter schools.
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“Free trips to Turkey”- Speaker of the Ohio House-Cliff Rosenberger, among them.
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“The Shadow Knows”
The Shadow knows ’bout Gulen schools
Gulen books and Gulen rules
The Shadow knows ’bout Gulen money
Gulen milk and Gulen honey
We don’t know, but The Shadow knows
‘Bout exiled Turks in the Poconos
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Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Do you think the day will come when legislators will demand real accountabilility from charter operators? When they will stop giving away hundreds of million or billions to failed charter operators?
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I may have gotten my CCSS non-informational texts mixed up, but I seem to recall that White Hat fella from a bit of doggerel I read a while back:
[start]
I met a traveller from a rheeally antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is David Brennan, edupreneur of edupreneurs:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
[end]
*For the original, and much better version, look up “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822.*
😏
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“Do you think the day will come when legislators will demand real accountabilility from charter operators? When they will stop giving away hundreds of million or billions to failed charter operators?”
As Buddy Holly liked to sing
Well, that’ll be the day, of charter good-bye
Yes, that’ll be the day, of pigs in the sky
They say they love the children, you know it’s a lie
‘Cause that’ll be the day when I die
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Under Ohio’s charter governance scheme there are two contracts. The first is between the state and the “authorizer- that’s the “charter” and a charter is just a kind of contract but it’s deregulatory- a grant of authority from the state to the authorizer.
The second contract is between the school and the management company, and no one looks at those, partly because White Hat has lobbied and litigated to keep that contract a private transaction.
To look at “Ohio charters” one has to get past the “charter” and go to that second contract, because often it’s controlling- the management company are making all of the decisions for the school.
I have no idea why people who were concerned with accountability and transparency would set up a system that has two additional layers than that of existing public schools, one of which is almost completely opaque, but they did. It’s just bad government. They invented a lousy governance scheme.
I personally think it was arrogant to throw out a public school governance system that took years and a lot of hard work and hard lessons to evolve and replace it without a second thought for downside risk, but that’s just me.
But, if people want to know how these schools work they have to look at the second contract: management company to school. THAT contract, not the charter.
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You assumed they were concerned with accountability and transparency. They are not. Those are “tools” to be used to break up the government monopoly, but after they enter the “free market” or are part of a free market, they either get results or sink.
However, there is an assumption in there that their goal then is to get results because that’s how they stay in business. If you shift that over to “their goal is to get money” – then it doesn’t matter how well the schools are doing, so long as they are paying the bare minimum for the barest level of education to maximize their profit margin.
They used to communicate that this would least to savings for taxpayers because they could do it for less, but then the truth comes out that they might be able to do it for less, but they do it on the backs of their teachers and pocket the difference.
Whenever you see calls for transparency, that’s the free market approach for something short of regulation since the market will regulate based on the information. Accountability is regulation, and they call for it for district schools because they claim they are an unaccountable monopoly, whereas charters don’t need either because they give results with enough transparency that they don’t need to break their “best practices” (at making money) to their competitors.
They put these layers in place so no one is responsible for the charters except the authorizer who has very little access to the going-ons at their schools (in exchange for a generous bribe of the per-pupil tuition fee for doing very little – they will take the heat if something goes wrong – not the charter operator).
In short, the authorizers are there solely to absorb criticism of what happens at the school and they accept money to do just that even though they have very little control over what happens there.
The charter school is then the conduit to funnel the money from the state with no real accountability except for how long they want to line their pockets for based on their profit margin and their ability to engineer results based on a philosophy of choosing the right students (and kicking out or harassing the others into leaving) to stay in business until it’s too embarassing to the state to keep funding them….then their infrastructure disappears into the ether along with lots of taxpayer money and only through very expensive and complicated legal machinations can the money be traced and retrieved.
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People in Ohio believe “public” means “nonprofit” in a public school context, so when they hear “public charter schools” they skip right by any questions about profit.
It’s completely understandable. They have an entire framework in place when they hear these words and “public school” in the Ohio DOES mean “nonprofit”.
It’s really interesting when you start to ask people basic questions because often they don’t know. One of the assumptions a lot of people make is charters are “magnet” schools, and that’s why they perceive them as “better” – because they think they’re selective.
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Right, the school is non-profit – the management organization generally is not, and even if they are, non profit doesn’t mean non-salaried so long as the money is all used on organizational costs and not kicked out to shareholders, enriching members of the organization is permitted in a non-profit context.
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A valuable tutorial on the issue of transparency. I think there is little interest in governance except by contracts written to protect the charter authorizers and operators. I have not recently looked at the list of authorizers in Ohio, but there are a few who dominate the landscape. Many authorizers of only one school seem to authorized by a local school board. I did get a call back from the office of the Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. Any change has to be legislated. His office can deal with consumer fraud but the list of types does not include educational services.
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It’s funny too, because the public seems to understand the connection between “contractor and school” regarding public schools. When they wanted to find out why Deasey made such a lousy deal for tablets, media didn’t go to the original charter for the City of LA and see where LA public schools were granted authority to hire contractors in that governance scheme. They asked to see the contract between the school board and Apple.
If the state is relinquishing to authorizers and then authorizers are relinquishing to charter schools who are then hiring management companies, the public has to see ALL the transactions, especially if management companies end up running the whole school.
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Here’s another question on regulation and public money going to marketing.
Why wouldn’t this complaint apply to charter schools?:
“The practices of for-profit career colleges — and claims that some rip off students and taxpayers — are coming before Congress again, this time with a threat that could cost the colleges money.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown wants to make it impossible for any college to use federal money for marketing, advertising or recruiting — a restriction he says would stop profiteering and recruiting abuses. A two-year Senate education committee investigation in 2012 found that for-profit colleges spent more than 20 percent of their revenues on marketing and recruitment, which was more than many spent on instruction.”
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2015/06/with_taxpayer_money_for-profit_colleges_spend_massively_on_marketing_sherrod_brown_wants_to_ban_the_practice.html#incart_river
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Because lobbyists and campaign contributions for charter schools.
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Honestly, I wouldn’t even object if “the market” continues to regulate charter schools in the absence of any meaningful reform if Ohio lawmakers would devote some of their time and energy to the public schools 90% of kids in this state attend.
Two things are going on here. There’s the laser-like focus on “choice” (charters and vouchers) and what amounts to abandoning existing public schools.
Public schools will not thrive as long as we have zealous committed charter promoters on the charter side and completely useless “agnostics” who are lousy advocates for public schools on the other. Public schools lose in that set-up.
Public schools deserve an advocate in government.
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If all Ohio public employees, including those retired from public service and, their families, voted Democratic last fall, the landslide for Ohio Republican privatizers, wouldn’t have occurred.
The megachurches, where many of the teachers are members, preach conservative voting and the teachers comply.
In N.Y. state, the voters have the right to blame the politicians. But, in Ohio, teachers and other public employees, elected well-known privatizers.
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In listening to and observing numerous faculty from Ohio’s public university departments of education and, N.C., Va.. Wash. and Oh. teachers, from K-12, the word, passive, is a good descriptor, except in the rare case.
Hand-wringing is a level above their demonstrated interest. I’d like to say their responses reflect fear of reprisal but, it wouldn’t be accurate. Assessing the response as defeatism seems unwarranted, when all they had to do, at least in Ohio, was vote Democratic in the last election. I peg the response at mild lament. Puzzling.
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I see the day coming when they find a way to avoid all measures of accountability that they say are so important for the rest of us. Keep exposing them and maybe that won’t happen.
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Reblogged this on Virtual School Meanderings and commented:
This is an interesting commentary… Note the references to e-schools, which in Ohio are the full-time cyber charter schools.
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