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Shawgi Tell: In Minnesota, Charter Schools Frequently Fail and Close

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2026 //
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Shawgi Tell keeps close watch over the checkered evolution of charter schools. He discovered that Minnesota, the first state to open a charter school, beats every other state when it comes to charter closure and failure.

It bears remembering the reason why almost every state has authorized charter schools. When Arne Duncan announced the Race to the Top competition for a share of $5 billion, every state that applied had to first authorize charter schools. That requirement turbo-charged the growth of charter schools.

He writes:

The first charter school law in the U.S. was passed in Minnesota in 1991. The first charter school in the country, City Academy High School, opened in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1992. Since then charter school laws have been passed in 47 states, Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

Over the past 34 years many charter schools have failed and closed in Minnesota. According to a 2025 article titled “More Minnesota charter schools are facing possible termination,” “In 2024 [alone], nine charter schools closed, the most ever. But records show another 10 charter schools could face termination.” It is worth noting here that, like many privately-operated charter schools across the country, most charter schools in Minnesota are highly segregated.

On April 23, 2026, Hoodline featured an article titled: “Charter Shock: AFSA Parents Scramble As Twin Cities Ag‑STEM School Shuts Down.”

What is interesting about this article is that it speaks to the shock, trauma, and abandonment that families and educators always feel when a charter school fails and closes abruptly, which is how charter schools close nine out of ten times. This article also highlights the same reasons that charter schools fail and close every week: declining enrollment, mismanagement, financial malfeasance, and/or poor academic performance.

Hoodline reports that, “The Academy for Sciences and Agriculture (AFSA), a Twin Cities charter serving students from pre-K through 12th grade, will shut its doors at the end of this school year, leaving families in Little Canada and Vadnais Heights scrambling for new schools.” AFSA first opened in 2001 (25 years ago).

The article continues: “Parents say the announcement came out of nowhere. Several told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS they had little warning. ‘Yes, it was sudden’, parent Kevin Cedeno said, adding that his son is having a hard time with the news.”

It appears that “the school [which focuses on science, the environment, and agriculture] has dealt with declining enrollment since the pandemic.” And like so many other charter schools nationwide, AFSA also experienced “oversight gaps” and problematic “procurement and contracting practices,” according to Hoodline. Conflicts of interest and poor accountability are common in deregulated charter schools operated by unelected private persons.

In related news, Agamim Classical Academy, a K-8 charter school in Edina, Minnesota, founded in 2015, will also be closing its doors in June 2026. Watershed High School, a charter school located in the city of Richfield, Minnesota, will also be closing its doors at the same time. The privately-operated charter school was open for only four years.

Old and new charter schools fail and close every week in America. The proponents of such schools openly and publicly embrace the idea that the “free market” should be the arena in which schools operate, which means that schools are a commodity and susceptible to the chaos, anarchy, and violence of the “free market.” This arrangement is seen by “free market” idealogues as a modern humane way to organize education and other services and social programs. In this setup, nothing is guaranteed and everyone fends for themselves. The right to education is replaced with the notion that education is an opportunity, something you shop for like a consumer. Education is reduced to chance and luck. “Buyer beware” is the only rail guard.

“Choice” and “competition” are some of the buzzwords attached to this outmoded approach to life. Thus, “parents are empowered” to choose which school to send their child to when in fact charter schools actually choose students and parents. This is why so many groups of students are under-enrolled in these “free schools of choice” that are said to be “open to all.” 

Parents are also led to believe that the philosophy of winning and losing is in no way problematic. Thus the notion of a school lottery is openly normalized in the charter school sector, meaning that some students will get into their “school of choice” while others will not. There is no concept of guaranteeing everyone’s basic right to a high-quality, free, fully-funded public education controlled by a public authority worthy of the name. You may or may not get a “good” education. How is this possible in the richest country in the world? Why is education a gamble in the 21st century?

To be sure, privatization creates and exacerbates numerous problems. See here for a detailed discussion of these problems.

According to the Minnesota Department of Education there are 173 charter schools in Minnesota today serving around 70,000 students.

Shawgi Tell (PhD) is author of the book Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at  stell5@naz.edu. Read other articles by Shawgi.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Minnesota

Jan Resseger: Linda McMahon Decides Which Federal Programs Live or Die, Not Congress

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2026 //
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Jan Resseger, the most reliable analyst of federal programs, reports on the Trump administration’s decisions to increase or decrease or eliminate federal programs at will–regardless of Congressuonal direction.

By the way, be sure to read The New Yorker‘s fascinating dissection of the career path of wrestling entrepreneur and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. Wrestling prepared her for politics, says writer Zach Helfand.

A brief excerpt:

Eventually, Linda McMahon came to be “tombstoned” (held upside down and slammed on her head) by a wrestler named Kane, “stunnered” (put in a three-quarter facelock jawbreaker) by Stone Cold Steve Austin, sexually assaulted, cheated on, driven to seek a divorce, lusted over, and sedated. Vince tried to get Shane to slap her in a scene, but Shane [her son] refused. Stephanie [her daughter] slapped her, though, and she slapped Stephanie. McMahon’s most memorable story arc involved Vince demanding a divorce, triggering a nervous breakdown in the ring which rendered her catatonic. For months, Vince would roll out her limp body in a wheelchair and subject her to various humiliations. The wrestler Trish Stratus, who was kissed and groped by Vince in a scene in front of a vegetative McMahon, has recalled that during rehearsal Linda asked, “If I drool, would that be more effective for my character?”

Before the election, I foolishly predicted that Trump would never get rid of the Department of Education because many Republicans support it. I did not anticipate that Trump would appoint a Secretary willing to hollow it out by transferring most of its programs to other departments.

Resseger follows up by showing how McMahon has cut and rearranged the budget:

If you have been tracking what is happening to federal funding for the nation’s public schools, you won’t be surprised to learn that Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman continues his role as the best reporter on this subject.  Here are two updates from last week.

How will federal funding flow this year once most of the Department of Education’s programs have been sent to other federal departments through interagency agreements?

Lieberman reassures state education officials and school district leaders that most key programs will continue to have their funds released “through the U.S. Department of Education’s grant portal this summer… Programs like Title I aid for disadvantaged students and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)… allocate funds for school districts, but by law the money flows first to states in two batches, one on July 1 and another three months later… In a statement, an Education Department spokesperson said the agency is ‘committed to delivering formula funding by the July 1 deadline.”

Operation of Title I is traveling to the Department of Labor, and the work IDEA is traveling to the Department of Health and Human Services.  Lieberman describes what is expected to happen with Title I: “The Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration in recent months has advertised new education grant competitions ‘on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education,’ and the two agencies have touted their collaboration in jointly running the competitions.  Still, most staffers overseeing those programs still work for the Department of Education. The postings announcing grant availability list Education department email addresses under the section with contact information.”

To what extent did the Trump Administration Violate the Congressional power of the purse last year?

Lieberman reports that data recently released by the Department of Education shows that under Linda McMahon’s leadership, the Department of Education “sidestepped Congress on more than $1 billion in education spending.”

“The Education Department, under President Donald Trump, subsequently subtracted appropriated funding from more than a dozen programs and instead added those dollars to other priorities, according to an Education Week analysis of congressional justification documents the White House published this month as part of its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal… The Education Department typically publishes its ‘spending plan’ mere weeks after Congress passes a new fiscal year budget, confirming allocations lawmakers laid out in their budget bills.  Congress approved fiscal 2025 spending (last year’s final federal budget) in March of last year, but the Education Department’s spending plan never materialized. That means the recently published numbers offer the first glimpse at how the executive branch decided to spend funds Congress appropriated more than a year ago.”

Here are merely some of Lieberman’s examples of what the new numbers show.  “For four Education Department programs, the Trump administration spent more than what Congress had prescribed: charter schools ($60 million added), civics instruction ($140 million added), historically Black colleges and universities ($439 million added), and tribal colleges ($56 million added).  To come up with those added expenditures, the Trump administration effectively zeroed out another four programs entirely, rerouting a total of $463 million for teacher preparation, public television, university foreign-language studies programs, and Hispanic-serving higher education institutions.  For another eight programs, the executive branch underspent the allocation Congress approved. That included redirecting hundreds of millions of dollars for minority-serving institutions within a higher education grant program—Aid for Institutional Development—that the Trump administration has argued violates the Constitution.”

Lieberman explains where McMahon’s department found $60 million to add to charter school spending: “To bolster the Charter Schools program, the agency depleted the entire $31 million allocation for the Ready to Learn grant program, which supports the development of educational TV programming for young children. The remaining $29 million boot for charter schools came from portions of fiscal 2025 allocations for four other programs: Magnet Schools ($14 million), Javits Gifted and Talented ($9 million),  Statewide Family Engagement Centers ($3 million), and Assistance in Arts Education ($3 million). The Trump administration last year slashed ongoing grants for each of those four programs as well as dozens of others, arguing in many cases that individual grantees were engaged in diversity-related initiatives that contradicted the president’s priories. But for most of those changes, the department offered no public announcement, instead notifying individual grant recipients with little warning that their awards had been discontinued.”

Perhaps there will be less cutting or rearranging of Congressionally allocated education dollars in the coming year: “Lawmakers included language in the fiscal 2026 budget law they approved in February that much more explicitly restricts movement of money from one program to another. The Department has already begun soliciting new grant applications for programs it moved to disrupt or shutter last year… Lieberman reports that the ranking members of the Senate and House appropriations committees, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) “said they prioritized unambiguous guardrails in the fiscal 2026 budget to block the Trump administration from further reprogramming funds.”

Lieberman adds, however, that Office  of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Russell Vought has threatened to use “pocket rescissions,’ in which the executive branch proposes to rescind appropriated funds so late in the fiscal year that the money expires whether Congress approves the changes or not. In other words, this year, Congress could allow Congressionally appropriated dollars expire.

Lieberman quotes Sarah Abernathy, who served for a decade as executive director of the Committee for Education Funding, a federal budget advocacy group: “This is the first time I’ve ever seen an administration say, ‘We have tons of authority to make our own decisions about funding levels for programs.’ “

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Disruption, Education Industry, Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), Extremism, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Miami-Dade Board Reluctantly Approves Five Schools for Controversial NYC Charter Chain

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2026 //
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Success Academy (originally called Harlem Success Academy) wil open five charter schools in Miami. The board had the paperwork for only one day, but were pressured to make a decision or have the decision made by a special magistrate.

SA is run by Eva Moskowitz, a former New York City Council member. She has nearly 60 charter schools in NYC. The chain is amply funded by billionaires, including several Wall Street titans.

Her debut in Miami is facilitated by a gift of $50 million by billionaire Ken Griffin.

Under a law passed recently, SA is authorized to move into any school with empty classrooms. In NYC, this is called co-location. It inevitably creates bad feelings between the public school and the charter school, because the charter school–especially SA–is better funded than the public school and has better everything.

Moskowitz hopes to enroll 8,000-10,000 in Miami and then expand into other parts of Florida.

Board member Luisa Santos, who represents the district Homestead Senior High is in, expressed concern for what the co-location would mean for students with disabilities. 

“ On paper it may look like we have the seats, but in reality, once I started looking at how you implement this year one and year two, at the specific school in my district, the reality would be that you’re doubling and tripling up some of those highest need students into environments that frankly will become very chaotic,” Santos said.

SA is a “no-excuses” charter chain, which has strict rules about student behavior. It retains the power to oust students who don’t conform to its rules.

It has been controversial in NYC for multiple reasons. For high student attrition; for high teacher turnover; for accepting only students with the mildest disabilities; for ousting students who can’t comply or keep up; for bringing students to legislative meetings at the city or state levels to lobby for more funding for charter schools; for Moskowitz’s compensation (close to $1 million a year including bonuses); and for using a powerful, wealthy campaign PAC to support candidates who back charter expansion.

The students who survive 12-13 years of SA get very high test scores.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Florida, Funding, Harlem Success Academy, Miami

Florida: A For-Profit Charter Firm Plans to Cash In on Public School Revenues

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2026 //
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Jason Garcia, investigative reporter, explains how giant for-profit charter chain Academica plans to grab a bigger share of local property taxes. Academica long ago figured out the importance of working with the right lobbyists and contributing generously to the right politicians. Their efforts have paid off in bigger profits.

Garcia writes:

In late February, toward the end of this year’s regular legislative session, Republican leaders in the state Senate introduced a measure to make public school districts across Florida give a bigger share of local property taxes to privately run charter schools.
The idea seemed to catch some senators by surprise when it was presented to the Senate Finance & Tax Committee as part of a larger package of proposed tax cuts and changes. The charter school provision prompted an extended round of sometimes-confused questioning during the hearing; Sen. Ed Hooper, a Republican from Clearwater who is a part of the Senate GOP leadership team, confessed that even he did not fully understand it.
But there was someone who knew about the property tax plan in advance: Academica Corp., the charter school management giant that stands to profit from the change.
Records obtained by Seeking Rents show that the sponsor the Senate tax package shared a draft of the charter school language with a lobbyist for Academica the week before it was filed for the rest of the public to see. An aide to Sen. Bryan Avila (R-Miami Springs) emailed the still-secret tax-sharing scheme to Academica lobbyist Andreina Figueroa with a one-word subject line: “Review.”

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Florida, For-Profit, Funding

An Activist in Indianapolis Mourns the Death of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2026 //
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Nigel Long is a graduate of Shortridge Public High School in Indianapolis and the parents of students in the Indianapolis Public Schools. He lived through the systematic destruction of his city’s public schools. He opposed the so-called reformers, as he watched them erode and finally eliminate democratic control of the public schools.

Here he expresses his outrage at the theft of democratic control of the city’ schools. His article was posted by the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.

Nigel Long wrote;

Guest Blog – How to Steal a Public School System: The Indianapolis Playbook

I want to talk about what happened in Indianapolis recently, not just for us, but for every city in America.

The Indianapolis Public Education Corporation board was announced. An unelected body now controls school closures, buildings, property taxes, and transportation across the entire boundaries of Indianapolis’ largest and oldest school district. 

David Harris, the man who founded the Mind Trust in 2006, chairs the board. Janet McNeal leads Herron Classical Schools, a network the Mind Trust incubated. Edward Rangel runs Adelante Schools, another Mind Trust launch. Dexter Taylor leads Paramount Brookside, same ecosystem. The IPS board members included were elected with the same dark money that’s been buying school board seats since 2012. And Micheal O’Connor, the consultant the city paid over half a million dollars in public money to design the process that produced this board is now its acting executive director. This board didn’t emerge from the community. It was assembled by the people who funded the takeover.

“This board didn’t emerge from the community. It was assembled by the people who funded the takeover.”

This is the final chess piece in a 20-year game. And I know that because I was there for the first one.

I was a 9th grader at Shortridge High School when the Mind Trust brought John Legend to Indianapolis. I remember being on that field trip, sitting in that room, caught up in the excitement of a global superstar telling us that the future of our schools was bright. I didn’t know then that I was watching the beginning of the end of IPS as we know it. I was a kid. I didn’t know what any of it meant.

I graduated from Shortridge 13 years ago. And I have spent the years since watching that moment slowly reveal itself for what it was.

John Legend wasn’t there for us. He was there to give community cover to the privatization of Indianapolis public schools: a coordinated decades-long effort involving the Mind Trust, Stand for Children, RISE Indy, the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart), Bloomberg Philanthropies, Reed Hastings (Netflix), John Arnold (Enron), and the political allies who carried their water at the statehouse. The money trail is all public record. You don’t raise $134 million and fly in a Grammy winner because you’re running an education experiment. You do it because you need people to stop asking questions.

Since 2006, the Mind Trust has raised over $134 million (their own number, from their own website) working toward this exact moment. They used dark money to purchase school board seats. They ran a legislative process that was designed from the beginning to land exactly where it landed.

The cruelest part of this privatization agenda is that real parents with real concerns were recruited, conditioned, and in some cases compensated to be the public face of something they were never given the full picture on. Their frustration was real. What was done with it was manipulation. They took the pain of Black and brown families navigating a broken system, pointed it in the direction that served them, and called it community engagement. That’s not parent voice. That’s manufactured consent with a marketing budget.

And long before any institution took an official position, there were everyday people in this city, parents, teachers, neighbors, who saw exactly what was happening and said so out loud. They got dismissed. They got ignored. They got outspent. The community has been screaming about this for years. What happened recently is what it looks like when nobody in power listens or cares about the community they are tasked to serve.  

When nearly twice as many people testified against this plan as those who supported it, it didn’t matter. The votes were already lined up. The legislation was already written. The board members were already chosen.

That’s not democracy. That’s the performance of it.

My grandmother had a saying: fat meat is greasy. It means learning a lesson the hard way after ignoring advice that was right in front of you.

A lot of us have been saying this for years. The receipts have been public. The Mind Trust got exactly what they came for. Now all of us — students, parents, educators, communities — have to live in whatever comes next. If this is the first time you’re hearing it, I hope today is the day it becomes impossible to ignore.

I want to be clear about where accountability lives here because this is not a partisan story. State Republicans wrote the legislation and pushed it through. Local Democrats, on the city council and beyond, had every opportunity to protect democratic governance in this city and chose not to. Mayor Hogsett convened the very process that produced these recommendations and appointed the board that will now run our schools. There is no version of this story where the spineless performance of our local elected officials doesn’t deserve to be named directly.

Both parties failed Indianapolis. Full stop.

IPS spent years being held up as a broken system that needed fixing. What actually happened was a live demonstration of how to take a public school system apart and replace democratic accountability with private control without firing a single shot. The enrollment flight that became the justification for this takeover was engineered by the same organizations now running the solution. And everyone in that room when the final vote was cast knew exactly where it was going.

I say this as someone who cares about every child in this city, Black, brown, white, charter school, public school, all of them. Every student in Indianapolis will feel this. Charter families included. This was never about kids versus kids. It was always about who controls the institution.

This was never about kids versus kids. It was always about who controls the institution.

We are living through modern day colonialism dressed up in innovation language. And the proof is in the outcome. Our schools are more segregated today than they have ever been. That’s not an accident. That’s by design.

The IPS that shaped me — that shaped generations of Indianapolis kids — has potentially changed forever. That matters beyond politics because schools are not just buildings and test scores. They are where communities build identity, pass down culture, and figure out who they are. This city has a documented history of coordinated institutional action against Black communities that most people were never taught. Crispus Attucks was built in 1927 to keep Black students out of white schools, segregation dressed up as institution building. Indiana Avenue, once a thriving Black cultural and economic district, was deliberately destroyed between the 1950s and 1970s through highway construction, IUPUI expansion, and eminent domain. Over 12,000 people were displaced. 400 acres of Black history erased. Coordinated by universities, hospitals, city leaders, and state government. Busing in 1981 put the burden of desegregation on Black children while white families simply moved further out. And now this. One day this moment will be remembered alongside all of those — another decision about Black children where the outcome was predetermined before the community ever had a real say. Different decade. Different language. Same intention.

IPS was first. This sets a dangerous precedent for every district in this state. The Indianapolis-Marion County townships, the rural districts, the suburban districts. Any community that powerful people decide isn’t capable of governing itself is vulnerable to exactly what happened here. That’s the part that should terrify everyone regardless of where your kids go to school. This isn’t just about Black and brown communities anymore. It’s about who gets to decide that a community isn’t smart enough or capable enough to make decisions about their own children’s education, and then build the infrastructure to take that power away from them. Indianapolis just showed them how.

The only chance we have going forward is making sure our next mayor isn’t full of shit. And it means holding every elected official, Democrat and Republican, local and state, accountable for what they did and didn’t do when it mattered.

Here’s what I know. The ability to elect the people who make decisions about your children’s education is not a bureaucratic detail. It is democracy’s most basic promise. When you erode that at the school board level and nobody stops it, you have established that it can be done. And if it can be done with education, the institution we trust most with our children and our future, then nothing is off the table.

This feels like a loss because it is one. But public schools have survived worse because the communities behind them refused to quit. That community is still here. It has always been here. No appointed board can change that. The fight doesn’t stop today.

Show up for our school boards. Know who represents us. Demand better from our mayor, our city council, our state legislators.Get involved in our local elections like our kids’ future depends on it, because it does.The people making these decisions are counting on our exhaustion. We can’t give it to them.

Nigel Long is a cultural organizer, event producer, and community builder based in Indianapolis. He is the Founder of SoundOff and serves as Chairperson of BLACK: A Festival of Joy. He is a proud graduate of Shortridge High School and an IPS parent.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Competition, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Indiana, Indianapolis, Inequity, Privatization

Arizona: State Supt. Intervenes to Save Failing Charter School owned by Multi-Millionaire

By dianeravitch
April 14, 2026 //
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In Arizona, the state charter board did the right thing: it planned to close an online charter school with a long record of failure. But the owner of the charter school was a big Republican donor. And he was a multi-millionaire, who had been richly rewarded by his ownership of Primavera. He had a meeting of the minds with the State Superintendent of Schools, Tom Horne. Horne is a strong believer in choice. Suddenly, Primavera’s grades were recalculated and closure of the piggy bank was off the table.

Veteran reporter Craig Harris told the story for Channel 12:

PHOENIX — For more than a year, Arizona’s largest online charter school, Primavera, and its multi-millionaire owner, Damian Creamer, faced the very real possibility of being shut down. 

Plagued by poor academic performance and mounting scrutiny, the State Charter Board had already taken multiple steps toward revoking the school’s charter in 2025.

But in a surprising turn of events, Primavera has been given a lifeline — thanks to an intervention from Republican State Schools Chief Tom Horne.

The decision sparked frustration among board members who had spent months working toward closure.

Longtime board member James Swanson, reflecting the general mood of the 11-member board.

He said the board acted within its authority to hold Primavera accountable after students recorded “D” letter grades for three consecutive years ending in 2024.

Board Chairwoman Jessica Montierth echoed that sentiment after the 9-2 vote, noting the significant time and effort invested in the case. 

“Our authority is based on following through with policy and procedure, and that’s what we have done,” she said, adding that the outcome was difficult to accept given the circumstances.

The controversy surrounding Primavera intensified following a 12News investigation early last year. 

The 12News Investigates report in February 2025 revealed that the school’s owner, Creamer, had paid himself $24 million since 2017.

At the same time, the school consistently underperformed academically as the Charter Board gave Primavera its worst annual rating four times: Falls Far Below Standard. Two times, Primavera got the second-worst rating: Does Not Meet Standard. 

The free-wheeling at Primavera is a byproduct of Arizona’s loosely regulated charter school industry that allows owners to make as much money as possible for years with public funds. 

But in March 2025, the Charter Board formally voted to begin the process of shutting the school down after it received three consecutive annual “D” letter grades.

Creamer, who did not attend Tuesday’s meeting, previously attributed the low grades to administrative errors. 

He argued that Primavera should have been evaluated under alternative school standards rather than traditional ones. 

And he appealed directly to Horne, after having the support of Republican leaders who also lobbied the Charter Board on his behalf. 

“We’re so grateful for Tom Horne,” Creamer, a major GOP donor, said during a press conference in mid-March 2025. “For working with us so that we can correct this administrative error.”

Horne twice that month said he wasn’t going to intervene. 

“My first priority for all public schools is academic success,” Horne said in March 2025. “It is important that charters and district schools alike are held accountable for the quality of education they provide. The Board’s action demonstrates that these are not just words, but actions. Primavera is being held accountable and losing its ability to operate because of poor academic results.”

Horne, however, later allowed Primavera to privately meet with his staff and present new records to his office.

The board accused Horne of taking the “unprecedented steps of retroactively reclassifying Primavera from a traditional school to an alternative school, reopening prior-year data, and allowing the submission of additional information.”

That was key because traditional charter schools are evaluated under higher academic measures, while alternative schools, which typically serve higher-risk or non-traditional student populations, are evaluated with different performance expectations.

It’s unclear when Horne, who is currently in a tight re-election campaign against Treasurer Kimberly Yee for the GOP nomination, made all of the changes. 

But Charter Board officials on Tuesday said Horne’s intervention resulted in the Department of Education indicating the school would have received three Alternative “C” grades instead of three “D” grades under the traditional model. 

The board, in a statement, said this “after-the-fact rewrite of Primavera’s academic performance fundamentally changed the facts underlying the Board’s case long after enforcement had begun, effectively removing the Board’s ability to proceed under its established authority.”

Remember, “it’s all about the kids! No child should be trapped in a failing charter school! Parents know best!”

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

Shawgi Tell: The Pace of Crime and Corruption in Charter Schools Continues

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2026 //
2

With the rapid spread of vouchers, which are busting the budgets of several states and tearing down the wall of separation between church and state, it’s easy to overlook the danger posed by charter schools. Charter schools are a strong step towards vouchers, replacing neighborhood schools with consumerism. Almost 90% of American students attend public schools. We should be funding those schools, not schools operated by private boards and religious groups.

Dr. Shawgi Tell reminds us that charter schools continue to breed corruption and fraud, as they drain resources from public schools. Charter schools are not subject to the same accountability as public schools. They operate under private management, which shields them from the accoubtabilty to which public schools are subject. Without oversight or accountability, bad things happen.

Dr. Tell is a professor of education at Nazareth University in Rochester, New York.

He writes:

Even though they make up only 8% of schools in the country, crimes, scandals, and arrests take place at a robust tempo in the nation’s privately-operated charter schools.

These non-stop wrongdoings usually include fraud, embezzlement, harassment, and a range of sex crimes.

This is not surprising given the weak accountability, transparency, and background checks that have plagued the crisis-prone charter school sector for more than 30 years.

A small sample of headlines from just this year speaks volumes:

·        Cedar Rapids Prep Charter principal terminated this week as second harassment charge is filed (The Gazette, April 3, 2026).

·        Las Vegas charter school assistant principal arrested on child abuse charges (FOX5, March 23, 2026).

·        L.A. charter school teacher accused of assaulting 6-year-old girl (2UrbanGirls, March 21, 2026).

·        Little Elm charter school teacher arrested for child sex crimes (FOX 4, January 30, 2026).

·        $25M swindled by fraudulent charter school recovered for San Diego K-12 students (City News Service, January 30, 2026).

·        Owner of Newark charter school accused of stealing wages from teachers (NBC Bay Area, January 21, 2026).

·        Former New Orleans charter school may have improperly spent more than $600,000, audit says (NOLA, January 21, 2026).

·        Former Midlands charter school teacher arrested for allegedly assaulting student (WIS, January 14, 2026).

·        North Carolina charter school teacher charged with multiple child sex crimes, including against a student (FOX 8, January 3, 2026).

Do such horrible things happen in traditional public schools and private religious schools? Yes they do, but when looking at scale, scope, frequency,  and proportionality, they are considerably more rampant in charter schools, which are deregulated businesses governed by unelected private persons.

The privatization and marketization of education lends itself to such phenomena on a broad scale. Privatization increases corruption and lowers standards across a broad range of operations, roles, and services. Converting public programs and services into capital-centered programs and services usually enriches a handful of people while harming the public interest in the process. When programs and services focused on uplifting people and society are transformed into profit-maximizing entities, the majority suffers.

See here for more examples of charter school crimes and scandals.

Shawgi Tell (PhD) is the author of Charter School Report Card. He can be reached at stell5@naz.edu 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

Oklahoma: Jewish Families Oppose Public Funding for a Religious Charter School

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2026 //
0

An organization called the Ben Gamla Charter School Foundation wants to open a virtual Jewish religious charter school in Oklahoma.

The story is not as straightforward as it appears.

Behind the Florida-based Ben Gamla charter chain is a for-profit management company called Academica, which derives huge annual profits from its connection to more than 200 charter schools across the nation.

There are fewer than 9,000 Jews in the state of Oklahoma, and they are not clamoring for a Jewish charter school.

The state charter board twice rejected the Ben Gamla application, because a previous appeal for a Catholic online charter school was turned down by Oklahoma state courts, then by a 4-4 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court because Justice Amy Coney Barret recused herself due to her friendship with a lawyer for the religious school.

The Ben Gamla Foundation filed a lawsuit on March 24, claiming that the state law banning public funding for religious schools is unconstitutional religious discrimination.

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to strike down Oklahoma’s ban on religious charter schools, and to order the state to stop denying applicants on the basis of their religious character.

“We’re asking the court to end that blatant religious targeting and allow families to choose schools that are best for them,” Peter Deutsch, a former Democratic congressman in Florida and founder of the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, said in a statement.

The lawsuit alleges that Oklahoma’s requirement that charter schools be “nonsectarian” is unconstitutional, citing the First Amendment’s Free Exercise Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

But Jewish organizations in Oklahoma are wary of the Ben Gamla application. A small group of Jews and a rabbi in Tulsa recently asked to join a lawsuit to block the Ben Gamla charter school.

The group filed a motion Wednesday in federal court in Oklahoma City seeking to intervene in the lawsuit brought by the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, which is trying to become the nation’s first publicly funded religious school.

Rabbi Daniel Kaiman, the principal rabbi of Congregation B’nai Emunah in Tulsa, says he opposes the mixing of religion and government because of the potential for abuse. His own children attend a public elementary school in Tulsa.

“I am passionate about Jewish education—indeed, I have dedicated my life to it. Kaiman wrote in a declaration filed with the court. “Children in my congregation, including my own children, receive excellent, privately funded Jewish education through our synagogue and at home in accordance with our community values. But the mixing of religion and government creates opportunities for religious coercion…”

The motion was filed on behalf of the seven by the ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the Education Law Center, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and Oklahoma Appleseed.

The Ben Gamla school would under insert religious teaching into all subjects and require all employees to uphold Jewish values in their lives. What any of that means is unclear. How would math, reading, science, and other subjects be taught from a Jewish perspective. What sort of “values” would employees uphold and who would determine whether they did?

The Ben Gamla application is opposed by state Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who is against religious charter schools. But Drummond leaves office in January and might be replaced by a supporter of religious charter schools.

The state charter school board is pro-charter and is not vigorously opposing the Ben Gamla application. In fact, the state charter board retained First Liberty Institute to represent it. It is a conservative Christian legal group that believes that religious charter schools should be legal.

Oklahoma Jews are opposed to Ben Gamla. The Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City sent a statement to the state Attorney General saying that religious charter schools “risk eroding the constitutional safeguards that protect both religious freedom and government neutrality toward religion.”

Ben Gamla’s financial interdependence on the Academica charter chain should alarm Oklahomans as much as the effort to turn public money over to religious schools.

Academica is a very wealthy for-profit charter management organization.

According to Ben Gamla’s strategic plan, Academica will control its budget and finances, facilities and management, human resources, and much more. And, of course, charge a management fee.

Academica manages more than 200 charter schools in at least 22 states. Its biggest chains are Somerset Academy (at least 80 campuses), Mater Academy (40-50 schools), Doral Academy, and Pinecrest Academy.

Academica held more than $115 million in properties in Florida in 2010 and collected $19 million in profit. That’s 16 years ago, the network has vastly expanded, and no one has updated the total value of Academica’s real estate since then or its annual profits.

Academica makes its hefty profits through management fees and “related party transactions.”

This is how a “related party transaction” works:

A real estate LLC controlled by Academica allies buys or builds a school property. The nonprofit charter school, like Ben Gamla or Mater or Somerset, leases the building. The school collects public funds from the state or the city, then pays rent to the LLC. The rent is high, often as much as 20% of all public funding. The management company chooses the services provided, making contracts with its allies.

The Network for Public Education described Academica in its report on for-profit schools:

Academica: The largest EMO is Academica, based in Miami, Florida. Academica’s owner is a real estate developer, Fernando Zulueta, who opened the first charter, Somerset, as part of a housing development he had constructed. He reasoned that his real estate venture would be more attractive to buyers since students would have a school within the development. Using their real estate companies, Fernando and his brother, Ignacio, built what journalist Jessica Bakeman called “an empire of charter schools.”

Over 100 active corporations linked to Fernando Zulueta and his family members are listed as residing at Academica’s Miami headquarters at 6340 Sunset Drive and 6457 Sunset Drive in Miami.39 They include real estate corporations, holding companies, and finance corporations, as well as sub-chains both within and outside of Florida.

Like many other charter schools and chains, Academica cashed in on the COVID Paycheck Protection Program during the pandemic. Individual schools and other nonprofit and for-profit entities related to the chain received in total up to $35.7 million dollars, even though there is no evidence of revenue lost during the pandemic. In fact, during the pandemic, the EMO continued to expand. In total, charter schools cashed in on one billion dollars from the PPP program.

Mater Academy Foundation, Inc., the related non-profit corporation that oversees Academica’s Mater brand of charter schools, acquired a $127.5 million educational facilities lease revenue bond to purchase several facilities from Academica. The South Florida Business Journal detailed the purchase price of several of the facilities and the Academica-affiliated real estate entities that cashed in on the sales, concluding that “the Pandemic Profiteering deal allows Academica to cash out after investing in the development of charter schools, although it will still earn management fees for the schools.”

The connection between Fernando Zuleta’s real estate holdings and his for-profit managed charter schools goes beyond the state of Florida. According to the State Public Charter School Authority, Academica Nevada pays the lease on behalf of the charter school Mater Academy Mountain Vista of Nevada to Stephanie Development LLC. The managingmembers of Stephanie Development are Fernando and Ignacio Zulueta and Robert and Clayton Howell. Robert Howell is the manager of Academica Nevada.

About 18% of all charter students are enrolled in for-profit charter schools, like those of Academica. If Ben Gamla is approved in Oklahoma, that will open new horizons for their expansion.

Be sure to read NPE’s report:

For-Profit Charter Schools Gone Wild—Proof That Greed and Education Don’t Mix

https://share.google/KgVigiNsDfKzQa0AD

Categories Charter Schools, Funding, Oklahoma, Religion, School Choice, Separation of church and state

My Views on Mayoral Control of Public Schools in NYC

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2026 //
17

I submitted the following testimony to the Committee on Education of the New York City Council, when it held public hearings February 10, 2026, on the current system of natural control of the schools.

I studied mayoral control and other forms of governance when I wrote my first book, The Great School Wars: New York City, 1805-1973.

My testimony follows:

The time has come to rethink the governance of the New York City public schools. 

Mayoral control in its present form was enacted by the Legislature in 2002, at the behest of newly elected  ayor Michael Bloomberg. 

The Legislature was no doubt dazzled by Mayor Bloomberg. He was and is an amazing businessman who built an iconic technology-media corporation. 

To think that this titan of American business was willing to take responsibility for the school system was an exciting prospect. 

What is more, the Mayor boldly said that he could fix the schools. He projected confidence. He believed, and he was convincing. 

The Legislature gave him an unprecedented level of control over the system. The Mayor would appoint a majority of a new board, which he called the Panel on Education Policy, its name a signal of its powerlessness. The eight of 13 members appointed by Bloomberg served at his pleasure, not with a fixed term. This arrangement eliminated any likelihood that his appointees would exercise independent judgment. On the rare occasion that they did, he fired them. 

And of course, the legislation gave Bloomberg the power to pick anyone he wanted as Chancellor. 

For Chancelor, Bloomberg appointed a lawyer, Joel Klein, who had no experience as an educator or an administrator. 

Klein spent 8 1/2 years as Chancellor. 

During the 12 years of the Bloomberg mayoralty, there were many changes–the dissolution of large high schools, the creation of scores of small schools, the opening of charter schools, the imposition of a standardized citywide curriculum in math and science, the launch of a Leadership Academy to train new principals, and a heavy emphasis on standardized testing to judge students, teachers, principals and schools.

Schools received A-F grades, based on whether their test scores went up or down. Schools were closed if their scores were persistently low. Test scores were everything. 

When Klein left on the first day of 2011, the Mayor appointed a retired magazine publisher who had no relevant experience. That didn’t work. After 3 months, she was gone. 

While there was much breathless reporting about a “New York City Miracle,” there was no miracle. New York City’s public schools are not a paragon for other cities to follow. 

The problems of educating New York City’s public school children have not been solved. 

Mayoral control in the administrations of DiBlasio and Adams continued to reflect the inherent flaws of the concentration of power in the hands of the Mayor. 

If we step back for a minute, the nation is now experiencing a Presidency in which almost all power resides in one person: the President. Surrounded by a servile Cabinet, a Congress whose majority supinely obeys almost every Presidential order, and a Supreme Court with a sympathetic conservative majority, Americans can see daily the dangers of a government that has no checks and balances. 

The New York City public school system is no different. Checks and balances are necessary. Presently, there are none. 

Top-down management with no checks and balances is especially inappropriate for the school system. Parents and communities feel that they have no voice, and they are right. 

The truth is that there is no organizational structure that is perfect. Mayoral control has been tried for nearly a quarter-century. We now know that it has multiple flaws. We know that there has been no”New York City miracle.”

Some adjustment is needed now. 

I propose reviving the Board of Education. Every borough should be represented on that Board. The Board should select the Chancellor, who reports to the Board on a regular basis. The Board should be composed of people devoted to improving the public schools–either as educators or community advocates. They should know the schools and school leaders in their borough. They should regularly attend meetings of local school boards. They should serve for a set term and should be free to exercise their independent judgment. They should receive a salary for their time, so that their service on the Board is properly compensated. It would be a full-time position. 

Clearly, the Mayor has a large stake in the schools. He or she should have representatives (but not a majority) on a reconstructed Board of Education. 

The Mayor’s ultimate power is that he or she controls the budget. 

Will such an arrangement solve all problems? No. But it will create a structure where parents and communities have a voice and are heard. The Board, when choosing a Chancellor, should select an experienced educator, whether chosen from the city or from another school system. 

There will still be controversies. It’s inevitable. Over funding. Over building new classrooms to meet the requirement to reduce class sizes. Over charter schools. Over admissions to gifted programs and selective schools. Over racial segregation in a system whose students are overwhelmingly Hispanic, Black, and Asian.  

The Mayor–every Mayor–has a full plate of issues to deal with: economic development, public safety, transportation, natural disasters, building codes, public health, housing, and much, much more. He or she doesn’t have time to run the school system, nor is he or she likely to be an experienced educator. 

I can’t think of any important problem that mayoral control has solved.

My advice: Create a stable and democratic structure.

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Disruption, New York City

Florida Legislature Planning a New Cash Subsidy for Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2026 //
1

Jason Garcia, an investigative reporter who writes, a blog called “Seeking Rents” uncovered a new Republican plan to shovel taxpayers’ money to charter schools. Under Ron DeSantis and a Republicanncontrolled legislature, Florida is determined to crush public schools by sending public money to charter schools and vouchers.

Here is a new twist: Republicans want school districts to share their funding with charter schools they did not authorize.

Garcia reports:

Five years ago, Republican leaders in Tallahassee gave the charter school industry something it had been seeking for years: A way around local voters.

The change — obscured inside larger education legislation that also included restrictions on the participation of transgender students in school sports — gave state colleges and universities the power to authorize new charter schools.

In other words, it enabled charter schools — public schools run by private management entities rather than public school districts — to bypass locally elected School Boards and work instead through the governor-appointed boards that control state colleges and universities.

The industry now wants to make local voters help pay for these state-imposed charters, too.

The idea is contained inside a package of tax cuts and tax-policy changes proposed last week by the Florida Senate. It would require school districts to split revenue from what’s sometimes called the “additional millage” — an optional property tax that county voters can levy via referendum in order to raise extra funding for their local schools — with every charter school in the area.

A school district currently only has to share proceeds from the additional millage with charters that the school district itself approved.

The immediate impact would be minor: There are currently only 12 charter schools across Florida that have been approved by an “alternate authorizer” like a college or a university.

But it could escalate quickly.

Just last month, for instance, the board of trustees at Miami Dade College signed off on six new charter schools — doubling, in one meeting, the number of charters in Florida approved without permission from the local school board.

They are the first of what could become a wave of new charters unleashed by the Miami college, which just launched a new authorization program late last year, according to WLRN Public Radio and Television.

WLRN reported in December that Dade College had begun pitching its authorization services to prospective charter operators. During one webinar, a college administrator told attendees that they could expect friendlier treatment from governor-appointed college boards than voter-elected school boards.

“I think one of the benefits of going to a college authorizer is that colleges are wanting to do this,” he said. “We’re going to be looking at the same types of things that the districts look at, but with the mindset that we really do want to make this a partnership, and we want to make it successful.”

It’s not the only potential accelerant that could lead to more charters sidestepping school boards.

Florida lawmakers last year approved a major expansion of the state’s “Schools of Hope” program, an incentive program through which charter school operators can get lucrative cash grants and low-interest loans if they open up new campuses in certain locations. The law was pushed through Tallahassee in part by lobbyists for Success Academy, the New York charter network that plans to open new schools in Miami.

The new law enables Schools of Hope charters to work through college and universities rather than solely through school districts.

Miami, Florida’s most populous county, certainly seems to be the focal point of this latest legislative proposal, too. 

Additional millage property taxes expire every four years unless extended by voters through. And Miami’s tax, which generates more than $400 million a year, is currently set to lapse on June 30, 2027 — which means the School Board may soon schedule another countywide referendum.

The provision requiring local school districts to share money with state-imposed charters would take effect just before that vote could happen. 

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, DeSantis, Education Industry, Florida, Funding
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