The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of the Inspector General issued a stinging audit, showing a near absence of oversight of charter school spending in the three states studied: Florida, Arizona, and California. On the same day, the California charter schools association celebrated another big expansion of the charter sector in that state. There are now more than 1,000 charter schools with nearly half a million students in them, and the state department of education lacks the staff to monitor them. Some of the schools never open; some open and close within a year or two. Some pay outrageous executive salaries.
The main focus of the audit was the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Innovation, which awarded over $1 billion to spur the growth of charter schools. It is headed by James Shelton, formerly of Edison Schools, McKinsey, the NewSchools Venture Fund and the Gates Foundation. He is an avid proponent of charter schools.
Expecting Shelton to monitor the growth and oversight of charter schools is like calling out the fox who is guarding the hen house and expecting him to be more vigilant. His job is to increase their number, not to monitor their quality.
Please pay attention, folks. The U.S. Department of Education is doing whatever it can to spur competition in the education sector by funding entrepreneurs, Gulen schools, no-excuses schools, and anyone who wants some federal money to go into business with no regard to quality, longevity or soundness.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Man, I wish I didn’t have a concience. Could be making a small fortune.
We could open up a virtual charter school with Kay (since we live in different parts of the country) and call it Promises and Results. We can promise to do what we say in the application (novel- I know) and show results based on it (also novel). We could still pay ourselves a six figure salary and even provide an education for the students. If we were lazy, we could probably select two dozen CD’s and call it a day. Who knows – the students might even learn more than they do at some charters today.
I am with you, Duane. Start a school, pay myself handsomely, don’t provide what is needed for proper education, make sure contract gives me a golden parachute clause, let the teachers and kids suffer through a while, move on. Seriously, that made me sad as I wrote it. How do these people leave with themselves?
Let the hearings begin. Oh wait- this administration doesn’t prosecute real crimes (e.g., war, bank fraud, and mortgage fraud to name a few). They do however like to prosecute juice heads. I’ll forward a copy to my Congressional rep. I’ll be looking forward to my form letter. Too bad there isn’t anyone on the Hill who truly cares. It’s also too bad that I do and that bothers me that I really can’t do anything to stop the looting.
This is just another reason why voting for the lesser of two evils is so galling.
Fun in Florida…
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-charter-principal-500000-payout-20121024,0,6968446.story
I read the same Florida article. This is going on in MANY states. I hear Obama and Duncan make big praises of charters and think to myself, “They are clueless about what is going on out here.” The charter movement is the biggest con of all cons. I want my tax money back!!
I don’t think the Federal Government should be providing any money for any schools, except those in Washington, D.C., and even there Congress closed down a voucher system which was working. Why?
Congress did not close down the DC voucher system. It is still operating. The five year evaluation system showed it made no difference.
Diane: Your response is incomplete, and thus apparently contra factual. It is not “still” operating, as if the Democratic House which passed Obamacare supported it. Congress DID allow the program to lapse in 2009. It was restored by new legislation sponsored by Lieberman and Boehner in 2011 after the 2010 election, and was included in the continuing budget resolution as part of a deal, not because the Democrats really wanted it. No money for it’s continuation is included in the President’s 2013 (advisory) budget, ostensibly because there is enough money left from 2012 to cover 2013. However, there is no guarantee of funding beyond 2013. That looks like to me like an effort to kill the program, in spite of its popularity in D.C.
As for effectiveness, again, you omit the full story. Wikipedia says this: <>
My continuing question is: If such a program is popular with parents and improves graduation rates, if only marginally, why should it not be supported?
I see that my “copy” from Wikipedia did not paste into my reply. I had to go and download the report itself. The report says that although the treatment group seems to have higher reading and math scores, those increases must be treated with caution because the improvements are not statistically significant. We can grant that, but the scores ARE higher. The report goes ON to say that graduation rates for the treatment group were 12% higher than for the non-treatment group. That seems to me to be a real improvement. What does seem to be statistically significant is the improvement in reading and math for those students whose parents chose schools on the basis of perceived academic strength. Those differences do seem to be statistically significant. The report, therefore, as you have said in your reply to me, is not dispositively positive, but it is not dispositively negative either. It is, with cautions, positive. Vouchers improved graduation rates AND student performance (among the more talented students whose parents were looking for superior academic programs).
By what criterion, then, are we to judge voucher programs other than by parent satisfaction and solid student improvement for the academically talented sub group? In order to get money from the state, must voucher programs exhibit a comprehensive improvement in student performance to justify themselves? Must they do what the public schools haven’t been able to do yet, that is counter the effects of poverty? Isn’t it enough that the high achieving students do better and that parents are satisfied? Isn’t “choice” in itself a value that we should promote? I see no reason, therefore, based on the report you reference, for dismissing vouchers as a poor and ineffective use of public money. The only difference is who gets the money. Private education is not intrinsically evil. The President himself is wealthy enough to buy his daughters an education at Sidwell Friends. I think education policy should work toward providing poor families with high academic ambitions with as much opportunity as possible. The country does not guarantee equal achievement, but we do want to try to achieve equal opportunity.
I still do not understand, therefore, your intense antipathy to vouchers and charters if the results are the same as, or better than, the public schools.
Public education is a public obligation, not an activity that can or should be outsourced to entrepreneurs, hobbyists and religious groups. Tests are not indicators of success or failure. They are diagnostic tools to be used to help teachers and students. Schools do not belong in the free market. If you don’t like your public school, use your resources to go elsewhere. But do not destroy an essential public function.
I do not accept any of your premises, so I guess I will just have to accept our differences. I do not see why private education can not do just as well as public for the un-poverty-impacted population, and probably for the poverty sector of the population as well, certainly better than the current public schools do. SOME tests are a measure of learning. Formative assessments are diagnostic. Education is, I agree, a public responsibility, but I do not accept that fulfilling that responsibility must be by a government-run educational organization, especially at the Federal level. National defense MUST be federal, constitutionally. Education need not, nor is it constitutionally required. Supervision and funding should, in my view, devolve completely to the States (except, of course, in D.C.). Public education lost its exclusive “right” to public money when it stopped being politically neutral, became unionized, and, like a lamprey, fastened on to the body politic and tried to grow fat even when the host was wearing away. The moral mandate has shifted, in my judgement, and public education must now forfeit its funding monopoly. The public school teachers did it to themselves, not out of greed or ill will, but, I suspect, out of ignorance and innocence perpetrated by the education school professors. Pity, though, because private ventures will continue to exhibit the corruptions which your blog is so effective at identifying. Thank you for taking the time to respond to my questions.
I do not see why private education can not do just as well as public for the un-poverty-impacted population, and probably for the poverty sector of the population as well, certainly better than the current public schools do. (It hasn’t so far, and probably won’t in the future- I think you miss the larger point of the post)
(Whoa- maybe it’s me but this seems kind of patronizing. I’m no fool. So we did it to our selves? Any enablers out there? Maybe the local government and Board of Education. How did we do it alone?)
The public school teachers did it to themselves, not out of greed or ill will, but, I suspect, out of ignorance and innocence perpetrated by the education school professors.
P.S. – The DC Voucher Program really didn’t work. See first entry – DC Voucher Fact Sheet
http://www.rheefirst.com/vouchers
The link you provide is to an attack-site on Michelle Rhee, and not a disinterested source. It therefore has no credibility with me. The D.C. voucher program did work. It raised performance among the academically talented and it raised satisfaction among their parents. Moreover, graduation rates were improved 12% over the non-treatment group. Those numbers are strong enough to justify the maintenance and expansion of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. To say “it didn’t work” (at all?) is just counter factual. As for the larger question, I see no constitutional mandate for the Federal Government to be involved in any way with education. Education is, or should be, exclusively the province of State governments. Public school teachers in the past were strictly neutral, politically, but as they became unionized they became supporters of the Democrat party. Although they are sincerely, if confusedly liberal, sincerity by itself does not constitute wisdom. They lost sight of the best interests of the children. Now they are only defending their excessively large piece of the fiscal pie (in my opinion). The only way they have left the citizenry to get unions out of public sector jobs, is to charterize and voucherize all education. It is a real pity. However, without the deunionization of public education there will be no way to dissolve the corrupt alliance of unions and legislators. The anti-charter and anti-voucher attacks I see, then, seem to me merely an attempt to retain political power, not arguments in favor of improving education.
The DC Opportunity Scholarship program had zilch to do with Rhee. It was passed by Congress in 2003. She started her job in 2007.
The final evaluation showed that the kids with vouchers were more likely to go to college but had no better test scores than kids without vouchers.
Kids with voucher in Milwaukee reported no gains at all.
Kids in Cleveland with vouchers: no gains at all.