Darcie Cimarusti—aka Mother Crusader—has done some heavy duty investigation and research. She was trying to figure out who were the movers and shakers behind the Jersey City Global Charter School. She knew that New Jersey Commissioner of Education Chris Cerf boasted about the care with which he selected new charter schools and their operators. But she was not convinced.
It didn’t take much digging for her to discoverthat the operator of this charter was a central figure in one of the nation’s biggest charter school scandals.
If Mother Crusader could get to the bottom of this quagmire, why couldn’t Chris Cerf or his crack staff at the New Jersey Department of Education?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
In a NY Times article back about a year ago, it was reported that about 19 percent of all charter schools across the nation in a given year were legally required to be closed and their charters dissolved due to 3 to 5 years in a row of failing academic performance.
It was the state agencies that regulated and monitored such schools that were literally ignoring them and refusing to enforce the law by closing them. Money was at stake and many charter school operators were deeply politically connected to the people who monitored the charter schools.
Hence, those in charge turned their heads away or stuck them in the sand . . . .
I don’t know if the situation has changed since then.
I’ve lived this nightmare. I was a teacher at Techworld Public Charter School in DC back in the early 2000s. We had an incredibly dedicated staff of mostly young teachers, an innovative plan to integrate technology into a rigorous curriculum, and kids who wanted to learn. We also had corrupt adults behind the scenes who led the school into scandal and financial ruin. It ended badly, despite the teachers’ best efforts.
The real problem is that it SOUNDS great to have a school unfettered by oversight and district administration. But without that layer of local administration and oversight, unscrupulous businessmen can rob the school blind and building administrators can quickly get in over their heads.
Those in charge want “quick fixes” over quality fixes. They also do not want to admit that they were wrong/made a mistake. They also seem to have an issue with talking to the “little man”, such as teachers, as to what a quality fix might involve.
There are many people in positions of power that want to cause industrialized nations to collapse from within (for the purpose of saving the planet supposedly). They have either personal or political commitments to this agenda. They can’t admit these things in public of course but they are given brownie points by the people within their sphere for furthering this work. So privatizing schools and allowing them to fail our children would be a good thing in their book.
Education for Sustainability Toolkit, first Published in 2002 by the US government, now reprinted and published by UNESCO, states:
“Generally, more highly educated people who have higher incomes, consume more resources than poorly educated people who tend to have lower incomes. In this case, more education increases the threat of sustainability.”
President Clinton created the President’s Council for Sustainable Development by executive order. No congress. No vote. Every member of his cabinet sat on that panel for the purpose of creating policies and actions consistent with UN goals (one world government in charge of equitably distributing resources and an overall reduction in population and the consumption of energy worldwide, especially targeting the U.S. as a nation which represents 5% of the population consuming 25% of the resources). This panel still exists and the work is marching on. I know it sounds crazy that Arne Duncan would be tasked with ensuring that our students fail. If this was in fact the case……don’t you think he’s doing a great job?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/26/earth-population-consumption-disasters
While I was glad to see an article in which praise, well deserved, was given to the st. Louis post dispatch and reporter Elisa Crouch….I furnished a link to it on their current affars forum…if they saw it, they would have been surprised that I did that…..I also added this comment after the article…..I am frequently critical of the Post Dispatch, Ms Crouch, and Doug Thaman. I thought the Imagine story was handled well by the pd, but Thaman’s main spin was how great it was that bad charter schools shut down, to be replaced by better ones. Never mind the very real consequences of what happened to 6000 children. The pd is a regular cheerleader for charters, and they have a list of progressive people in education who are taboo to mention….including Diane Ravitch. KIPP has about the same status as the local Catholic diocese, and last week the appointed school board traded them a building in exchange for using their students’ test scores to make them look better to the state board of education…they are barely, provisionally accredited…….
If you look at st. Louis, Peter Downs is somebody worth paying attention to, even though he is on that same taboo list as Diane. (A Pulitzer internet site called the Beacon, did allow him offer a negative review of Waiting for Superman). I pulled a stunt on current affairs…worth it given the number of views…”.scientology training for staff? No, says sch board candidate” turns out I was furnishing a link to what he said in 2005……September 22, 2005 ” A controversy over sending St. Louis Public School teachers to a training program connected to the Church of Scientology underscores a major flaw in the federal No Child Left Behind Act: rigorous performance standards for public schools, but none for private companies that are supposed to repair the failures.” Diane has praised his book about myths and shams in the reform movement…..he really was a candidate for the school board….outspent 7-1, he was elected….the pissed off mayor went to the state board of education and engineered a state takeover to get rid of him. It was sickening…it was successful.