Jeff Bryant, director of the Education Opportunity Network, here catalogues the abuses that have become all too common in the world of charter schools.
Although there are responsible and caring charter schools, there is a growing number who take advantage of their freedom from supervision, from oversight, from audits, and from state laws governing public schools to engage in child abuse, corruption, nepotism, and financial fraud.
This is a valuable article, as it shows that these abuses are inherent in the fact that charter schools are given large amounts of public money without necessary financial oversight. In some cases, charter operators get freedom from accountability because of their political connections. But there is even more than Jeff describes. He doesn’t mention Ohio’s biggest charter operators, who rake in millions in profits, while making generous campaign contributions. Nor does he mention the padded closet used to discipline small children at KIPP in NYC’s Washington Heights. Nor did he mention the rampant conflicts of interest in Arizona charter schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thanks Diane. Yes I know, it’s even worse than I described (in 2,500 words, mind you). Yet believe it or not, many have said in comments that I’ve been “unfair” to charter schools. Yes, really!
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Jeff, I expect you are hearing those complaints from people paid to defend charters no matter how unconscionable their practices. As I advised KIPP in a speech at Rice University in 2010, charters should clean their house of the frauds and grifters or see their sector tarnished.
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Ohio’s decade-long laissez-faire approach to publicly-funded but privately-run charter schools is certainly a problem for my state, but ed reformer Governor Rick Snyder in Michigan is actually the national leader in promoting for-profit charters and abandoning existing public schools:
“Those 33 for-profit companies operate more than 200 schools in Michigan, according to the report, resulting in the state having more than 20 percent of the entire national population of students in schools run by for-profit companies.
“Seventy-nine percent of Michigan’s charter schools are operated by for-profit EMOs, and another 10 percent of these schools are operated by nonprofit EMOs,” the report states. Missouri, Florida and Ohio were the only other states where for-profit group operated more than 30 percent of charter schools.”
http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2013/11/national_charter_school_report.html
The only difference between Snyder in MI and Kasich in OH is Ohio has had ed reform focused on privatization much longer than Michigan. The stories we see in Ohio will be rolling in from Michigan here shortly. Bet on it.
What’s most alarming is ed reformers don’t seem to learn from their mistakes. Ohio is a deregulated disaster, but they took the exact same approach when they parachuted into Michigan. Hell, they move the same PEOPLE from state to state.
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I have worked in Michigan charters and have known many people who have worked in others too. They are the best con this country has ever produced. It is nothing but a gold mine of abuse of tax money and fraud. It is all about a family or small group of people making money with absolutely no checks on their power while ripping off everyone in sight. I have very little faith in government any more. If Rick Snyder were truly an honest man he would put an end to it all. He isn’t so the show goes on. Obama isn’t so his Ed. Sec. promotes charters. It goes on and on.
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Ohio charter people are showing up in WA State now.
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Can you ask an Ohio person to testify? Part of the reason this continues is there’s no continuity or accountability when the operators move from state to state. White Hat in Ohio have an absolutely horrible reputation and a long, long paper trail of lawsuits, ect. but they were given access to public funds in Florida because no one in Florida was aware of it.
It would seem to me that having people who have actually experienced what you’re about to get in your state would be persuasive to people there. The buzzwords sound great “choice!” “accountability!” “innovation!”. The reality is much, much different.
The truth is they have a decade-long record in several states. None of this is “new”.
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The biggest problem with charters is they have a lousy assessment system. Wait a minute, they have the same one public has, and voucher and all the others.They are all falling under the testing fiasco. Who ev er is the first to challenge that, will prevail. http://savingstudents-caplee.blogspot.com/2013/12/accountability-with-honor-and-yes-we.html
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It seems to me that more regulation of charter schools is warranted in many jurisdictions. In general, regulation in an environment where people get to choose from a variety of schools should cover areas where there is general agreement on what should be done by the school, difficulty on the part of the parent in seeing if the school is in fact doing those things, and fairly serious consequences for the student if those things are not being done.
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So then what’s the point of having charter schools? The whole point was to “free” these schools from regulations. Why have two parallel systems if they’re basically identical?
“I can tell you a million reasons and they’re right in the bank” (Parent Trap–the old one).
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More regulation may not be as much regulation as traditional zoned schools require.
It is not at all clear that the schools are basically the same. Poster Joanna Best has posted about her experiences with Academie de Lafayette and the district run schools in Kansas City, for example. Was the experience at Academie de Lafayette available in the traditional school district run schools?
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The original point of charters as I saw it at the time, was to be innovative, similar to the fully public school I designed, union and all. In fact, many traditional Milwaukee Public Schools are charter for that purpose. And then the others ran amuck, following political agendas. Created a disaster.
In stead of doing 12 month schools, individualized schools, non graded schools etc, they did the same old warmed up crap that has been done for 200 years. The only difference, was at the bank. Now it’s a total mess. If a traditional public school applied for a charter with union and all, and asked for a school without common core goals and without the test, it is highly unlikely that they would get it.
Howevedr, if they could get it, think of the possibilities for public schools. A way to get out from under the testing fiasco hahahaha not likely
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The most amusing part of watching this play out in Ohio over the last decade is they can’t re-regulate Ohio’s publicly-funded schools. Our state leaders are completely captured by charter lobbyists.
When free market ed reform began in this state the public were told that teachers unions had this iron grip on legislators, and ed reform would usher in a new era where there would be no “self-interested” actors. Just pure,unsullied free market actors, working on behalf of The Children.
How could they not recognize that charter operators are THEMSELVES self-interested?
You’d have to be either laughably naive or willfully blind to ignore that, yet they STILL ignore it.
If you buy the central (really cynical and grim) premise of ed reform, that teachers and unions are wholly self-interested (I don’t, but they obviously do) then don’t you have to buy that charter operators are ALSO self-interested? How do you miss that?
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Chiara Duggan: the cognitive dissonance is stunning.
It’s as if the leading charterites/privatizers send all their educrat and edubully underlings to the same advanced course at the Broad Academy, “Mote & Beam For Profit and Pleasure: Double Standards, Straight Faces, No Regrets.”
I am not a religious person, but the following words are well worth knowing:
King James version, Matthew 7:3-5:
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
The hypocrisy is stunning.
That is, to those in favor of a “better education for all.”
For edufrauds and edubullies, just another day raking in $tudent $ucce$$.
And as for their mobile “mote & beam” operations, Paul Vallas said it best:
“I go in, fix the system, I move on to something else.” [English-to-English translation: “I sneak in, put the fix in, move on to other prey.”]
Link: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Paul-Vallas–213999671.html
Thank you for your comments.
😎
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“the cognitive dissonance is stunning.”
Is that what it is, though? It doesn’t feel “cognitive” to me. What it feels like is a moral or ethical judgment. The assumption must have been that ed reformers are just inherently less self-interested than public school advocates, as PEOPLE.
You see it in Michelle Rhee’s political campaigns. Her central premise is always that “unions” are lobbying out of self-interest. She sees ONLY self-interest in public school advocates.
If I buy that, don’t I ALSO have to look at self-interest possibilities of Rhee, other charter school lobbyists, etc.? The only way I wouldn’t look at that would be if I believed that ed reformers were somehow morally or ethically superior, as people.
Why are public school advocates suspect, and charter school advocates presumed pure as the driven snow?
That doesn’t make any sense. It’s both or neither.
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The charter story is one part of ed reform, but there’s another side to ed reform leadership in these states, and it’s the abandonment of existing public schools.
Michigan actually had some very strong public schools, the state has a history of supporting public education (like Wisconsin).
So while Snyder has done damage by instituting a completely deregulated charter school system, the real damage of ed reform in Michigan probably won’t show up for years, and that’s the damage caused by abandoning existing public schools:
http://www.eclectablog.com/2013/12/more-michigan-cities-and-schools-in-financial-emergency-under-rick-snyder-than-all-other-governors-combined.html
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I agree. Michigan’s decline in performance has mirrored its decline for the support of public ed.
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Pushing charters and abandoning the public schools are two sides of the same coin.
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“It’s time to put the brakes on charter expansion and refocus public policy on providing excellent public schools for all.”
THIS
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I agree with Mr. Bryant’s statement that charters do more harm to our society than good. I worked at a charter, and it was chaotic for everyone but the people making the real money. It’s all true; inexperienced Ivy-leager staff, mis-informed parents, students used as political lobbyists during the school day, token local people sprinkled in to add credibility to the out-of-towner CEO, tax money funnelled into managerial pockets that really didn’t even need lining – relatively well-off children of the rich moving to our city like carpetbaggers, with a “educational vision” that always included them getting lots of our money and new Volvos.
The charter movement – drive a stake through it’s heart, and quick.
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These horror stories are becoming sickeningly common.
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There are tons and tons of these stories out there.
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