Charter school advocates predict the great benefits that flow from deregulation, freedom from oversight.
For more than 20 years, they have boasted that great education benefits would flow from the removal of state supervision: The deal, they said, was give us freedom and hold us accountable.
While the charter industry boasts of its successes, no one has kept track of the number of charter schools that have failed or been engaged in fraud, nepotism, and corruption; it is not a small number.
Here is another sad story, where millions of public funds were lavished on a charter, and things turned out poorly.
Two women in Charlotte, North Carolina, had a dream of turning their small private school into a charter school.
And this is what happened:
For years they’d been trying to turn their small private school, StudentFirst Academy, into a charter that would reach more students. It had won praise from such leaders as then-Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory and then-Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon, and recently earned state approval for a $3 million startup budget to become a public school.
Handford and Moss talked about a school where impoverished children would flourish in small classes led by master teachers. There would be arts and athletics, healthy meals and Latin classes.
“It is all about opening our doors to an academic wonderland that’s being funded by the government,” Handford said.
Less than four months after StudentFirst charter school opened, those dreams collapsed amid allegations of mismanagement, nepotism and financial irregularities. Overdue bills had the school on the brink of bankruptcy. Students were going without textbooks, losing teachers and taking long naps during the day, consultants reported.
The school’s board of directors fired Handford and Moss, who are now suing the board they once recruited.
It is not clear who is right and who is wrong.
What is clear is that this idea needed regulation, supervision, and oversight, like public schools.
Deregulation has its down side.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That said, I’m broke. If I had a child in Washington, DC who was going to be entering high school, couldn’t drive across town to the affluent area, and couldn’t get into the magnet schools, I would most likely try to enter them in the lottery for two local charter schools that I like and pray for the best.
Mason educator, it would be sad to enter a charter lottery, then discover your child is taught by first-year teachers who are so insecure that they run the school like boot camp, having forgotten their own education.
I am glad to hear you use the term “insecure” because that is exactly what needs to be pointed out in the reform movement. The tactic has been to make those who have been in teaching to doubt the ability to do so. But the cover-ups for those coming in as an alternative are very transparent to a seasoned teacher.
You know, there is no perfect way to be a teacher. But I can tell you that the loving and caring kindergarten teacher who died suddenly in our building last month (her cancer came back and took her in two weeks) was doing great things for children. She might have been a little bit country and folksy, but she paid attention to the children and nurtured them and loved them and talked to them. At five years old, children are learning letter sounds and numbers and very basic science concepts and about communities. . .they like to be read to, sing songs, do activities and hear the teacher talk to them. It is true that a teacher who lived in the same town her whole life, went to the teacher college up the street and came right back to teach may have some limited insight into, say, how the commerce of scrap metals impacting China’s economy, but does that really matter for someone who spends meaningful time with five year olds who love her? Especially when she also drives their bus and sees them around the community.
Folksy is out of style. But so what. So is short hair for 12 year old girls. But right after the movie LES MIS last year, it came back into style. The trick is to follow the instinct of knowing what is right for children. The reform energy is built on infusing doubt into age-old institutions. We cannot let that happen. We must not doubt ourselves.
Joann, I agree with you.
I know I don’t doubt myself, but I doubt the lawmakers who know almost nothing about the teaching and learning process or who do and choose to ignore it for their own self gain . . . . .
An interesting study would be to catalogue, chart and compare these financial and educational shenanigans rate per school amongst profit charter, non-profit charters, true public school charters and the public schools.
Watch this video about huge amounts of taxpayer money being wasted when charter schools fail. Someone posted this as a comment on an earlier post, it bears repeating here.
http://www.nbc4i.com/story/24778722/nbc4-investigates-taxpayers-left-holding-bill-for-charter-schools
It’s a good thing they had some public schools to act as a back up to the parallel “choice” system. I hope the parents who were dumped out of the choice system had somewhere to go.
How are the public schools doing in that district by the way? I know they’re unfashionable among political and media types, but is anyone looking after them?
McCory spends a good part of every day bashing the public schools in that state. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he found those schools as valuable and worthwhile as this school?
“Mayor McCrory, who was elected governor in 2012, wrote a letter to a prospective StudentFirst donor in 2007 offering his “full support” for a grant. The letter cited students who did internships and community service. “The Upper School students receive resounding remarks in their work ethic, professionalism and seriousness,” McCrory wrote. He said recently he has only “a vague memory” of the school.”
Of course he doesn’t remember it. The school was just a prop to sell “choice”. Once they opened, his work there was done!
“Run, Forrest, run!”
I would vote for less oversight in PUBLIC SCHOOLS from the politicians who think they know more about education than those who have spent their lives in study and working within the education society.
In the public arena, the “experts” said that with less or no oversight by government our banks would do just fine. The rest is history.
Oversight is necessary and good IF, big IF, the people with oversight are knowledgeable AND have integrity. This should be true in society as a whole. GOOD laws, respected, and implemented make for a good society. Bad laws? – Nuff Sed.
What kind of leadership is the President giving for your notion of “GOOD laws, respected, and implemented”? Bad laws blunderingly implemented . . . does that make for a bad society? How’s that Hope and Change thing working out for you?
It’s not working out. Not at all.
Obama and wife are the Bonnie and Clyde of Federal politics.
They are all bullets and fraud dressed up to look like protective shields and morality.
I’m afraid the majority on both sides of the aisle are perverted . . . .
Yes, this is a sad story.
As is this long running problem in a NYC district public school:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/nyregion/inquiry-into-queens-school-calls-for-firing-of-principal.html?ref=education
It would be good to know why this district principal was protected for so long.
This educator did something reprehensible, Joe.
But as a principal under the Bloomberg administration, you’d practically have to murder someone in cold blood and in broad daylight to be dismissed.
Bloomberg protected his management layer and consciously shut out the vigilance of the teacher and the parent. That is nothing new in the body of common knowledge of the Bloomberg style of management in public education. You would know that if you lived and worked in New York City, as I have for over 26 years, 12 of which with Bloomberg as mayor.
This will help to explain the situation.
The custodian who let this person into the building surreptitiously should be held accountable as well. This was a clearcut theft of service . . . . .
But charters in general have far less oversight than do public schools . . . . . They are designed to.
There’s an old saying, “Follow the money.” In this case follow it right out the door.
I read recently that deregulation isn’t real. Regulations are never removed completely. Old regulations are replaced with new ones that favor the entity under scrutiny, instead of the public. This seems to be what’s happening here. Except that there’s no existing law about charters, and lots of money is guaranteeing that when the regulations arrive, they are extremely friendly to the charter operators at the expense of the public school system.
You wrote, “There’s no existing law regarding charters…” There can’t be charters in a state if there is not a law permitting and regulating them. What state are you referring to?
I ought to have said comprehensive regulatory framework. I didn’t mean that there are no laws governing any charters. I meant to say that with charter schools, there regulation is still being written and developed in a lot of cases. So, “deregulation” advocates have a much easier time getting favorable regulations for charters than if they were established. Like, for examples, railroads were harder to reregulate than charters will be.