Bill Phillis founded the Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition, which advocates for public schools and exposes for-profit scams.
He writes here:
”
Imagine Schools, Inc.: For-profit, out- of- state business operation took $44.9 million of Ohio school districts’ funds last school year
Imagine Schools, Inc., based in Arlington, VA, has 18 Ohio business centers, authorized by eight different charter school sponsors. During the 2013-2014 school year, this for-profit company enrolled 6,235 students at a cost of $45 million to Ohio school districts.
Each of these 18 charter schools has a sponsor and a board of directors. The Ohio Department of Education and Ohio charter school sponsors typically provide limited monitoring and oversight. The boards of the Imagine Schools, Inc. appear to be mere rubber stamps of company decisions. (A company internal memo surfaced in which charter school principals were admonished to keep boards in line with company decisions because the schools belonged to the company.)
Since the financial operation of this school district-funded enterprise is hidden from public view, the amount of tax money that is converted to profits is a secret.
My resident school district had a deduction of $3,702,897.67 for Imagine Schools, Inc. last school year. As a taxpayer and supporter of my school district, board of education, administration and district employees, I object to a portion of the school district tax money being taken from my school district and handed to entities that have little or no transparency or accountability. I, along with other school district residents, have no access to the unaccountable financial operation of Imagine Schools, Inc. School districts’ finances, on the other hand, are available to citizens.
The Ohio Department of Education deducted $15,570,134.09 from my resident school district for students going to charter schools. These funds went to 66 charter schools, most of which had a lower state report card rating than the district.
State officials should eliminate the for-profit companies from the Ohio charter school industry.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Although “some” charter schools claim to be not for profit or non-profit there are those charter schools that are soaking the taxpayers through various schemes. Right now in New Mexico there is a charters school system under investigation by the FBI after a lengthy two year investigation by the New Mexico Auditor’s Office. Now, the FBI does not go into to investigate something if there is nothing there to investigate.
The State of New Mexico does not allow for profit companies to operate charter schools but there is a way around that problem. They set up a non-profit foundation though which all the taxpayer dollars flow. Problem? Nope!! All legal. Yep!!!. Examples are the K-12,Inc. and Connections Virtual Charter Schools. Connections, of course, belongs to Pearson headquartered in London, England. Companies like this are not in the business for the good of the students. Their stockholders love the charter school business. Check their profit and loss statements. Check their profit growth for the last couple of years. While you are at it, check how successful these charter schools are when it actually come to providing quality education for the students.
There is always a way around for the for profit companies to soak the taxpayers. You can bet on that.
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The non-profits, at least in Louisiana, tend to be sectarian religious schools, which present a conservative, even revisionist, political agenda and sometimes use curricula from such dubious groups as Bob Jones, ABekaBook and Accelerated Christian Education. The rest of the “non-profits” are Catholic. ( It is very convenient that Gov. Jindal is also a Catholic and consults both the Diocese and a non-profit religious PAC, Louisiana Family Forum on policy decisions.) I don’t know which is worse, a school that teaches that the dinosaurs rode The Ark with Noah and that slavery was not bad because it exposed the slaves to Christianity and gave them jobs, or one that takes its profit off the top of the schools’ budget and delivers an inferior product to hand selected students.
One way to stop the charter movement is to require open admissions, and to check to make sure they are in compliance with that policy, eliminate suspensions and expulsions on pain of loss of the charter, require test scores at least as good as public schools with similar demographics, demand they hire ONLY certified teachers and pay them state standard wages, and require that they accept all types of special needs students and educate them in accordance with state and federal regulations and with certified special educators (who tend to be strong advocates for students).
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You need to add, to your list, the fastest growing charter chain, one associated with an Islamic Turkish national. Allegations of pay differentials based gender, anti-union activities….
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Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Ohio-Where-For-Profit-Cha-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Business_Charter-Schools_Diane-Ravitch_Education-140915-
with this comment
The end of public education began when NYC schools were emptied of the real professionals, the voices that would have said no to anti-learning curricula and testing. If you have not seen this Grassroots film,
http://gemnyc.org/2012/05/20/the-inconvenient-truth-behind-waiting-for-superman-now-online/do go
https://vimeo.com/4199476
and spend some time… because this process is now the way it is done across 15,580 districts in 50 states, now that the billionaire’s boys club, (BRADO/WALTON/KOCH/GATES) run the show and control the media.
For profit education is robbing the country blind, not just of tax-dollars, but of our future, and our people do not know what is happening in their own district, let alone in other states.LAUSD is being run into the ground, and although Perdaily.com has chronicled the entire debacle few people know what sleazy Deasy has done to end public education in LA, while sending veteran teachers out the door.
They are able to do this because they control the media which offers the Duncan narrative
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/08/subverting-the-national-conversation-a.html
of ‘evaluate those bad teachers’ and test, test, test to see if the kids have mastered our bogus ‘core’ crap… the ‘Magic Elixir”
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.htmlwhich we use to Bamboozle the people.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html
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And eliminate the pointless report cards.
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If one can produce a copy of the cited memo calling to keep boards in line with corporate policy, I suggest that that document be presented to the accreditation authority of that school.
Governance is a critical part of accreditation, and well managed accreditation authorities will take action against schools in which the governance has gone astray.
Nothing should impede upon the board’s ability to govern and set policy for that school for which they are responsible.
Incidentally, most colleges will only accept graduates from accredited secondary schools, so this is a critical credential.
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These “internal memos” need to be leaked to the Board and the media as well as to the governing board of the state and any acreditation agencies responsible. Transparency is the only way to eliminate corruption. Like the body cameras being required to be worn by police officers, if they are not doing anything wrong they should not object to being held accounable.
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Last year, one of the Ohio state Board of Education members, when faced with allegations of conflict of interest, resigned. The Chair of the Education Committee, an elected Republican politician, decided last week that the charter school problem didn’t warrant action by the legislature, this year. Bottom line-N.J. and Ohio, one and the same.
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Just one more example of US education in chaos destroying the youth of tomorrow. Too many adults now have already become dysfunctional from our declining society. Until we get a strong president and leaders who will get rid of DOE and give education back to the communities where it belongs, this insanity will continue. George Washington’s education was in his garden, and centered about botany and literary classics. He was our smartest and greatest president, but how quickly we forget. Schools today are producing robots, not leaders. Too many people think PhD or MD after a name makes one smart. It is the opposite. What makes people smart is their childhood environment. Our method of warehousing children in daycare and institutional abuse from harsh boring school environments is producing a society of deranged people. We have become a society of workaholics with social and emotional dysfunctional. We need to get back on track and restore authentic learning like Montessori, which is the same as George Washington’s school. Everyone needs to burst the little bubble they are living in and notice that our country may claim to be great, but actually it is a ghetto of dysfunction from traumatic grief and betrayal trauma: loss of trust in government, fear and insecurity, lack of respect for differences in race and religion, and corruption from the wealthy and powerful. We do not need war machines being sent to communities all over the country from the Dept of Defense, we need that money put into healthy public schools to nurture our children rather than abuse them. What will it take for people in this country to wake up, another Civil War?
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