Jeff Bryant of the Education Opportunity Network writes that the biggest story of 2014 is the explosion of charter school scandals.
He reviews some of the frauds and scams in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, D.C., and elsewhere. He might have added Chicago and many more places, like Arizona, where charter schools are not subject to laws about nepotism, self-dealing, or conflicts of interest that govern public schools.
The scandals continue: what’s new is media attention to them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But, but, I’m sure that Joe Nathan could tell us about an equal proportion of public school scandals, right?
District scandals are uncovered virtually every day—Google “Hempstead school audit” for the most recent one. (Just make sure that you click on articles about the 2014 scandal, not 2005.)
Without question, the worst district scandal of 2014 was the shocking admission by the head of the United Federation of Teachers that some of his members were longstanding participants in a health insurance scam that costs New York City taxpayers as much as $250 million each and every year. It seems that they and other municipal workers have developed a nasty habit of adding friends and family to their healthcare coverage who aren’t actually eligible to receive it. Somehow, shockingly, this has occurred despite all the layers of regulation and the public transparency and everything else that the district model allegedly assures. More shockingly, it would have never come to light had it not been for a contract negotiation that put the UFT between a rock (find health care savings) and a hard place (have your members contribute toward the cost of their care).
Instead of arrests and perp walks and firings and a plan to claw back what was stolen, the taxpayers and voters were treated to a celebratory press conference—it’s not ending fraud, you see, it’s “saving” on healthcare. If enough “savings” are found, the city will even pay out cash bonuses!
It’s hard to imagine any charter school scandal of 2014 topping this one due to its sheer size, audacity, sneering disregard for voters and taxpayers, and a complete failure to hold a single person accountable.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/committee-labor-union-coalition-approves-health-savings-plan-article-1.1776902
Here’s the latest, Tim. Newsday, December 29, 2014:
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/state-audit-highlights-numerous-fiscal-flaws-at-hempstead-school-district-1.9757636
“The Hempstead school district overpaid its superintendent by tens of thousands of dollars, routinely held closed-door meetings to the exclusion of the public and failed to screen and provide services for some special-needs children, a state audit has found.
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said the district repeatedly disregarded sound fiscal and administrative practices,”
“
As a parent of a child in a district school, I am more concerned about district scandals and I acknowledge they exist.
Part of the pro-charter propaganda is that charter schools are not corrupt like district schools and one of the ways they will save public education is that they will not waste or steal money. I think that is why these scandals tend to shock people. If an organization claims to be an improvement over the status quo and it turn out to be false, it is going to be reported.
People expect charters to live up to their claims of honesty, purity and only existing for the sake of the children and it does not benefit charters when instead of acknowledging their own scandals, they show how district schools are more corrupt.
Since the main purpose of charters to test out new ideas that can be shared with all schools, perhaps they can teach everyone how to weed out the thieves.
Concerned mom, we agree that strong district & charters have a lot to teach each other and in the process, help students.
Here’s a column from Sunday’s St. Paul, Minnesota Pioneer Press. It describes how a group of district & charter educators, working together, produced triple digit increases in dual high school college course enrollment. This is saving families thousands of dollars and helping more young people succeed in a 1, 2 or 4 year higher ed program:
http://www.twincities.com/columnists/ci_27209553/joe-nathan-early-encouraging-results-dual-credit-partnership
Joe,
Thanks for sharing some good news. Hopefully this program will catch on in other districts.
Catching on depends on how people use their time, energy and resources. It can be to create or complain (or some of both). I try to focus more on creating.
Thanks for caring enough to comment and post. If you want info that you could share with legislators or school boards or other families, please let me know.
Actually, I’ve reconsidered. My nominee for the worst district scandal of 2014 is the dozen or so districts in hypersegregated Nassau and Suffolk Counties that have attempted to illegally bar immigrant children from enrolling in their schools:
<blockquote.On Long Island, where some districts in the mid-1990s tried to expel undocumented students or required permanent resident visas to enroll, the re-emergence of “barriers to kids enrolling” has rocked children’s unsettled lives, said Patrick Young, legal director for the Central American Refugee Center, based in Brentwood and Hempstead.
“That will be traumatic because then children will enter midsemester,” Mr. Young said of immigrants who are turned away. “It kind of stigmatizes them. They don’t socialize the same way.”
Such restrictions have deepened a cultural cleft in the region between Hispanic and longtime white residents, immigrants say, putting the promise of acceptance and economic opportunity farther (sic) out of reach.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/nyregion/rules-and-paperwork-keep-long-islands-immigrant-children-from-classroom.html
Hell hath no fury like a district or school dealing with a kid whom the district or school believes to reside outside its borders.
But Tim, haven’t we been told over and over that public (district) schools take “all students.” You’re apparently suggesting otherwise. Actually, you are correct, Tim.
Long, long before there were alternative schools, there were suburbs set up with at least part of the idea being that the residents would not have to live near, or send their youngsters to school with “those people.”
As Tim & Joe have amply noted, charter scams are same-old, same-old, v-a-v public school scams.
I would only caution that charter scams are undoubtedly bigger (proportionately) than what is reported, due to (a)laws in many states authorizing them to operate under different regs, so they needn’t accept all types of students, nor meet state curriculum/ testing regs, nor in some states even hire certified nor even BA teachers, hence quality is less by comparison, and (b) in most states they are non-auditable due to being run by private corps.
At a bare-minimum level, one can observe that at least with traditional public schools, the law has a means of catching up with them eventually via audit.
As a taxpayer, my view is that charters, while purporting to benefit the public by offering ‘school choice’, in fact siphon enrollment money away from the district public school system in exchange for similar or lesser-quality schools which are equally or more vulnerable to wasting school taxes, while leaving us de facto with district schools which, having their budget enrollment cut, yet enrollment further augmented by expensive hard-to-teach students, are doomed to providing the lowest-quality education to the students most in need.
As has been repeatedly noted, laws in most states prohibit charters from using the kind of admissions tests that hundreds of district magnet schools throughout the country use.
Your argument again charters (taking dollars from other schools) is the same argument used against providing options within a district over several decades. When some of us began offering district options in the early 1970’s, we heard the same thing.
Another way of thinking about this is that some youngsters succeed in traditional schools, others succeed in schools that are different.
Moreover, sometimes schools respond to the fact that families have options by refining and improving what they offer. For example, since 1985, Minnesota has allowed high school juniors and seniors (and since 2012, 10th graders) to take courses on college campuses for free, with state funds paying all tuition, lab and book fees.
One result is that high schools have created many new dual credit courses in their high schools. Extensive research shows the benefit of taking these courses, whether on a high school or college campus.
So providing options can have a widespread positive impact.
All fraud is bigger than reported, because fraud is by its nature secretive.
Thanks Diane!
Jeff, looking forward to reading your comments about the ongoing Hempstead district scandals.
Newsday, December 29, 2014:
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/state-audit-highlights-numerous-fiscal-flaws-at-hempstead-school-district-1.9757636
“The Hempstead school district overpaid its superintendent by tens of thousands of dollars, routinely held closed-door meetings to the exclusion of the public and failed to screen and provide services for some special-needs children, a state audit has found.
New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said the district repeatedly disregarded sound fiscal and administrative practices…”
Diane wrote, “The scandals continue: what’s new is media attention to them.”
Actually, journalists such as John Merrow have been reporting scandals in charter and other fields for more than 2 decades.
” Daniel Powell was charged Wednesday with four counts of third-degree assault, a class 1 misdemeanor.
Powell was a teacher at SMART Academy, which is part of a network of charter schools called Strive Prep. On Sept. 15, he was trying to show students a chemistry experiment with fire and methanol when a fire started causing serious burns to one student.”
http://www.9news.com/story/news/local/2014/10/22/fired-science-teacher-charged-in-classroom-explosion/17729033/
Yeah, district schools had one of those this year, too:
http://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20140211/upper-west-side/beacon-hs-teacher-removed-from-school-after-chemistry-explosion-doe-says
Some small differences: this teacher, who was licensed and fully credentialed, not only didn’t face criminal charges for maiming a kid through her negligence, she wasn’t even removed from her school until more than a month after the accident. Nearly a year later, she is still drawing a DOE paycheck and benefits–due process takes time!
Joe, the difference is that public school cheating and malfeasance is generally punished when uncovered unless it aids privatizing interests. The notion of holding charter swindlers legally accountable and punishing them is new. It is a long time coming and we welcome it.
Old teacher – hundreds of charters have been closed because of poor behavior. Sadly some people in both district & charters have retained their jobs despite poor behavior. I’ve offered examples here of both district & charter misbehavior.
Shelly – there’s been media attention all over the country. I hope you both are concerned about mis-use of public $, whether in district or charters.
Joe, sadly, in NYC, the news is always about how great charters are–nary a negative word! That’s where my response was coming from. I am well aware of the scandals plaguing them; sadly, the New York media does not seem to be…
Shelley, perhaps someone should do a careful analysis of journalist coverage of education scandals. People constantly are posting coverage here of scandals involving charters. And there’s a network of people around the country who feed in – what they don’t seem to feed in (and what does not get posted here) are scandals involving teacher unions and local districts).
So the presentation of what’s happening around the country that’s presented here is not comprehensive.
WHAT media attention?! Glad you told me this is news–that’s news to me!!!
What Mr. Nathan and Tim fail to recognize is the fact that public schools don’t have lawmakers in their pockets who write legislation that give them public money, but don’t allow any oversight, teach religion, and disavow mainstream science curriculum. That’s a problem.
The NYC local (UFT) and state (NYSUT) teachers unions spend millions each year on directly lobbying New York’s elected officials (not to mention polling, advertising, and cash payments to “dark pool” organizations like the Alliance for Quality Education). Do you have a theory as to why they would continue to spend their members’ hard-earned dues in such a fashion year after year if it wasn’t bearing legislative fruit?
Corruption perhaps?
Proportionally, charters still have more scandals than TPS. And when TPS engage in little oversight or “closed door” meetings, we are bound to uncover some corruption.
Perhaps we need a new term to describe the toxic opprobrium that sticks to public education when diehard supporters and enablers of self-styled “education reform” do their utmost to run, say, public school system like LAUSD into the ground in order to make anything else—but especially charters—look good by comparison.
“Scandal” doesn’t quite seem to do the trick.
In the LA area it is already quite obvious that many members of the general public are sickened by what is touted as “public school” failures like the $1 billion plus iPad fiasco that involves what can be justly considered an immoral and improper use of bond monies and the $130 million MISIS mess, just to mention two ticking time bombs that threaten to blow up public education.
Brought to us, literally not figuratively, by folks like former Supt. John Deasy and LAUSD Board of Ed members that are ardent lovers of charters and privatization.
“Scandalous” doesn’t even begin to describe the pursuit, for themselves and others, of as much $tudent $uccess as traffic will allow.
Imagine a superbowl in football where the opposing teams are run by the coaches—from just one of the teams. Any doubt what the outcome will be?
If that seems farfetched, just look at the rigged fail rates of NY CCSS-aligned tests by officials that are supposed to be for the public schools team but operate as if they are on the charterite/privatizer team.
Are there no lengths to which the leaders and enforcers of the “new civil rights movement of our time” won’t go?
Just when you think they can’t go any lower…
But forewarned is forearmed. Watch out for their sucker punches.
Just sayin’…
😎
Krazy, I agree that the LA mess is almost in a “league of its own.” Happy holidays.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [Charlie Chaplin]
The gift of laughter is invaluable.
Happy Holidays right back at ya!
😎
Ah so…dear Krazy one. Did not realize that you were in my battle ground of LAUSD which is now led (as Interim Supt.) by the elderly and randy, Ramon Cortines who continues to collude with the BoE which holds only closed sessions about the important issues. The public which pays the freight has no way to find out who is being interviewed for the permanenct job, or if indeed any one is being sought and interviewed. All questions about finance, budget, an external audit of Deasy Days, etc. are just ignored.
It continues to amaze me how unresponsive to the voting public the BoE remains…and their attitude seems to shout, taxpayers/voters be damned. They seem to continue to please Eli Broad as their God and benefactor.
Deasy is supposed to gone as of Dec.31, and a brief note was issued that Ben Austin met with a welcoming Cortines and planned far reaching parent triggering, and then another brief note was issued that the mendacious Austin had resigned from Parent Revolution. Who is running Parent Rev and what inner city schools have they targeted for their damaging turnarounds, imposing charters on the uninformed parents?
Where is the LA Times when we know that all this secret dealing, and possibly double dealing, is going on? Why are so many vital issues only addressed in secret closed session? Why can’t the public get any information?