Just when you think you have heard it all, another amazing for-profit charter scandal emerges
Imagine this: an optometrist in Michigan comes up with an insight about learning: Children learn VISUALLY. So he founds a charter school and recruits other optometrists to serve on the board. In time, he has four charters, and their scores are about average for the state.
But Michigan, as the Detroit Free Press documented last year in a week-long exposé, has almost no accountability or transparency for charters, most of which are operated for profit.
Eventually, lawyers for the school noticed that the founder was borrowing large sums from the schools and repaying them by borrowing from other schools in his chain. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of dollars of public funds were somehow left in his personal bank account or that of his wife.
His trial is set to begin next month.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Vision Charters?
You’re right, you can’t make this up.
Waiting for the day proctologists open up charters?
Maybe Arne could provide some support to make that happen…
Vision Charters is like “thought” leaders in this realm.
Why am I suddenly thinking of “The Music Man”?
Dienne: me too.
😎
The amazing part of this one is that he isn’t going to trial on any charter school regulation or enforcement violations. Everything he did was A-ok with the State of Michigan:
“Nick Oshelski, executive director for the Lake Superior State University charter school office that oversees Grand Traverse Academy, said the exchange of money between the school and management company was never an issue because the audits were problem-free each year until 2013. After the 2013 audit that found the board was prepaying more fees than the school could afford, the authorizer asked the department of education if the process was illegal.The Department of Education questioned the board’s judgment but did not conclude that anything was illegal in the payment arrangement. ”
He’s going to trial on allegations of bank fraud and not paying taxes.
Priorities! We draw the line when he messes with a BANK 🙂
Click to access IngersollIndictment.pdf
Messing with banks is the best hope we have of bringing down the charter movement. So many of these schools, especially the chains, are somewhere between pyramid scheme and house of cards. Their continued “success” (financially speaking) requires continuous growth – the money they get from opening the newest school is often going toward paying off loans from the previous school(s). Sooner or later it’s going to collapse. Still no one will care about the kids, but the banks will make sure they get “justice”. Maybe we’ll start to see some frog marches.
I think someone in Michigan should go in and check the safety of his school facility before he fills it with children. According to that complaint, his crony “building contractor” paid construction workers in cash. They were off the books. I don’t know of any legitimate, reputable commercial contractor who would be that reckless.
This is wonderful too. The authorizer has no clue where the public money goes:
“Lake Superior State said it is waiting to see if the trial reveals illegal activity at the charter school. The authorizer doesn’t know the particulars about how the money flowed between the Grand Traverse Academy and Ingersoll’s company or why the school and the company each said the other owes it money, Oshelski said.”
So what do they know if they don’t know how money “flows”? What is it they’re regulating?
There is money for the charters which means less for public education.
In Indiana our Governor Pence is giving more money for charters and for vouchers
AND
trying to get a law passed wherein our elected Glenda Ritz, state superintendent of public education is to be superseded by a government appointee.
Incredible
AND
with a [sorry] Republican controlled house and senate, it is likely to get passed.
Want to hear something horrifying? Our new governor in Illinois (Rauner) has announced that Indiana’s previous governor (Daniels) is his role model.
“Charter Advancement”
Kiting check
And chaining charter
What the heck
It gets you farther
In case anyone thought Ohio was actually going to begin regulating charter schools, here’s the big GOP donor who will be weighing in on that:
“He was on the board of directors for Richard Allen Schools in Dayton from 2005-06. The privately run Richard Allen management organization operated four publicly funded schools at that time. During his tenure, the state auditor cited all four schools for failure to comply with regulations that they receive a federal nonprofit status and failure to adequately monitor finances.
He said he didn’t recall the findings, but knew there were some after he resigned the charter school board to join the state board.
“I was just a board member. I mean, we had a board meeting once a quarter or something and I listened to the financial statements and all the reports by all the professional educators like all the rest of the board members,” he said.”
How was he supposed to know? He was a rubber stamp like the rest of the board members.
http://www.ohio.com/news/local/thomas-gunlock-family-of-republican-donors-takes-a-lead-role-on-state-board-1.445420#.VLQIVyL-he4.twitter
I am going to keep making my point here until somebody says something. That I am wrong. That I am missing the big picture. That dwelling on botched charter efforts is the best way to put up the much needed battle against the rise of prominence of charter schools. I applaud them being pointed out….but there is a bigger danger:
Start dealing with the somewhat successful ones. The ones with the sort of political influence is powerful but discreet. The ones like KIPP in St. Louis who answer to a local appointed board of 3, a state board of 7 or 8, and a state charter board fighting on their behalf….actually eliminating some charters with problems so they can cheer….the bad ones go away…the good ones survive……..ten percent of st. Louis public school children are allowed to go to KIPP….ruled by this board:
John W. Kemper
john is the President and COO at Commerce Bancshares,
Kyle Chapman, Vice-Chair
Kyle is co-founder and Managing Director of Forsyth Capital Investors.
Kerry Casey, Vice-Chair & Treasurer
Kerry is the Vice President of Customer Advocacy at Exegy
Keith H. Williamson, Secretary
Keith is a corporate attorney and business executive
Maxine Clark
Maxine is the Founder of Build-A-Bear Workshop
Don Danforth
Don co-founded City Academy and assumed the role of President when the school opened in 1999.
June Fowler
June is the Vice President of Corporate and Public Communications at BJC.
Gabriel E. Gore
Gabe is a partner at Dowd Bennet LLP Clients have included Fortune 500 Companies and high-ranking members of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government
Flora P. Tersigni
Flora is the owner of Royalty Imports, a food and beverage business focused on Italian wine
Robert J. Wasserman
Rob is Senior Vice President at U.S. Bancorp Community Development Corporation.
Gregory W. Wendt, KIPP: St. Louis, Founding Chair
Greg is the Senior Vice President of Capital Research and Management Company, a division of Capital Group Companies
I know others have tried Joe…but I don’t want the silence to let you think we surrendered and agree with you…so here’s my attempt to enlighten you…
Yes public schools have had scandals too. The objection here is that charter school supporters and many politicians spew a lot of garbage about ‘failing’ public schools and ‘failing’ teachers and how they have the all-hallowed answer in ‘choice’ – as if they have the ‘secret sauce’ that every other public school district, principal, and teacher in America has been unable to find or unwilling to use. Then there are the games they play with claiming themselves to be ‘public’ when convenient and ‘private’ when that suits their needs best. Of course, don’t forget the rhetoric about how the free-market-business model trumps all, even above the voices (and research) of those that have experience in education.
No one supporting public schools will tell you they ALL work. No one will tell you that we have the ‘answer’. Every school and every district has to figure out their own ‘secret sauce’.
But charter schools and their supporters DO say they have the answer. Fine. I’m all in for a little smack talk now and then. But if you’re going to ‘talk the talk’, then you better ‘walk the walk’. And they don’t. You want us to recognize the ‘somewhat successful ones’. Really? Where is their recognition of the ‘somewhat’ successful public schools and teachers? How about the tremendously successful ones?? Why aren’t those teachers/principals/board members on the KIPP board?? Where is there a published article about a charter school’s ‘secret sauce’ (something more specific than ‘higher expectations’ please). What is so magical about charter school teachers that public school teachers can’t match? And where do these magical teachers come from? Do public schools just choose not hire them, or are they just too proud to work in a job offering due process? Or maybe it’s their boards, with fancy business titles? Is that the secret? Please show me one published paper from a charter organization that is going to show me how to teach my son with Down Syndrome to READ. There is none. Because charter schools don’t teach kids with Down Syndrome to read. That’s left up to the public schools. Because my son won’t ever ever ever pass a PARCC test and wouldn’t be welcome at a KIPP school (full disclosure, my son thankfully graduated before every single one of his teachers were labeled failures).
I am a scientist. Having a theory and getting it to work ‘sometimes’ doesn’t cut it. For something to be a theory or a model, it has to work repeatedly, in ALL of the conditions it is required to work in. Otherwise, it is just a failed experiment. Gravity can’t work ‘sometimes’ or only in Iowa. Charter schools have never demonstrated consistent results across time, location, equal distributions of student abilities, and have never worked to scale.
And do you really not have a problem with the way the business model works? In your own words: “…actually eliminating some charters with problems so they can cheer….the bad ones go away…the good ones survive”. And what happens to the ‘inventory’ of the bad ones that close down?? They’re KIDS Joe, not boxes of unsold cell phones! Do you honestly think constant churning of schools (whether public or charter) opening and closing, assembling and re-assembling teachers, support staff, materials, buildings, technology, communications, and community ties is a GOOD idea?? It isn’t even efficient – never mind the kids that are left behind!! The fact that someone would consider that a model for education in America is downright nuts (and a whole lot of scary, too). Where do the kids go when the schools close down Joe? And what happens when so many charters fail in an area (I mean let’s just SUPPOSE that some students are harder to teach than others…I know…sounds like an EXCUSE) that no others want to go there? Then what? Have you ever been in a rough area looking for a good grocery store? There aren’t any, Joe. That’s what your ideas will do to neighborhoods!
So after all that smack talk, and the horrible results, NOW we have to put up with fraud? Fraud in charter schools is insult on top of injury.
The big picture is that we have wasted a colossal amount of time, money (my money!!) and energy on the charter school debate, and we have produced ZERO concrete ideas to help struggling students. Worse, it has been at the expense of the public schools, an entire generation of students and an entire profession. Motivations matter Joe. Public school systems are designed to prevent fraud; charter schools are designed to encourage it.
I appreciate your response, so much. What I am trying to assert is that there are two basic problems with charter schools. 1.Many are run in ridiculously bad ways, punishing students to make profits, choosing people to run them that are corrupt, etc…..thankfully, we do get a lot of specific reports about this at this site…..reporting about them is much less thorough elsewhere. 2. “But charter schools and their supporters DO say they have the answer.” They start with the misleading thing about the bad ones eliminating themselves so that the ones which survive are the good ones. That, of course, is not the case….many of the sub standard ones are propped up by politicians, and people in the so called education reform movement. Those with a lot of the best public relations, like KIPP, do not have 15 member boards of people from the financial industry, and not much input from educators for no reason…….they are adept at stacking the deck regarding the student population, and having a positive public image as a result. In St. Louis…..KIPP now has 10 percent of the public school population. Someone here furnished me a story from yesterday, and after I reread the original story about KIPP from several months ago…(The partnership paves the way for KIPP to have access to other empty school buildings in the city for future charter schools, potentially removing one of the largest stumbling blocks to opening a charter in St. Louis. KIPP officials already operate KIPP Inspire Academy, a high-performing middle school in the Fox Park neighborhood, and plan to eventually run five charter schools in St. Louis.
In return, all attendance, enrollment and test score data collected at KIPP’s St. Louis schools would be reflected in the data of St. Louis Public Schools, potentially strengthening the performance of the city school system.)
I put in bold two sentences….not sure if anyone will see the relevance…for the state report from yesterday…..
Educators who work with English language learners and students with disabilities were included to help ensure that achievement levels would be fair and appropriate for all students.
The levels define student performance based on yearly English language arts and mathematics assessments for grades 3-8 in Missouri public and charter schools.
My basic point in that thread…..report the stats of all charters in the slps district, or none of them. I have my doubts that KIPP is taking care of 15 percent of the special needs children.
My point here is…yes….keep reporting the scandals, but……also try to deal with more subtle, difficult to explain damage that the more successful charters do to equality of opportunity for all public school students.
Cue Joe Nathan. Wait for it!