There is no end of charter school scandals in Ohio. Blogger Plunderbund follows these stories and reports the details. Here is the latest:
“Columbus Dispatch readers were shocked, shocked to learn last week that members of Imagine Columbus Primary School’s charter board, protesting that they had no say in negotiating the terms of an operational contract, resigned “en masse” over a lease imposed by the management company that had the school paying $58,000 per month in rent for space to house 150 students, as well as other issues related to the viability of the school.
“The board’s action, which did get some attention from the usually somnolent “Ohio’s Greatest Home Newspaper,” was so dramatic that the Casablanca Prefect of Police might have exclaimed it was time to “round up the usual suspects.”
“But Captain Renault and the rest of us don’t have to look too far. In this case, the usual suspect is Imagine Schools, a national for-profit charter school chain founded by Dennis Bakke, a well-known Christian evangelical, and his wife, Eileen.
“The Bakkes have found great success with Imagine and its subsidiary, SchoolHouse Finance. But as is the case with many charter school enterprises, success is one thing, and ethics is quite another.”
But is Imagine a charter chain or a real estate empire? A breathless world awaits the answer.
“Conflict of interest? When the friend of a governor is appointed to a commission to study the feasibility of charter schools and, using his insider knowledge, forms a charter school management company to coincide with the enactment of the legislation, when one of the sponsors of the original charter school legislation works to have it designed so that a political friend and a family member profit from its enactment, and when a private foundation affiliated with a school management company offers free international travel to members of the legislature as a vehicle for influencing favorable charter school legislation, could these be examples of possible conflicts of interest?”
Plunderbund adds:
“Unfortunately, the terms charter school and conflict of interest are becoming synonymous. And redundant. ”
Who owns the charter schools in Ohio? Like many states, Tthe charters are called “public.” But the owners of the for-profit Imagine chain believe they “own” the charters. The boards are a necessary encumbrance. The public has no role, other than to supply money to the corporation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Glad I don’t teach in Ohio anymore. Colorado is bad enough with all this testing and egads repressive, stupid standards.
I like Yong Zhao when he speaks about “Out of Basement” readiness.
Thank you for posting this video. Where was Yong Zhao speaking & the date so I can look this up & share? Thanks!
This isn’t even the worst scandal of last week. This one came in Friday and will be rapidly climbing in ranking:
“But then we got the news last week that Brennan’s White Hat Management was going to sell off their least profitable, “highest performing”, and most at-risk for closure schools to a group run by K12, Inc.’s founder Ron Packard. That’s right, the same guy who gave us the Ohio Virtual Academy and all its “success.”
But White Hat will keep its cash cow online school, OHDELA, which has the worst performance index score of any statewide E-School — and that’s saying something, given how abjectly horrible Ohio’s statewide E-Schools perform. Its performance index score actually dropped more than 4% from four years ago, the only statewide E-School to see such a precipitous drop. Again, that’s saying something.
It will also keep its other bloated carcass — Life Skills — which proudly graduated 2 out of 155 students in one of its locations last year. But don’t worry, the state won’t ever be able to close these schools because Brennan had the legislature essentially create an exemption for his atrociously performing schools.”
http://www.10thperiod.com/2015/06/white-hat-sale-proves-ohio-charter.html?spref=tw
This is what happens when lawmakers and the governor “relinquish” their duties to contractors. To me the most irresponsible act of the whole mess these “adults” created is how they off-loaded the most vulnerable students to Life Skills. Solved that problem! On to the next fundraiser!
The public has no role, other than to supply money to the corporation.
This is the official policy of the Republican Party and about one-half of the Democratic Party. Has been for 40 years.
Whenever any politician talks about public-private partnership, it’s just a plan to hand unearned revenues to political supporters. They don’t believe there is anything wrong with it. They believe that is how things are supposed to work.
I beg to differ. They do know there’s something wrong with it, and as proof I offer the fact that when Ohio lawmakers visit public schools while promoting their own careers they vow their eternal support for “our schools”.
If they really believed privatizing public schools was such a popular idea their actions would match their words, and they don’t. Match.
The one and only silver lining to the Ohio mess is this is a hotly contested state in Presidential elections, and they aren’t going to get the pass here on “ed reform” they might have gotten even 5 years ago. It’s about time.
When politicians, especially Republican politicians, speak of “our schools” they mean “schools were well-off white people send their children.” Charters are for “those people’s children” – This is the pattern all over the US. Corporate, for-profit charters are not proliferating in communities where white, college graduates send their children to school.
Everyone should look at any mention of “reform” with a critical lens. It generally means that the proposed change will allow corporations to exploit and feed off of the poor or middle class. Forget all rhetoric about “welfare queens;” the real problem is corporate welfare.
This, Ohio, sounds similar to Indiana. Legislature just passed giving a 50 million loan guarantee to charters but even down state Republicans are beginning balk, questioning if tax payers interests were being observed.
silly question!!!!
Off-topic (although it relates to nearly everything we talk about on all of these posts), but this is important reading: http://www.salon.com/2015/06/15/democracy_cannot_survive_why_the_neoliberal_revolution_has_freedom_on_the_ropes/
People are tired of being treated like only “human capital.” It is this type of thinking that permits corporations to dictate “career ready” objectives in preschool. In fact, I am reminded more of the communist state schools with the emphasis on national goals rather than individual growth and development.
CROSS POSTED HEREhttp://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Ohio-Land-of-Charter-Scho-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-Schools_Diane-Ravitch_Management_Profit-150615-349.html#comment549625
WITH THIS COMMENT:
”Unfortunately, the terms charter school and conflict of interest are becoming synonymous. And redundant. Just mentioning both in the same sentence exposes one of the fatal flaws in the DNA of charter schools and school privatization.That most fatal of charter schools flaws is called governance.”
My series here, and my comments on these posted links to the reality exposes the fraud being perpetrated on this nation in the name of ‘ school choice'”
The media has hidden the destruction, state by state o four public institution of education, and this is the end of democracy, and the road to opportunity for our people…http://www.opednews.com/Series/CHARTER-Schools–the-scho-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-141014-281.html
and few people see this happening across the nation!
Doublespeak exemplified. Instead of charter school, why not just say what they really are, corporate schools?
More breaking news in Ohio’s scandal ridden charter school industry. Yet, this governor is holding his head high and trying to run for President!
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/06/15/yost-charter-school-audit.html
And another one today:
“State Auditor Dave Yost today accused a recently-closed Dayton charter school of defrauding taxpayers of almost $1.2 million by billing the state for students who were not attending school.
Among them were a student that was not in school because he was in jail and another who had moved to Georgia.
The General Chappie James Leadership Academy closed before this school year because its oversight agency, Kids Count of Dayton, pulled support amid a series of investigations into the school.”
What is “Kids Count” ? Who works for them? What do they do? What do they earn? No one knows.
They referred it to the county prosecutor, which is where all of this should be going. It’s ridiculous to wait for federal law enforcement.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/06/charter_school_billed_state_12_million_for_no-show_students_some_in_prison_or_out_of_state.html
Here is the latest from Plunderbund:
“More Charter School Favoritism In Senate’s Budget Bill Through “Bonuses”
by Greg on June 15, 2015 · Leave a Comment
In the Senate’s version of the State Budget Bill (House Bill 64), the author’s decided to include bonus money for charter schools and school districts based on two specific items: four-year graduation rates and third grade reading proficiency (based on whatever third grade reading test the state will be using).
For graduation rate, the formulas are fairly simple: “The school/district’s four-year adjusted cohort graduation rate on its
most recent report card x 0.05 x the formula amount x the number of the district’s graduates reported to the department … for the same school year for which the most recent report card was issued”.
The “formula amount” is also being increased slightly via the bill (page 1508): “Formula amount” means $5,900, for fiscal year
2016, and $6,000, for fiscal year 2017. The formula amount is the base (starting) per-pupil amount allocated to schools/districts.
While the graduation rate bonuses are based on the same formula for charter schools and public school districts, the bonus centered around the “third grade reading guarantee” law is quite different and inexplicably favors charter schools over public school districts.
The formulas start out the same: “The school/district’s third-grade reading proficiency percentage x 0.15 x the formula amount x the number of the school’s students scoring at a proficient level or higher on the third-grade English language arts assessment … for the immediately preceding school year”.
At the end of the formula for districts, however, there is this additional multiplier: “… x the district’s state share index”.
The “state share index” is something that the legislature uses in funding formulas that supposedly describes a district’s ability to collect funding from the local community (i.e., a local community’s “ability” to chip in to pay for schools). Local communities do not, however, have full autonomy over exactly what they have to pay for, since state laws surrounding testing, transportation, retention of third graders, etc., are mandated by the General Assembly and local communities simply have to absorb those mandates and associated expenses. Additionally, local communities don’t get to decide whether or not they wish to have charter schools open up in their area and steal money away from the local school district (at a rate higher than what the district receives in state funding).
The “state share index” is a multiplier that is already used in determining the base amount of school funding that districts receive from the state and, while the calculation is changing slightly under the Senate version of HB64, the percentage still ranges from 0.05% up to a cap of 90%. What this means is that while charter schools are eligible for the entire formula amount as a bonus, school districts will only receive, at most, 90% of that formula amount for achieving the exact same goal.
To be even clearer, however, only 5 out of Ohio’s 613 school districts had an index figure of 90% this past school year while 17 were at the minimum figure of 0.05%. 311 of Ohio’s school districts had an index figure below 50%, including two of the largest urban districts in the state that are home to many charter schools – Cincinnati (46%) and Columbus (49%).
The other large urban district’s that “compete” with numerous charter schools are still nowhere near the 100% funding bonus mark that the charter’s will receive:
Cleveland – 70%
Dayton – 80%
Toledo – 75%
Once again, the legislature is favoring charter schools over the public school districts by finding more creative and subversive ways to try to funnel more funding their way.
Think of it this way: in Columbus, a charter school will receive a bonus based on a formula amount of $5,900 next year, while the Columbus City Schools’ formula amount based on the same achievement will be half of that amount — approximately $2,950. This provision sets up for Columbus, for example, to have the same requirements, the same goals, and the same achievement as the charters that they are supposedly “competing” with, yet the per-pupil bonus will be less than half the amount.
While many Ohio politicians and charter school backers say that they want charters to “have an even playing field” with the local school districts, they keep finding more and more ways to tilt the field in favor of the charters.
Contact your state senator today and tell them to remove the “state share index” component from the bonus for local school districts (page 1,525 of the Senate Finance Committee’s version of HB64).
After all, why do the members of the Ohio General Assembly value a charter school student more than a student in our public school districts?”