Last week, the Center for Media and Democracy released a detailed (though not complete) list of financial scandals in the charter industry.
In Michigan, the CMD identified 25 “ghost” charters that received $1.7 million in planning grants from the state (taxpayer dollars at work), but never opened.
One of the “ghost schools” was to be a boarding school called Detroit College Preparatory Academy. After failing to open the school, its proponent was then hired as the head of Michigan’s State School Reform/Redesign
Office which is responsible for fixing “Priority Schools,”schools in
the bottom 5% in terms of academic performance. This is often done with a
state takeover, leading to an Emergency Manager. Sometimes, they get turned over to charter companies.
Being a reformer means there will always be a rightwing governor or think tank to hire you.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Lobby Story
What can you say about a school system that died?
Being a reformer means never having to say you’re sorry.
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“Being a reformer means there will always be a rightwing governor or think tank to hire you.”
Who needs right wing governors? In California, a so called progressive bastion of Democrats, all the reformers land on their feet. And you’re only supposed to whisper about their destructive ideology. I guess nobody wants a billionaire reformer to come after them next. We’ve got lobbyists straight out of Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst filtering parent input for lausd’s superintendent search. We’ve got the disastrous disciples of Deasy running their own districts with Tommy Chang in Boston and Matt what’s-his-name in Burbank. We’ve got the founder of PUC charters buying an election to get a seat on our school board. We’ve got TeachPlus posers meeting with Obama and TFA grooming Congressional aides. How exactly is it that democracy will win?
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It would be wonderful to have a single database documenting the waste, fraud, and abuse in the charter industry, and in public education, including the names of those who are known to have committed fraud. There is nothing happening at the federal level. Whistleblowing is not for the naive. A good start would be even more of these published reports with some classification of the type of fraud.
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Don’t blame this profiteering by sleazy charter school con artists on right wing operators. Just about the entire ruling class, democrat and republican, liberal or conservative, has decided that public schools must be privatized. It’s a perfect storm of excreta, much like the weird left-right alliance that brought us Prohibition a century ago. Read “Las Call” for details on that.
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Cyber schools are certainly not almost understanding through the computer. The kids carry out a great deal of understanding offline. The youngsters have to have support parents to aid all of them study online and also offline.
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OMG … disgustingly wrong. Glad I don’t teach in Michigan anymore.
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“Being a reformer means there will always be a rightwing governor or think tank to hire you.” whether you know anything about education or not…
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