Bill Phillis, former deputy Commissioner of Education in Ihio, runs the Equity and Adequacy Coalition.
Highway robbery is legal in the Ohio charter industry
The charter industry has been largely deregulated from the beginning. The charter promoters and operators have had unrestrained freedom to use public money recklessly and dumb down educational opportunities for children. This industry is not a part of the common school system but it is a bloated parasite extracting valuable resources from the public system.
It is legal or not illegal in Ohio’s charter industry:
For a for-profit charter school company to hold title to real estate, furniture, equipment and other tangible assets that were purchased with public money
For a charter school board to pay a company allied with their for-profit management company $700,000 per year rent to house 150 students
For a charter school of 600 students to pay $185,000 in year for marketing and promotion
For an online charter school operator to siphon off funds set aside to educate students to operate other private companies that personally benefit the charter operator
For a charter operation to help subsidize a worldwide religious movement
For charter school board members to serve without being a citizen of the United States
For non-profit charter sponsors and charter school boards to pay outrageously high salaries and benefits that would not be tolerated in the public common school system
For a person with no training or experience in education to operate a charter school
For the presence of nepotism and contractual relationships that would not be tolerated in the public common school system
For a charter operator to buy legislation via obscene levels of political contributions
For charters to spend unlimited amounts of funds on marketing and promotion
For charter operators to operate in the dark and be shielded from public exposure regarding illegal activities
The list goes on and on…
Children in public school districts are being robbed of educational opportunities by the transfer of more than $7 billion from districts to the failed charter industry over the past 15 years; yet, state officials allow this fraud on the public to go on and on and on.
Under pressure from the public, the 131st General Assembly passed legislation that will rein in some of the abuse now authorized by law. But big money from the charter industry, ineptitude of the Ohio Department of Education and the $71 million federal grant to expand charters will work together to fatten this failed industry.
The only hope is for the public common school community and advocates to band together to demand the end of this debacle that has utterly failed.
William Phillis
Ohio E & A
Ohio E & A | 100 S. 3rd Street | Columbus | OH | 43215
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A Chicago reporter got some new info on the Concept schools investigation.
Concept is big in Illinois- 30 schools- but they’re much bigger in Ohio. They’re the second largest operator (after White Hat) in Ohio.
“A clout-heavy charter-school firm that operates four taxpayer-funded schools in Chicago is suspected of defrauding the government by funneling more than $5 million in federal grants to insiders and “away from the charter schools,” according to court records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.
No criminal charges have been filed in the ongoing investigation of Des Plaines-based Concept Schools, which has built a network of powerful supporters, including Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago.”
I don’t know if this reporter invented the phrase “clout-heavy” but it is great 🙂
http://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-politics/7/71/1183551/watchdogs-charter-firm-suspected-cheating-federal-grant-program
Also, the much-celebrated Ohio charter school reforms are falling apart. The plan depends on regulating “sponsors” (sponsors are the entities that take a cut of every charter school student dollar).
The sponsors want a special rating system that will improve their numbers:
“Charter school supporters want the state to kill a proposal that would grade their “sponsors” just like school districts.
But they haven’t won over the Ohio Department of Education, at least not yet.
And the outside panel that proposed the new rating system is as adamant as ever that sponsors — the agencies that monitor and help create charter schools — be graded the same way school districts are on state report cards.”
The state will fold and give the charter lobbyists what they want, which effectively kills the new charter regulation law because it’s (mostly) dependent on sponsor ratings. If they rig the ratings they rig the whole system.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2015/12/dont_grade_us_like_school_districts_charter_school_sponsors_say_state_might_do_it_anyway.html#incart_river_index
cops & robbers scratch each others backses
with the scratch they scratch from your taxes
And then there’s Gulen Charter Schools … BAD! Ohio is a huge MESS.
As a public school official, I can say that this stuff is truly astonishing! Any one of these dubious practices would be cause for my removal from my position, for public humiliation, for the cancellation of my professional license, and possibly, for jail. Not to mention what would happen to the board of education.
This is plutocracy in action; not democracy.
Does the Teachers College at Columbia University view transparency as partial disclosure? The PR department’s release of researcher, Wohlstetter’s, paper on charter schools, only identified the Walton’s as funders, not the Arnold Foundation. I contacted Wohlstetter, who is on the Broad Charter School Prize Reward Board, along with Margot Rogers, former Gates employee and Duncan Chief of Staff and, currently, an education executive at Parthenon, to ask about the funding. She replied but, did not respond to my request for a list of funders.
The “embargoed until Dec. 9, 2015”, as a heading at the top of the paper, was new to me. I’m unaware of that practice, on an academic paper from a university.
The paper’s final comment, in the section about Columbus, Ohio (highly ranked as
favorable to charter schools) described the community’s lack of interest in charter schools.
Apparently, a co-opted legislature trumps democracy, when it comes to the U.S. Dept. of Ed.’s decision to ram privatized education down the throats of Ohioans, with $71 million in bribes.
“The paper’s final comment, in the section about Columbus, Ohio (highly ranked as
favorable to charter schools) described the community’s lack of interest in charter schools.”
I think it’s been a continual disappointment to ed reformers in this state that people in this state actually support their public schools. They must have been mystified when people didn’t “flee” public schools with the voucher program. We were told we would, by the people who promoted the vouchers.
Despite years of government officials/lobbyists denigrating and defunding public schools and promoting charters and vouchers, the people who actually live here and use the public system stubbornly refuse to go along with The Grand Privatization Plan 🙂
That study and report was supported by the Fordham Institute and Teachers College, Columbia University. It identifies “America’s Best (and Worst) Cities for School Choice. The report serves as a tool for “’targeted” marketing of charter schools in charter-friendly cities as well as a guide to which strategies may be needed to strengthen “market share” in each city. There are detailed profiles of each city, another aide to targeted marketing.
The report was embargoed until December 9, 2015 for no obvious reason that I can think of other than allowing charter lobbyists to seek generous support of charters in ESSA… a mission accomplished.
Click to access fordham_-_2015-12-09_americas_best_and_worst_cities_for_school_choice.pdf
Laura,
Teachers College, Office of External Affairs, has an interesting disclaimer at its site, under the tab, “contact us”, “…Actions taken by Teachers College and its officials are not synonymous with those of the university with which we are affiliated.”
Wohlsetter – “Foreword Acknowledgements” p. iii
“This report was made possible through the generous support of the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and the Walton…..”
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé.
Ohio released the CC test scores, nearly a year after the children participated in the experiment. It’s a limited sample, admittedly, my son and 4 of his classmates, but the kids use the CC ranking system to describe themselves- “I’m a 4 in english but a 3 in math”. “So and so said he’s a 2”. I’m not an expert but did anyone think about how kids might perceive this handy one-digit ranking system we’ve given them?
This week, the Superintendent of Oakwood, Ohio Schools wrote an analysis of Ohio’s education “reform”, which was published in the Dayton Daily News. He presented the content of “7 Tough Conversations Ohioans Need to Have… (1) A useless testing/accountability system designed to rank and sort- not improve learning (2) A program that forces local districts to pay for college credits and textbooks (3) Local tax dollars used to fund sub-par charters that have very limited oversight (citing KnowYourCharter.com) (4) Dropout recovery programs that are free of the punishment of the accountability system (5) Loss of value and, any understanding of what the State Report Card means. (6) The collapse of the Ohio Department of Education, which is supposed to be a liaison between the legislature and schools (7) A broken school funding system… with school officials forced to run frequent political levy campaigns, for the youth of the community, while being required to do it on their own time.”
My observation-the current climate of education in Ohio is the state’s shame. Columbus represents the moneyed interests of people who could care less about education.
This has all been led by Ohio Governor John Kasich. Past Ohio Governor Strickland was a teacher himself, and he would have never done this to Ohio public schools. It has been satisfying to see such an arrogant, smug man like John Kasich fall flat on his face for the Republican nomination. I am not a vindictive person, but Governor John Kasich has done so much damage to Ohio public schools, their students, and their teachers………that it gives me much satisfaction that he got nowhere in this race. Maybe Governor John Kasich needed his Ohio teachers after all. We are good for some votes.
The Ohio CC PARCC test score results gave us absolutely nothing. What an expensive joke! The scores are worthless. The Ohio Achievement Assessment gave us so much valuable information on our how kids performed on each strand of the assessment, and now we have nothing at all to help us. Good Job, Governor John Kasich,…once Ohio gets rid of you…I don’t think you will ever be in public office again. At least I hope not…for the sake of the public.