Nancy Flanagan, a veteran educator, now retired, writes about the contrast between the bankrupt Detroit public schools and a scandal-tainted charter school four hours north in Traverse City, called Grand Traverse Academy in Michigan.
We have read many stories about the desperate financial condition of Detroit, a condition made worse by inept state-appointed emergency managers.
Flanagan writes:
“The Michigan legislature hasn’t decided yet whether to let Detroit Public Schools thrive. The House is currently tinkering with bills that cut back funding even further, allow uncertified teachers in DPS, remove DPS teachers’ collective bargaining rights, force teachers to re-apply for their jobs and eliminate an elected school board. In addition, DPS teachers got a tongue-lashing from several members of the legislature.
“Yes, this is the same DPS whose teachers had to shame their appointed leaders into doing something about the dead rodents, mold and wavy gym floors, earlier this year. It’s the same DPS that’s had four “emergency managers” in the past seven years. And it’s the same DPS system where 14 administrators appear to be headed for prison or plea bargains for taking kickbacks from a supply vendor.
“I don’t know a single DPS teacher who doesn’t provide essential supplies (including snowpants) for the children she teaches, out of her own funds. Imagine learning that principals in your district have been pocketing thousands of dollars out of the supply budget while you’re stopping at the dollar store on the way home, just to make it through the next day. They have taken to social media to plead their case, because nobody else seems to be listening…”
Drive four hours north to the Grand Traverse Academy, and you will find a beautiful charter school that collects $10 million in public funds.
GTA has a messy scandal on its hands. The charter operator borrowed $3.5 million from the school’s funds. Does anyone care? The media ignores the mess. The charter operates for profit, and these things just happen in business. The operator, an optometrist, said he had a pedagogical method based on “visual learning,” and his charter board had other optometrists who supported his ideas. The operator has since been convicted of fraud and tax evasion, but the board does not seem overly concerned.
Flanagan wonders:
“Detroit and Flint, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Washington D.C. were the first charter frontier. It was easy to persuade your average citizen to think: Well. You know, Detroit. They had to do something.
“Next step, however: Build gorgeous new buildings and use public money to fracture solid, well-run public educational systems. For private profit.
“Ask yourself: Why are the papers and the policy-makers all over those protesting teachers in Detroit–while the white-collar crime in charter world goes virtually unnoticed?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is beyond concerning that despite the very serious concerns about the effects of privatization and the uncovering of serious misappropriation so public funds in a number of charter schools, media and government support for privatization continues.
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National ed reformers don’t talk much about Michigan charter schools. There’s reason for that- 80% of the schools are for-profit and there’s no transparency or accountability at all:
“Ingersoll will go on trial next month on seven criminal charges of bank fraud and tax evasion. The allegations of financial self-dealing and cozy relations between Ingersoll, his associates and board members could not come at a worse time for the Michigan charter movement. The state’s powerful, mostly for-profit charter school industry has found itself on the defensive since the Detroit Free Press published a devastating series last June chronicling how charters receive nearly $1 billion a year in state taxpayer money with little accountability or transparency on how that money is spent. The report detailed how board members at some charter schools were forced out when they pushed to learn more about finances from management companies, and how state law failed to prevent self-enrichment by those operating some low-performing charter schools.”
The part that shocks me is how public universities are (often) the authorizers of the schools in MI. They get a cut of per pupil funding, but other than that financial incentive why are public universities going along with this?
http://www.mlive.com/education/index.ssf/2015/01/upcoming_fraud_trial_for_schoo.html
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I’ve written often about charters in MI–beginning with nuanced pieces (20 yrs ago) about the students who moved from the shiny new charter in my district back to the public school where I taught, and their academic shortcomings. I was always careful to examine the facts and the feelings–to ask whether charters would eventually have an impact on thriving public districts, or if they were simply another alternative, forcing us to pay attention to parent concerns.
Bad charters in MI are now legion (as that report in the Free Press, June 2014, amply demonstrated), largely because most of the early controls over outcomes and finances have been weakened by a right-wing legislature:
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2014/06/22/michigan-spends-1b-on-charter-schools-but-fails-to-hold/77155074/
I have seldom seen, however, charter fraud on the scale of Steve Ingersoll (who seems to have gotten his use-charters-as-cash-cow water wings at that charter in the community where I used to teach. Ingersoll was warned–years ago–by his Board’s own law firm–that what he was doing was wrong and must be halted immediately.
Somehow that didn’t happen.
In the meantime, Grand Traverse Academy is adding another wing to their sleek modern building,e
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Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Public-Education-vs-Chart-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Charter-Schools_Corporate-Fraud_Fraud_Media-160506-199.html#comment595698
with a comment leading to posts at this site about privatization and charter fraud
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“This week, we celebrate charters as the great success story in the world of school choice, but next week’s conference will focus on what may be the next frontier in school choice. ESAs may well pave the way to the educational marketplace that school choice advocates have sought for years. Yet how they are adopted, implemented, and managed by states will determine if they will be another school choice success story, or little more than a cautionary tale. As parents, policymakers, and advocates approach this new frontier, it’s important that they understand the great possibilities, and potential drawbacks, of this latest — and potentially game-changing — form of school choice in America.”
Ed reform is starting a big marketing push for vouchers. It’s the Next Step in Ed Reform.
Still nothing on ‘improving public schools” other than the usual grim testing agenda. They’ll now spend the NEXT 15 years on private schools.
For people who are supposedly paid to “improve public schools” they spend little or no time or effort on public schools. We really could have just hired a testing company and saved a lot of money but I guess all these people would then be unemployed 🙂
http://www.aei.org/publication/examining-the-next-step-in-school-choice/#.Vyx_dTPuVnI.twitter
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PR Watch has a new report out today about the Ed. Department’s inability to produce the records that document federal spending failures for charter schools.
Quote from founder of “New Schools Venture Fund” (rec’d $22 million in Gates funding),
“Our goal is to develop charter management organizations that produce a diverse supply of different brands on a large scale.” (Philanthropy Roundtable interview with Kim Smith)
No amount of money, particularly that taken from the poor, is ever enough for the richest 0.1%.
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Because the crimes, fraud and corruption behind the for profit, corporate, public education reform movement that worships at the alter of avarice runs all the way to the White House, Congress and up until recently the U.S. Supreme Court.
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