The anti-privatization website “In the Public Interest” reports on an interesting development:
The Department of Education issued a press release boasting of its commitment to transparency and noting that the agency had committed $1.5 billion to support new charter schools since 2006. When the CMD requested a list of the schools that had been closed or never opened, the Department claimed it did not have any information. Some transparency.
National: The Center for Media and Democracy files an appeal against the Department of Education’s claim that it has no records about closed or never-opened charter schools referenced in its “Commitment to Transparency” press release. “It strains credulity and common sense that, despite spending billions in taxpayer dollars on charters and putting out this press release—among several—on the accomplishments of the Charter Schools Program, the Department claims to have no databases, no data analyses, and no internal communications about the program mentioned in its press release,” CMD said in its appeal letter. CMD says it intends to file a lawsuit to compel disclosure if the DOE’s response to its FOIA appeal letter is inadequate.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Accountability is for Peons …
“Accountability is for Pee-ons”
Fixed
At the ESSA hearing in January at USDOE, the representative from the National Association of Charter School Authorizers was so cavalier about “just close” the charters that are “failing.” Don’t put them into any kind of remedial program. Just close them. It was astonishing to hear. There was not a thought about the students at all – as was the case with most testimony provided that day.
Now seeing this, no wonder NACSA doesn’t care about closures. No accountability whatsoever.
Well, because the public schools are there as a back-up to the “choice system”. They can be cavalier. They have no duty to “the public school system” at all. Public schools don’t have that luxury.
Nowadays the fewer and fewer truly public schools in our district are turning into what I would call “clean-up” institutions: Those schools still required by old-days’ law to admit all children, and thus legally mandated to take in any and all of the children who have been rejected and expelled from the choice system. (Schools which will then be publicly denigrated and humiliated for their subsequently produced test-scores.)
Are transcripts/reports available?
dmaxmj – here’s the link to the day’s testimony: http://edstream.ed.gov/webcast/Play/7592f68fb7404eedb2b89ea72032188c1d
Here’s my blog post about the day. You’re looking for Amanda Fenton in the first afternoon session. http://elfasd.blogspot.com/2016/01/julie-goes-to-washington-with-jamy.html
This should be illegal. Taxpayer funding should be accountable or the dept of Ed needs to reimburse those funds. You can’t require this from public schools and then give charters a free pass. That this is still going on is the ultimate fleecing of public funds for education.
I feel as if the whole “review” process was exposed as a joke with the Ohio charter grant. There were blatant misstatements in that application and no one caught them at the US Department of Education although the information is publicly available.
No one would have caught them, at either the state of federal level, but for a single newspaper reporter who happened to be at a state meeting.
Anyone can get tens of millions of dollars to expand charter schools from the Obama Administration, based on an application that is fiction. Charter promoters in my state just did This has to be a rubber stamp. There is no other explanation for the Ohio grant.
The US DOE was prolly storing the info on Hillary Docs.
So, it’s completely understandable.
How about starting the screenplay — we can’t be too far from one.
The charter grants are only half the story. That’s only one stream of federal funding charters are eligible for- they’re also eligible for most grants that go to public schools.
This is one of the Obama “innovation” grants. Look at the top recipients:
http://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/i3-grants-findings-from-the-first-round.html
I guess public schools are incapable of “innovating” unlike The Best and The Brightest.
It’s interesting to me that the Obama appointees award grants directly to charter orgs and organizations like TFA, while most of the grants for public schools go thru a university- do they not trust public school leaders to handle grant money without a university filter?
You are correct. There are multiple programs to support charters including grants for charter facilities, new charters, expansion of charter chains and so on. I looked at the reviews for the sham Ohio grants. They were filled with red flags but the money was just shoved out the door.
Looked at the reviews for KIPP application for new and expansions of charters. 50 points were awarded for “reputation” of the applicant. Only 5 points on the evaluation plan. The reviewers found few flaws in the application. One opined that the planned expansion was like opening a bunch of big box stores. That KIPP application included copies from report cards submitted by individual schools and some summaries from locations where there are multiple schools. There are missing reports, but those available have attrition rates and percentages of student receiving special education services. Iam putting this info into a spreadsheet for some analyses, but also thinking that USDE should have all of this information in a form that enables secondary analyses, for every year, every outfit that received a grant.
The Obama administration and transparency go together like matter and anti-matter.
@Laura H. Chapman Re: KIPP Did you file an FOIA request? I see this office has been the subject of several articles.
Sounds like a group crowd-sourcing project. I’m in.
BTW – still waiting for a response to several emails and calls made to Ed re: KIPP redacted information. Will be calling my MD Rep. next week if I still don’t hear anything shortly. (heads up to Department of Ed staff who I hope monitors social media. If not, I’m available for hire.)
Now, someone is in charge of keeping records or should be. Do we have a name? Perhaps that great staff in the Charter office that likes white-out and black markers and the word: redact?
Todays Washington Post Department of Ed and Title 1 dollars. Those guys are something. They can’t keep track of money. They can’t enforce rules, laws or regulations. I question their comprehension and analytical skills (perhaps they should have to pass a battery of Common Core English and Reading and Language and Arts tests) but now they attempt to rewrite the laws. If anyone needs to heel it’s them.
“Education officials say they’re trying to protect poor children. A senator says they’re trying to break the law.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/us-education-officials-say-theyre-trying-to-protect-poor-children-a-senator-says-theyre-trying-to-break-the-law/2016/05/12/944c3108-179b-11e6-9e16-2e5a123aac62_story.html
“An Obama administration proposal to ensure adequate resources for poor children in the nation’s schools has triggered a backlash on Capitol Hill and among the nation’s K-12 superintendents, who say that the U.S. Education Department is trying to unilaterally — and illegally — rewrite the nation’s main federal education law.”
Where is the GAO?
Probably worried about the office’s funding, if it goes after the richest man in America’s Dept. of Ed.
The ITPI link does not work.
Thank you for all you do,
CPSdoc