In a remarkable turn of events, the federal Office of Inspector General issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s goals.
The report was released just days after the US Department of Education released $245 million to increase the number of unregulated charter schools.
US News reports:
“Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals of an array of programs the Department of Education oversees, a new audit from the Office of Inspector General found.
“Investigators assessed the risk that charter schools receiving federal funds, specifically the schools’ relationships with the organizations that oversee them, posed to the objectives of department programs, including the federal K-12 law, special education, school turnaround efforts and others. The audit period covered July 2011 through March 2013 and assessed 33 charter schools in six states.
“Specifically, the report found instances of financial risk, including waste, fraud and abuse, lack of accountability over federal funds and lack of assurances that the schools were implementing federal programs in accordance with federal requirements at 22 of the 33 schools they looked at, all of which were run by management organizations.
“We determined that charter school relationships with [charter management organizations] posed a significant risk to department program objectives,” the report reads. The investigators noted, however, that because it was not a statistical sample, the findings can’t necessarily be projected to the entire sector of charter schools and their management organizations.
“Moreover, the inspector general’s report found that the Education Department did not have effective internal controls to monitor, evaluate and mitigate those risks, nor did it ensure that state departments of education were overseeing charter schools and their management organizations.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I thought charter schools were the goals of the Department of Education, considering they’re all we ever hear about from the so-called reformers who have long colonized it.
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One thing I’ve missed reading is the difference between the original concept of charter schools vs the autocratic, publicly funded, private sector corporate charter school industry.
The original concept was to put teachers in charge with more freedom to develop curriculum and/or instructional techniques that would be more successful reaching children that were a challenge to teach and learn. The original charter/alternative schools would still operate inside of community based, locally controlled, democratic, transparent traditional public school districts.
Even with more freedom to be innovative, the teachers, who were in charge like teachers are in Finland, instead of administrators, stock holders, hedge fund mangers, and corporate CEOs, would still be held accountable with transparency built in so fraud and abuse of children would not be a high risk.
What we have with the autocratic, often fraudulent and inferior, child abusing, child bullying, cherry picking, corporate charter school industry is everything the orignal charter school movement didn’t represent. We have no transparency to discover fraud, child abuse and even who is hired to teach our children. In the opaque corporate charter school industry, psychopaths and sociopaths and child abusers, without any background check at all in place, can end up in the same classroom with our children and we have no way to know who they are or what they are doing with our children. We have little or no way to know how the money is being spent. We have no say in the methods being used to control and teach our children.
When I was becoming a teacher back in 1975-76, I went through an FBI background check before earning my credential to teach our children, and I had more freedom as a teacher back then to teach without top down control. The top down control from non-educators appeared soon after the flawed and fraudulent “Nation at Risk” report in 1983 that was spun out of the Reason Administration, and as the decades slipped by the top down control from idiots and frauds that no little to nothing about teaching got repeat idly worse while most if not all of the countries that preform better on the international PISA test continued to give teachers more freedom in the classroom and bottom up thinking and control.
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Yes, Lloyd, when I was getting my teaching credential, about the same time you were, I had to have my fingerprints taken and submit to an FBI background check, as well. And teachers did have more freedom then.
The county I live in actually had two charter schools, a number of years ago. They were started and run by teachers and interested parents, and they were still operating under the auspices of the local school district, while being given a whole lot of freedom to develop their own curricula and they were, and are still, transparent. They were good schools, able to introduce innovative teaching. They remain so to this day. They are the dinosaurs among charter schools in the area, however. The others that have popped up are typical of the corporatized charter school “industry.” When parents from time to time ask for my advice when they are looking into a charter school for their kids, I advise them to take a look at the two “old” charter schools, and stay far away from the newer ones.
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The district where I taught for thirty years had a charter school but it went by another name. It was called an alternative high school, but it was operated under the original concept of what charter schools were supposed to be.
It’s still there but I have no idea if it is being subjected to the same test-and-punish agenda being forced on this country thanks to the likes of Bill Gates and his billionaire cabal. If so, then it is a safe bet that teaching to the test has destroyed the original charter school concept used in that alternative high school and the at risk teens they work with are not longer getting the attention they should have.
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So far, the two “old” charters in my county have managed to maintain their original standards, but I wonder how much longer that will last as this state pushes for more and more testing and teaching to the test.
I cannot help but think that, in future years, people will look back at this era of miseducation and “data-driven” techniques and wonder “what in the he!! were they thinking?” Or maybe I’m wrong, maybe there will be no more teachers at all, just kids being “taught” by computers and robots. 😦
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If we lose the education wars to the libertarians, neo-cons, and neo-libs, the United States will become a country where its children are taught by computers and there will be no professional teachers. Instead, the U.S. will become worse than George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984”, and William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”.
The U.S. will no longer be a republic with elements of a participatory democracy. It will be a market based, autocratic technocracy ruled by billionaires and corporate CEOs. The public sector and labor unions will be cleansed (literally) from history and waging wars around the world for profit will be the norm as even warfare is automated.
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I just made a study of information I received from the state of MO public education site. I asked for information about charter schools racial diversity. I learned that St. Louis has not lost a lot of students in the last ten years, which is often claimed to be the case. SLPS now has only 22,506,but the city also has 10,500 in charters. Some seem designed to be escape places from slps, others seem to be run as profit sources. As more students opt for charters, it is not evident how many special needs students are being served by the charters; But the percentage of white children in charters is close to 25%, while it is at 11.5 in the rest of the district. Several schools, including KIPP which now has 956 students simply do not offer the state any information.;;presumably following the advice from the 15 banking industry people on their board. Some of the best scores came from the Gulen school.1285 students—72% white.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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The truth be told!
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How appropriate that the article to which the post links headlines it with a picture of charter school “advocates” in their matching t-shirts waving yellow banners. Come on, public school advocates! Get out there in your matching t-shirts with your professionally made banners! Make sure to add a few hand made posters to add credibility to your cause. (snark alert)
Does anyone really think that John King and the DOE will pay anything other than lip service to this report?
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Doesn’t King’s wife work for Bellwether- schools are “human capital pipelines”?
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King’s wife works for Bellwether Partners, which promotes charters and TFA
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Ha!
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The true corruption of the Obama administration.
I would have thought it was just ignorance and excused Obama, but this report and the DOE’s continual support of the most unethical charters demonstrates otherwise.
I can’t believe it is anything but true corruption. Those staffers are either hoping for a high paying low work gig in the pro-charter think tank world, like Arne Duncan is getting, or they are getting marching orders from high up with Obama’s acquiesces and are afraid to speak out.
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If tests can redefine success, then the public-expense-private-profit pipeline flows with Wall Street cash.
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Amen! Agree. Been to Congress and the DEMs I met with are pro-charters. Remember, Obama has NO CLUE about the power and necessity for public schools. He went to private colleges and the HOITY TOITY preppy Punahou Schools founded by 5 missionary Puranical families who were given prime land by the Hawaiian Kingdom. These missionaries owned sugar cane plantations and did NOT want their white children going to school with non-white heathens. It’s the same-o same-o story of taking from the natives and raping the land and its people FOR PROFIT.
Remember, Queen Lili’uokalani signed the annexation papers, because USA military was bombing Diamond Head killing those whose land they stole. When the Hawaiian flag was taken down and the USA flag put up at I’olani Palace, it is told that the Hawaiian flag was cut up into small pieces and given to those who stoled and killed FOR PROFIT as their memorabilia.
If any of you are interested go to YouTube and type in Hawaii’s Last Queen. This is the story in 9 parts and it is exceptionally good.
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There is a lovely exhibit of the native Hawaiians and the royal family at the Smithsonian American Indian Museum in DC. They showed a movie in the exhibit- could that be the same one that is on YouTube?
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“…the Education Department did not have effective internal controls…” sums up not only the mess made by the federal government, but, in my experience, both our state’s AND our local district’s educational efforts.
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The article seems to mostly point a finger at the mismanagement of the cyber charters, They are not the only culprits that rip off taxpayers. There are a lot of shady real estate dealings connected to brick and mortar schools as well with real estate holding companies charging absurd amounts of rent for charter school space. The leasing company is often connected to owner of the charter chain making this a very corrupt practice. There is also a practice in which ownership public buildings gets transferred over to private equity. Numerous charters receive money and close their doors shortly after opening. The charter industry is riddled with waste and fraud. They oppose regulation because the lack of oversight gives them maximum opportunity to exploit public funds and poor students.
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Once the focus shifted from improving teaching to fattening wallets, everything described here quickly followed.
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Cross posted the original US news article http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/OIG-Report-Charter-School-in-General_News-Charter-School-Failure_Education_Education-Curriculum_Education-Funding-161006-228.html
with links to this site and Diane’s book, in my comment with I am copying
“Here is a link to Diane’s posts on charter school corruption : https://dianeravitch.net/?s=corruption
And if you are interested in how billions are misspent see this one on theCommon Core disaster http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/opinion/sunday/the-common-core-costs-billions-and-hurts-students.html?_r=3&utm_campaign=linkplug&utm_source=linkplug&utm_medium=linkplug&utm_content=linkplug&utm_term=linkplug
… and finally here is
How Not to Fix Our Public Schools :Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reign-of-error-by-diane-ravitch/2013/10/18/2ec6a848-2623-11e3-b3e9-d97fb087acd6_story.html
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My question about the $245 mil.- the Walton’s and their rich, enclave compatriots, have said, publicly, that they are willing to pay enormous amounts to privatize public education so, why are scarce, federal tax dollars being used to achieve the Walton agenda?
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Reblogged this on patthaleblog and commented:
What a great turn of events!
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Here is the link to this report http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/auditreports/fy2016/a02m0012.pdf
No less interesting is mow many of these investigative reports have been issued. Here is a SMALL sample of titles from http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oig/areports.html
OFFICE OF CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER (OCFO)
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Oversight of Local Educational Agency Single Audit Resolution
The Department’s Followup Process for External Audits
U.S. Department of Education’s Compliance With Improper Payment Reporting Requirements for Fiscal Year 2015
Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Oversight of Local Educational Agency Single Audit
OIG Risk Assessment of the Department’s Purchase Card Program for Fiscal Year 2015
Fiscal Year 2015 Closing Package Financial Statements – U.S. Department of Education
The U.S. Department of Education FY 2015 Agency Financial Report
OFFICE OF CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (OCIO)
The U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 Report For Fiscal Year 2015
OFFICE OF CIVIL RIGHTS (OCR)
Resolution of Discrimination Complaints by the Department’s Office for Civil Rights
OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS AND OUTREACH (OCO)
Audit of the Department’s Oversight of the Rural Education Achievement Program
OFFICE OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION (OESE)
Audit of the Department’s Oversight of the Rural Education Achievement Program
The Tennessee Department of Education’s Administration of a Race to the Top Grant
State and District Monitoring of School Improvement Grant Contractors in California
Audit of the Followup Process for External Audits in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education
OFFICE OF SPECIAL EDUCATION AND REHABILITATIVE SERVICES (OSERS)
Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor and Industry, Office of Vocational Rehabilitation’s Case Service Report Data Quality-
Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities’ Case Service Report Data Quality
California Department of Rehabilitation Case Service Report Data Quality
FEDERAL STUDENT AID (FSA)
FSA Oversight of the Development and Enhancement of Information Technology Products
Closure of OIG’s Audit of Federal Student Aid’s Monitoring and Enforcement of Compliance with the Misrepresentation Regulations-
FY 2015 Annual Report for Federal Student Aid
Functionality of the Debt Management Collection System
OFFICE OF POST SECONDARY EDUCATION (OPE)
The Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission
INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION SCIENCES (IES)
Protection of Personally Identifiable Information in Oregon’s Statewide Longitudinal Data System
Protection of Personally Identifiable Information in the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Longitudinal Data System
Audit of Small Business Innovation Research Program Regulations and Operating Procedures
OFFICE OF DEPUTY SECRETARY (ODS)
Title-ACN #-Date Issued-Format
Nationwide Assessment of Charter and Education Management Organizations-A02M0012-09/29/2016-PDF(4.87M))
Management Certifications of Data Reliability
Heck of Job Obama + Arne + John + congressional oversight committees
and this is only for this year and last
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Heck of a job, Laura!
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I read through the study. I found it amusing that charters love to talk about the bureaucracy of public education, and perhaps this is a problem in large systems. I worked in a small school district which operated very efficiently with total transparency. In reading this study, the CMOs of the charter chains represent another layer of unneeded bureaucracy using funds that would be better spent helping struggling students. What a waste of public money!
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FYI-Here’s Peter Greene’s sadly amusing take on this report and all the waste and fraud in the charter industry. Taxpayers should be asking, “Here’s evidence, what are you going to do about it?” http://curmudgucation.blogspot.com/2016/10/useds-troubled-charter-love.html
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wasted money ! your tax dollars !
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People should keep an eye out for the charter lobby “model law”:
http://www.publiccharters.org/press/national-alliance-calls-for-states-to-strengthen-charter-school-laws/
It’s about vastly expanding charter schools, not regulating them.
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I think it was fairly obvious that there was little or no oversight of this program when they allocated 71 million to Ohio based on completely made-up numbers.
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“Investigators assessed the risk that charter schools receiving federal funds, specifically the schools’ relationships with the organizations that oversee them, posed to the objectives of department programs.” Bingo.
I just attended a charter school board meeting to see if I could figure out how they were hiding financial malfeasance, and heard the oversight organization’s report (this particular charter is authorized by Lake Superior State University). Details are here: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2016/10/seven_things_i_learned_from_attending_a_charter_school_board_meeting.html
In short, the charter authorizer gets $281,000 every year from this school (over $5 million for all the charters they oversee) for doing basically–nothing.
An email to the state superintendent got a response that the MI Dept of Education could do nothing, per our charter laws.
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The authorizer situation in Michigan needs an immediate investigation.
Sometimes they are hundreds of miles away from these school they’re supposedly “regulating”.
No one knows what the Ohio authorizers do either- how they earn their cut of the public school dollar.
It’s a free for all.
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Yes, nflanagan, this is exactly the problem with the charters in most states. They receive tax-payer dollars, but have absolutely no accountability to the public. And the charter laws in these states are written to protect the charters from any public over-sight.
{{Sigh}}
What can I say? This is not just unacceptable, this is totally unethical, and works against the interests of the children, of the public, and of good education.
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There is a videotape of the SUNY Charter Institute meeting (I think it was October of 2014) where they authorized a bunch of Success Academy Charter Schools. The so-called “oversight” was embarrassing. A group of parents had brought evidence of empty seats despite the charter school claiming thousands on a wait list. And the “oversight” consisted of “we asked the charter, they said it was a glitch, no problem”. That isn’t oversight! And then SUNY broke its own rules and allowed the charter chain to change the district where it wanted to locate the school despite never having actually held any hearings to locate the school there. When caught out on this by people watching the meeting, and when it got a minor news story, SUNY had to go back and change its website to pretend it had approved the original charter location where the charter had no intention of locating and never did. It was truly absurd but proved beyond a doubt who was in charge and it wasn’t SUNY.
Finally, SUNY mentioned a very minor — almost laughable — concern with the very high attrition rates at some so-called exemplary charters. They said they’d “convene a committee” to look into it at some point in the future which they never did. “see no evil” is their mantra as long as test scores are high and the donations pour in.
Unfortunately, that kind of “oversight” encourages all charters to break the rules, not follow them. To the victors go to the spoils, and in a game where the refs are only interested in marketing and not following rules, education is not the priority.
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Indeed, the “convene a committee” is their way of seeing no evil, hearing no evil. They get to say “Hey, we couldn’t find anything wrong. What’s the problem?”
Ugh.
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Key question: Did you look?
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This is pretty amazing:
Between FYs 2010 and 2013, a State audit entity in New York conducted an audit involving charter schools with CMOs and a local audit entity in Pennsylvania conducted an investigative review involving various charter schools. The reports cited questionable service and lease
agreements, uncertainty as to the fiscal controls maintained at the charter schools, and a CMO that refused to provide documentation to support its activities. The CMO, which operated
charter schools in eight States, was unwilling to provide financial information related to its charter school management to the State auditing entity because the CMO claimed the
information was private and proprietary.
Two State auditing entities had limited authority to perform audits related to charter schools with CMOs. Specifically, one State auditing entity in Michigan claimed it did not have the authority to audit a charter school or a CMO. Another State auditing entity in Pennsylvania indicated that the CMOs did not want to provide their information because they stated that they were a private entity and were not the auditee. As an alternative, the auditing entity used the Internal RevenueService form 990 to obtain information.”
The state auditor in Michigan is not even ALLOWED to audit charter schools.
All the school has to do is claim it’s a private entity and they don’t get audited.
One of them operates in EIGHT states.
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Chiara, if they are “private entities,” then they should not be receiving any “public money” whatsoever.
But they do.
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It’s such a complete abdication of duty by state lawmakers!
Looking after public funds is a big part of their job. They’ve just decided not to do it?
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Very true. They have decided not to do it, though, because they not only have “drunk the Kool-Aid,” but mostly because there is so much money involved in the pro-charter movement.
Money talks, after all. 😦
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Well said…it’s more than just a complete abdication of duty by state lawmakers…it is a government-based organized and legitimized crime syndicate…
Lawmakers like Cuomo and Christie have descended chin deep in the criminal enterprise…they pass legislation to support charters because on a balance sheet, our youngest and most vulnerable citizens, the survival of the middle class, and the health of our democracy do not carry the weight of the multi-million dollar bricks the wealthy hand over to them in return for the abdication of their responsibilities to our citizens and our society.
These are in fact crimes, perpetrated against the United States by the billionaire class, inked into law by those that desecrate the office of governor.
Two hundred forty years ago, American colonists rose up and fought against King George III and the British…and since then colonies suffering under oppressive empire rule and overthrew their masters…
Less than two hundred years ago, King Louis XVI was overthrown by the 97% of France…and the new French Revolution purged itself of many, with a keen focus on royalty, which quickly discovered that the guillotine was non discriminatory.
The wealthy finance wars abroad, and Americans fight and die, not for the United States, but for the corporate world and Wall Street.
The illegal privatization of public entities such as education represent a whole new horizon for these war wagers…they see the American people not as Americans, but as a part of the 7,000,000,000 or so they must share the planet with, and whether the money comes from New Delhi or New York, La Paz or Los Angeles, or from Capetown to Chicago…all citizens are expendable, to be utilized for the goals of profit, power, and control.
The actions of the wealthy class know no logic, as they pray to their bank accounts and the law to “protect” them. The wealthy are poor students of history, hitching themselves to an aire of arrogance, worthy only to themselves.
A normal approach would be to stop the funding and false-legitimization of the privatization of public education, but these are not normal times.
Are the wealthy of this nation destined to follow their British or French corrupt rulers, or will common sense prevail.
Will the wealthy be open to a crash course in human nature and rationality?
Will the wealthy, and those in positions of power look into faces of the children they trod upon, or wI’ll our children remain faceless to them, as they count their bank accounts?
Will moral decay win the day, or will someone step up and say enough is enough?
Or will the illegal money stolen be wired into the new checking accounts of those such as:
Mr Privatization and Ms Philanthrocapitalism
10 College and Career Ready Lane
The State of Criminality, USA
The new American Dream…built on the backs of our children.
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Here’s a charter school accountability requirement that is just plain common sense and in no way a “restriction” on charter schools: Charter schools must file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file. The public has a right and an obligation to know where public tax dollars for educating children are actually being spent. No honest charter school would want to avoid telling taxpayers where their dollars are going.
Hillary Clinton could and should, if elected, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the U.S. Department of Education which requires that no charter school can receive any federal money unless the school files the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file.
And even the staunchly pro-charter school Los Angeles Times (which acknowledges that its “reporting” on charter schools is paid for by a billionaire charter school advocate) complained in an editorial that “the only serious scrutiny that charter operators typically get is when they are issued their right to operate, and then five years later when they apply for renewal.” Without needed oversight of what charter schools are actually doing with the public’s tax dollars, hundreds of millions of tax money that is supposed to be spent on educating the public’s children is being siphoned away into private pockets.
One typical practice of charter schools is to pay exorbitant rates to rent buildings that are owned by the charter school board members or by their proxy companies which then pocket the public’s tax money as profit. Another profitable practice is that although charter schools use public tax money to purchase millions of dollars of such things as computers, the things they buy with public tax money become their private property and can be sold by them for profit…and then use public tax money to buy more, and sell again, and again, and again, pocketing profit after profit.
The Washington State and New York State supreme courts and the National Labor Relations Board have ruled that charter schools are not public schools because they aren’t accountable to the public since they aren’t governed by publicly-elected boards and aren’t subdivisions of public government entities, in spite of the fact that some state laws enabling charter schools say they are government subdivisions.
Charter schools are clearly private schools, owned and operated by private entities; nevertheless, they get public tax money. Moreover, as the NAACP and ACLU have reported, charter schools are often engaged in racial and economic-class discrimination.
Charter schools should (1) be required by law to be governed by school boards elected by the voters so that they are accountable to the public; (2) a charter school entity must legally be a subdivision of a publicly-elected governmental body; (3) charter schools should be required to file the same detailed public-domain audited annual financial reports under penalty of perjury that genuine public schools file; and, (4) anything a charter school buys with the public’s money should be the public’s property. NO FEDERAL MONEY SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO GO TO CHARTER SCHOOLS THAT FAIL TO MEET THESE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS OF ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.
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What I am very clear on is this – they do not have the secret sauce. They do have ways – that are not in line with, as they say above, the goals of the fed dept of ed. And ways that are not fair, democratic or ethical. But ways that get them test scores with selected students and in turn -more money. But they do not have the secret sauce. Listen to any interview with Ms TFA herself – charlie rose or otherwise. no secret sauce. Maybe at one point a few years back they were ahead in technology but that is now no longer true. Everything is available and happening in technology at most all of public schools at present. The original intent of charters was to help the students that were struggling – these privitazation charters do not even want those students. ….rest in peace Albert Shanker – they screwed up your dream. (I wanted to say f—-ed up but Diane does not allow bad language)
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“Moreover, the inspector general’s report found that the Education Department did not have effective internal controls to monitor, evaluate and mitigate those risks, nor did it ensure that state departments of education were overseeing charter schools and their management organizations.”
This is fantastic. I wonder why they started the investigation. Who pushed for it? Hopefully, much more will come out of it.
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The secret sauce is hard work, professionalism and compassion. And that can be done at our existing public schools.
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