Kevin McCorry read the report from the federal Office of the Inspector General and learned that the major malefactors of the charter industry are the big corporate management chains.
He writes:
Some charter schools operate like islands — day-to-day they run independently of any higher or centralized power.
Others contract with a management organization — sometimes part of a big network, sometimes not. Sometimes for-profit, sometimes not.
It’s these charter management organizations, or CMOs, that have been criticized recently by the Office of the Inspector General inside the U.S. Department of Education.
In a September report, the OIG warned that CMOs pose a “significant risk” to both taxpayer dollars and performance expectations.
The report studied 33 CMOs in six states and found that two-thirds were cause for concern, with internal weaknesses that put federal tax dollars at risk.
Pennsylvania was one of the states investigated, and the report echoed much of what Pa. Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has already flagged about CMOs in the state.
He testified on the issue at a hearing in Allegheny County last week.
“When you have the larger management companies running a broad chunk of schools, we view that as a major issue,” he said. “If you were not allowed to find out the salary of your school district superintendent, what would be the outcry in your district?…There would be pitchforks at that meeting. In many of the management companies, we don’t even get to see the salaries let alone the costs.”
In the federal report, five Pa. CMOs were studied — four in Philadelphia and one in Chester. Two in Philadelphia checked out, but the other three rang alarm bells.
The report did not call out organizations by name.
There’s only one charter school in Chester, though, Chester Community Charter. It’s run by CSMI Education Management, a for-profit entity headed by Vahan Gureghian, a wealthy, politically influential player in state politics.
The report says he wrote checks to himself for $11 million dollars without seeking board approval in 2008-09.
This isn’t illegal in and of itself, but like the rest of the red flags in the report, the Inspector General says this raises concerns about the potential for waste, fraud and abuse.
The NAACP is right. It is time for accountability and transparency.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The results of this report should be shared with the public. Most people barely understand how charters function, and few know anything about CMOS that operate behind the scenes where there are lots of opportunities for waste and fraud. If we learned one thing from our meltdown in 2008, it is that some level of accountability and transparency should be followed. Taxpayers have a right to know where public money is going.
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SPREAD THE WORD because your state and local lawmakers and social media friends everywhere need to know right now that the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a warning that charter schools posed a risk to the Department of Education’s own goals. The report says: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting the goals.”
The report documents multiple cases of financial risk, waste, fraud, abuse, lack of accountability of federal funds, and lack of proof that the schools were implementing federal programs in accordance with federal requirements.
Throughout our nation, private charter schools backed by billionaire hedge funds are being allowed to divert hundreds of millions of public school tax dollars away from educating America’s children and into private corporate pockets. Any thoughtful person should pause a moment and ask: “Why are hedge funds the biggest promoters of charter schools?” Hedge funds aren’t altruistic — there’s got to be big profit in “non-profit” charter schools in order for hedge fund managers to be involved in backing them.
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. Hillary Clinton could, if elected President, on day one in office issue an Executive Order to the Department of Education to do just that. Tell her today to do that! Send her the above information to make certain she knows about the Inspector General’s findings and about the abuses being committed by charter schools.
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“The report did not call out organizations by name.”
That’s odd. They’re 100% publicly-funded. Are the names a secret? Why do they get these elaborate protections?
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Charter, cheater, pumpkin eater.
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Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Pennsylvania-Federal-Repo-in-General_News-Charter-School-Failure_Charter-Schools_Corporate_Education-161018-507.html#comment623599
with this comment, which has embedded link at that dress:
See my series on privatization http://www.opednews.com/Series/PRIVITIZATION-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-150925-546.html
which shares information that Diane Ravitch provides about the state legislatures which are taking over the local schools, with nary an educator on board, and giving them to charters, with not a shred of oversight! Here is a link to Diane’s posts on charter school corruption. https://dianeravitch.net/?s=Charter+corruption
And to really grasp what is afoot while this endless campaign steals the media’s attention, read How Not to Fix Our Public Schools
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch.
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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Always and forever, these days, with nary a teacher on board.
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I posted this comment at current affairs in the Post Dispatch, where they have 8 forums for the discussion of various sports, including soccer, but proudly assert it is not necessary to have one for education. (it is just another current affair).
“I will vote for Hillary. I am not super enthused about it.
There will be a lot of stupid stuff talked about tonight, at the last debate, but in an area in which St. Louis is a national leader, avoidance of education issues will guarantee that the Pennsylvania story is not a part of it.”
Pennsylvania: Federal Report Reveals Malfeasance on Part of Charter Management Organizations:
The Post Dispatch refused to carry the news about the NAACP resolution. This morning they ran a story about how difficult it is for teachers to include the presidential election in social studies this year, because of the vulgarity.
I am contemplating raising whether it is a good thing or a bad thing that they probably do not feel free to discuss what the NAACP had to say about charter schools. But, in the Spirit of St. Louis, no one would know what I was referring to, or why.
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Like!
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