New York City’s Comptroller Scott Stringer released his long-awaited audit of one of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter schools, Harlem Success Academy 3. Moskowitz fought the audit, even going to court to prevent it.
The story is reported in the New York Daily News.
“Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charter network engaged in a variety of sloppy financial practices and should reimburse the city for a $50,000 in public money it has received, Controller Scott Stringer charged in an audit released Monday.
“Stringer’s long-awaited financial probe of the city’s largest charter school network shows the network billed the city for special education services it can’t prove it provided at Harlem Success 3, the school that is the focus of the audit.
“We found irregularities in this audit of Success Academy that raise serious concerns,” Stringer said. “Billing the DOE for special education services without records to verify that they were provided, financial reports that made administrative costs seem lower than they actually were, ineffective fiscal controls over credit card and other spending, missing loan agreements for millions of dollars — all were findings uncovered by this audit.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A performance review is needed. When Harrison Goldin was NYC Comptroller in the late 1970’s, he set up a unit to conduct analyses of management that went beyond fiscal accounting and probed the effectiveness of a program’s operation. Sadly and deliberately it seems that this kind of watchdog reform has been abandoned and we’re back to the status quo ante that a Comptroller’s jurisdiction begins and ends with examining the books.
At least New York City’s Independent Budget Office has been given responsibility by the NYS legislature to monitor the outcomes of the NYC Department of Education.
In the case of Success Academy, however, it seems that this charter organization has remained free of any such scrutiny. Politicians have come to fear the lash of SA’s leader, Eva Moskowitz and her ability to rile up support should anyone question any of the methods her schools use to produce results. Resources are poured into these school, while transparency lies cringing.
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Thanks, Fred Smith. If I were Comptroller, I would be curious about SA’s financial capacity to spend $67.7 million for a condo in Manhattan. What public school can do that?
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I agree with this.
Notice that one issue that there were no records of special education services that were given to students. Why? If you look at the data for Success Academy Harlem 3, you will notice that the number of students with disabilities seems to decline when those students are tracked from year to year. Where do they all go?
This audit was prevented from looking at enrollment records to see what happened to the children who won the Kindergarten lottery over the years to see which ones were allowed to remain at the school and which ones were unceremoniously drummed out in the manner that we have seen their model teachers demonstrate. But the fact that Success Academy could not come up with decent records for services to their special education students is very telling. And the extraordinary waste of funding that is going to a management organization which still has the chutzpah to charge the school extra money for programs they are supposed to provide for that management fee? Unbelievable.
Conclusion: pushing out expensive children results in high profit margins for your management organization to use to market to affluent college educated parents and purchase fancy offices for your administrative staff and expensive PR firms to promote the profile of your leader.
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I have worked in City government for more than 25 years and have been through dozens of Comptroller’s performance audits. Trust me. the function is alive and (un)well.
It has been my experience that auditors from the Comptroller’s are shockingly, embarrassingly incompetent, without exception. They invariably get every aspect of their analyses wrong, wildly exaggerate the significance of whatever findings they manage to come up with, and never find any of the problems that the audits’ targets leave in plain sight. Financial audits are rarely any better. A comptroller’s audit of SA means absolutely nothing.
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So,
We should accept no oversight, no transparency, no outside audit?
Me too, a former civil servant.
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From the article:
“Officials from Stringer’s office said their audit found no criminal activity at the 41-school charter network.”
Right. A mere $50,000 for “irregularities” in bookkeeping. And millions not properly accounted for-monies designated for the classroom but that went into management.
Move on, nothing to see here.
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Duane Swacker: your comments, and those of Fred Smith above, make it clear that even under the political constraints imposed/used by $ucce$$ Academy enablers—
That the crème de la crème of charter schools isn’t capable of even keeping adequate internal records.
And from a slightly different POV… For many years now charter/privatization advocates of many political hues and colorations have asserted that they do “more with less” and that they are the “rising tide that lifts all boats.” In other words, that they utilize best practices across the board that should be praised and emulated. Step back for a moment: imagine what $ucce$$ Academy would bray if the very same sort of results issued from an audit of NYC public schools! Yet with the shoe on the other foot, so to speak, even the limited audit conducted by the comptroller shows that they may be exemplary when it comes to political gamesmanship and lack of transparency and accountability—
But by the very standards they apply to their competition (aka public schools) they are found woefully wanting.
Hypocrisy. And those that engage in it have been around for a long time:
“Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another.” [Homer]
And for you fans of corporate education reform that believe rheeality Trumps reality—that’s Homer, the very old and very dead and very Greek guy.
NOT Homer Simpson.
¿Entendido?/Understood?
😎
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As usual excellent commentary, KTA.
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No, but we should understand the dynamics of Comptroller’s audits. First, they ALWAYS find something wrong because that’s what the auditors are instructed to do. Second, the auditors have zero relevant subject matter expertise and routinely get most of what they look at wrong. Third, skilled accountants and analysts with real job prospects do not work for the Comptroller’s office where salaries are a small % of the going rate for a CPA’s and CFA’s. Fourth, the Comptroller is a politician. He selects audit targets with a political agenda and conclusions in mind. This pollutes everything they do. We need oversight, but the versions of it we have (Comptroller, Public Advocate, even the CBC) are all feckless at best. Everything these bodies do needs to considered from a position of extreme skepticism.
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Betsy DeVos’ long public record bashing public schools is finally coming out:
“Perhaps the best way to understand Betsy DeVos, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the U.S. Department of Education, is to see her as she sees herself–an insurgent fighting against a broken public-education industry. “More and more parents are coming to realize their children are suffering at the hands of a system built to strangle any reform, any innovation or any change,” she said in May at a conference held by the American Federation for Children, a conservative advocacy organization that she chaired until recently. “This realization is becoming more evident as the momentum builds for an education revolution.”
This is what the new Secretary of Education believes about every public school in the country, parents. She’s on a mission to eradicate your local school.
The best part is we’ll be PAYING her and her huge federal staff to destroy the schools our children currently attend. You’ll all be funding this anti-public school agenda.
I’m sort of mildly curious how they see this playing out apart from the ed reform echo chamber. When she parachutes into states to bash public are we expected to welcome her into the public schools she opposes? Why would I do that?
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I wish more people clearly understood that DeVos’ mission is to take a wrecking ball to millions of children’s schools.
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Just so people know, ed reformers are already planning the Trump”DeVos voucher agenda:
https://edexcellence.net/events/a-new-federal-push-on-private-school-choice-three-options-to-consider
Regular people really have to read the DC ed reform lobbyists. There’s no real debate. They “debate” how to most efficiently eradicate public schools. The “liberals” urge caution and regulation, while the conservatives urge “ripping off the bandaid” with a “revolution”.
None of them ever mention public schools. That’s what they have in common.
Public schools are pariahs in DC circles. Elites don’t even bring them up anymore. These decisions have been made. The only way anyone will stop them is at the state and local level
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I see some parallels with a charter school out here on the other side of the country. Therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Eva was flying first class to expensive hotels, with expensive wine, moonlighting as a scout for an NBA basketball team. No joke, charter scams are scandalous. Here’s how it went down over here: Fire the big spender or we revoke the charter. Bye bye, big spender.
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Eva has friends in high places including Governor Cuomo. The malfeasance would have to be so blatant and highly publicized that her ‘friends’ wouldn’t want to be associated with her.
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John King @JohnKingatED 5m5 minutes ago
It’s time we all ‘think deeper’ & invest in school counseling as effective & meaningful support for our students:
But the Obama Administration didn’t make any “investments” in public schools. In fact, public schools in 38 states suffered under ed reform leadership.
They can take credit for promoting and funding charters but they didn’t do any more for public schools than they were legally required to do. Even there they failed- Republicans cut federal funding to public schools in 2010 and Democrats rolled over and allowed it, because they got token preschool funding.
DC harms public schools. There is no upside.
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If this happened in a “traditional” public school the Superintendent of the district would have been tar and feathered and the board of education would of resigned in disgrace!
“The audit found that in FY 2015, Success Academy schools paid the Success Academy Network an extra $624,342 for services that the Network should have provided in exchange for its $18.3 million management fee.”
“As a result, auditors determined that Success Academy understated its “supporting services expenses” by as much as $16 million – or 61.2 percent – which masked its true management and operational costs in its financial statements.”
“The audit found the Success Academy billed the DOE more than $50,000 for special education services that its records did not show it provided.”
“Success Academy schools borrowed $8,500,000 from the Network, but failed to record written loan agreements for $2,700,000 of those funds. ”
http://comptroller.nyc.gov/newsroom/press-releases/comptroller-stringer-finds-financial-reporting-deficiencies-at-success-academy-schools/
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Good piece on DeVos in Michigan. Public school parents are actually permitted to speak in this piece!
https://news.vice.com/story/school-choice-detroit-betsy-devos?utm_source=vicenewsfb
It’s odd how the national ed reform narrative has so little connection to the reality in states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. One would think there would eventually be a kind of collision, but it seems to run on two entirely different tracks.
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Thanks for this important link. Vice News can be counted on to provide accurate stories without spin or hype, but with a progressive view. I prefer them to the canned evening news with endless ads for Viagra and every other expensive drug on the market.
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A couple of points about the audit of Success Academy.
On December 16, 2016, Success Academy objected to the conduct of the audit, disagreed with most of the findings, and did not respond to any of the audit recommendations.
The Success Academy reply to the auditor did include the following blast of verbal swagger, superfluous except for the intent to tell the auditor: “You are not smart enough to get us.” Begin quote from addendum, (p. 2-3)
Success Academy’s board members and supporters are among the most sophisticated and highly respected business men and women in the world. They are founders, partners, principals, and CEOs of some of New York’s most successful, well-respected firms and non- profits. Collectively, they have earned 10 undergraduate and graduate degrees in finance and 14 MBA degrees from Harvard, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, among others. Among them are lawyers and a former law professor, assistant U.S. attorney, management consultant, as well as film producers and media executives. Eight board members are currently CEOs, seven have founded non-profits, and 11 have founded companies. Collectively, they manage more than $103 billion in assets. In addition to their commitment to Success Academy and providing the children of New York with high-quality education, our board members have also served as trustees for such institutions as Princeton, Stanford, and Tufts universities; Mt. Sinai Hospital, Carnegie Hall, United States Olympic Committee, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Students First New York, and Democrats for Education Reform.
Success Academy’s auditor, BDO, is the fifth-largest accounting firm in the world and serves as auditor to scores of Fortune 500 companies. In addition, Success Academy’s authorizer, the Charter Schools Institute of the State University of New York (“SUNY”), is nationally recognized for its rigorous oversight and evaluation process. Both BDO and SUNY have consistently given Success Academy a clean bill of health with respect to its financial practices. End quote.
For information about the members of the board of Success Academy and the Success Academy Network go to http://www.successacademies.org/about/
I think the board members have the financial capacity to spend $67.7 million for a condo in Manhattan…and without any public dollars.
The auditor should go after the legal and financial records in this deal.
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She brings shameless appeals to authority to new heights. Not only is Moskowitz stealing possible, she has cornered insufferable.
If stronger revelations about how SA has succeeded come to light, Eva’s saving her appeal to the deity. I can hear her reassure us non-believers that she’s on a Mission from God.
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I’m no fan of Moskowitz, but my experience with Comptroller’s audits is such that I’d take even her word over theirs.
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” they have earned 10 undergraduate and graduate degrees in finance and 14 MBA degrees from Harvard, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, among others.”
Ed reformers are fundamentally snobs. If you read them you see it’s a big part of the “movement”.
They do this constantly- list selective colleges as proof-positive that they are the Best and Brightest.
They’re snobs. The book they published about charter schools is full of stuff like this – they don’t do a biographical sketch of an ed reformer without plugging a selective private college. We’re supposed to be impressed 🙂
I think one of the reasons they have such contempt for public schools is so many teachers come out of public colleges. If they were worthwhile people they’d have an MBA from Harvard! 🙂
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They are elitist bullies. By the way I worked with a young woman that graduated from Penn, and she was a good person and a good elementary teacher. However, she was no better than those that graduated from less prestigious schools.
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Laura H. Chapman, Fred Smith, Chiara and retired teacher:
Which is why I refer to the default approach/response by the enablers and enforcers of corporate education reform as being the “sneer, jeer and smear.”
Another phrase that came to me years ago was suggested by the many tv shows where people are judged, rated and (in their vast majority) humiliated: “contempt culture.”
Thanks to all for your comments.
😎
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“Flafalel State College.”
On the subject of elitism, Mercedes Schneider knocked it out of the park again with her perusing the on-line chats that TFA folks have with one another:
As TFA Corps Members converse with one another, there’s little said about how to best educate children, or how to improve the education of children. Much of it is all about angling for six-figure jobs post-TFA… either in the lucrative world of “corporate education reform,” or in the private sector, or on Wall Street, etc.
The thing that really jumped out was their attack on (non-Ivy League) university ed professor/teacher educator Mark Naison’s article where Naison says TFA is no longer welcome to recruit in his classroom.
One TFA chats away, belittling Mark for being upset that Mark’s non-Ivy-League students “didn’t make the cut.”
(TRANSLATION’ “didn’t make the cut”— were not hired, but were passed over in favor of TFA applicants.)
Unlike Naison’s students, who have a four-year teaching degree and training, plus are or will be finishing a Master’s Degree in teaching, and who also plan on a decades-long teaching career, while TFA-ers have a scan 5 weeks of training, and plan on leaving after two years … but hey, they come from Ivy League schools, so that makes up for that deficiency.
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TFA chatting on-line:
“All I hear from this article is “WAAAHHHHHH”.
“He would rather have the bottom third of Flalafel State College teaching in these schools, than (TFA) Yale graduates, just because (TFA’s) choose to go a different route in life after a couple years in TFA.
“Oh yeah, and because his students didnt [sic] make the cut,(i.e. did not get hired, while TFA teachers were) he is now butt hurt over it.”
——————————————-
Wow… just wow.
However, it’s nice to see this refreshing honesty (BELOW) from one TFA person who chimes in about his experiences during TFA’s their Summer Institute.
“smh” clearly sees through all that is TFA, but will stick it out because if he quits, there will be a “stigma” on him that will negatively impact his post-TFA future.. Note how he debunks TFA’s “more successful than, — or as successful as — veteran teachers claim”…it’s all a test prep scam based on bogus data.
———————————————–
Another TFA chatting on-line:
smh: “There’s a lot of truth in (Naison’s) article. I’m in the midst of my summer training for TFA now, and the vast majority of my (fellow TFA institute Corp Members-in-training) co-workers don’t REALLY care about these kids. It is a stepping stone, and a guaranteed job, by and large. I also have developed a tremendous amount of animosity towards the organization as a result of what I’ve seen in these past few weeks. This organization is NOT in it for the kids… it’s in it for the ‘Corps Members’ and their experiences.
“They have us teaching summer school after only have ONE WEEK of formal training. These kids are getting REAL grades in subjects that many of the teachers have no prior knowledge of. I, for one, typically learn the subject I’m going to teach the night before the lesson plan is due. It’s disgusting that these kids are used as our guinea pigs. Even the way their success is measured is a damn scam.
“They are given the final exam on the first day and given 30 minutes to complete it. For the remainder of summer school, we are then forced to teach our objectives to this specific test, and it is given again on the last day of classes.”
—————————————————
Here’s where he blows the whistle on TFA’s claims of the growth their teachers get…. and what that “growth” really means.
————————————————–
“It’s disgusting that these kids (children taught by TFA institute teachers-in-training) are used as our guinea pigs. Even the way their success is measured (by TFA) is a damn scam.
“They are given the final exam on the first day and given 30 minutes to complete it. For the remainder of summer school, we are then forced to teach our objectives to this specific test, and that same test is given again on the last day of classes.
“(Children taught by TFA institute teachers-in-training) are given 2 hours at this point to complete it, after having been taught essentially identical questions the entire summer. The questions we give on the final is the EXACT SAME as the ones given on that 1st day too. It’s real easy to say that ‘little __________ made a 48 point gain in his subject’ when you have those particular conditions.
“The sh%# is sickening.
“I joined to try and do some genuine good, but this organization is no different than many of the private for-profit organizations. At least they’re honest with their intentions. I would leave after seeing this, but there’s too much of a social stigma attached for my professional ambitions to do it (i.e. quit TFA). smh.”
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Finances are not the only thing which need audited…
http://wksu.org/post/alabama-admits-its-high-school-graduation-rate-was-inflated#stream/0
Extremely sad. Especially when a superintendent of a district gives the impression that “…It does not matter…” His reason? There will be jobs in 10 to 15 years that do not even exist yet. Who guarantees that today’s standards will prepare them for those jobs…
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Federal and state policies create incentives to inflate the graduation rate. Sad.
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You missed my point – but than, I am used to that.
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Rudy,
A word of warning. Any time you insult me, I will delete your comment. You are sarcastic and snarky. When you let loose on me, you can’t post here. Go somewhere else. Find another blogger to pester with your repetitive and sarcastic comments.
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From the article: “Collectively, they have earned 10 undergraduate and graduate degrees in finance and 14 MBA degrees from Harvard, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT’s Sloan School of Management, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, among others.”
Bully for them. I have to wonder how many humanities classes they had in their curricula and, if they had any, what they learned from them?
The question to ask these folks is if they understand democracy (the one they probably live in) and its relationship to education as basically a two-or-more-tiered socioeconomic system; where as social and economic, the tiers resist social interaction as well as the extension of one’s personal moral sensitivity across to other tiers (enter: Ayn Rand); where factors that define “quality of education” within that system follow those defined-in-your-mind tiers systematically in upward and expansive fashion (the higher the better); where the tier you occupy defines what political influence you have (or don’t have) and the responsibility you can shed, like picking lint off your sweater–again, as socioeconomic, the higher you are, the more power you have, regardless of what you actually know about what you are doing. Your degree in finance from Harvard, for example, qualifies you as an expert in education, or to be whatever you want to be; and where that political influence extends, in reflexive fashion, to securing your silo-view of yourself, your “class,” and the obfuscation of and, thus, carelessness about what and whom you see as “lower” tier/classes of others.
I don’t recall that the above is what “democracy” means; nor do I think that your degree in finance (etc.) magically enables you recognize what the implications of what DeVos is up to.
But hay, after all, DeVos has a lot of money and knows a lot of people with degrees from Harvard and so, to your way of thinking, she’s on a top tier.
Hurrah for democracy.
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There is only one reason to fight an audit in court and that’s if you have something to hide. For instance, Little Fingers refusing to release his complete and detailed tax records and not opening his complete and detailed medical records to the public during the election.
From now on I plan to refer to Donald Trump as Little Fingers. There is a character in Game of Thrones who is known as Little Fingers. That Little Fingers is nakedly ambitious and he is tricky but he does have a brain and is not ignorant like the real world Little Fingers who will soon by the President of the United States.
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Lloyd: I keep thinking we are a democracy, and so the voters are also responsible for the problem of Trump. In that regard, I cannot help but think of Jim Jones and his followers.
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Specially the almost 90 million eligible voters that did not vote.
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Nothing new with that… Clinton was elected with about 30% or so of eligible voters.
School boards with less than 12% of voters
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Do extremists vote more compared to average people?
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