The confirmation hearings for Billionaire Betsy are scheduled to begin on January 11. It is assumed that she will breeze through because the DeVos family gives so much money to Republican politicians. That is usually enough to get a wealthy donor given an ambassadorship, but it is not typically the case for cabinet positions. Members of the president’s cabinet are expected to have some experience in the department and sector where they will take charge of federal policy. Billionaire Betsy has none. Her only involvement in education is as a lobbyist for private school choice. Since some 85% of children in the U.S. attend public schools, this means that she is totally out of touch with public education, for which she has repeatedly demonstrated hostility and contempt.
If she had her druthers, every child in America would attend a religious school, preferably evangelical Christian, to further her religious goals.
She and her husband tried and failed in 2000 to change the state constitution in Michigan, which forbids spending public money on religious schools. Voters turned down the revision overwhelmingly, by 69-31%.
So Billionaire Betsy and her husband went all in for charter schools, the next best route to privatization. They stood firmly against any regulation of charter schools, and the result–according to a year-long investigation by the Detroit Free Press in 2014–is a sector that is dominated by for-profit charters, that has low quality and poor performance, and that wastes $1 billion of taxpayers’ dollars every year. (I will explain in the next post why I am not including a link to the DFP series about the incompetence and corruption of the state’s charter sector.)
Here is one of dozens of stories of charter school corruption.
A husband and wife team (the Cancilliaris) started multiple charter schools; she was a teacher, he was a contractor. They were charged with self-dealing and conflicts of interest for steering millions of dollars to their private, for-profit companies. But the law is so weak on conflict of interest that almost anything goes. He was paid $200,000 as facilities director; she was paid $250,000 as program director, while also running an off-site textbook company that she and her husband founded.
In 2008 and again in 2012, Central Michigan raised questions about insider dealings, mostly involving the Cancilliaris; Mike Witucki, the former Flat Rock schools superintendent whose company, Helicon Associates, was brought in to manage the Summit schools; and the schools’ lawyers. At issue:
■ Companies founded by Witucki and Dino Cancilliari received millions of dollars in school funds for janitorial and tutoring services.
■ Emma Street Holdings, another company founded by the two men, provided loans and sold real estate to the schools.
■ Lawyers for the schools’ boards incorporated several of the Dino Cancilliari and Witucki companies, but CMU said they failed to disclose those relationships to the boards.
■ A company owned by Dino Cancilliari and his brother got construction contracts worth millions of dollars.
■ Helicon Associates paid Alison Cancilliari for consulting work, even as the two schools, with her at the helm, paid Helicon fees for managing the schools.
An expert on ethics says she sees ‘conflicts of interest at every turn
John Austin, president of the Michigan Board of Education, which makes education policy and advises lawmakers, said “self-dealing and personal enrichment of one’s self and family members in operating a public school would not stand the light of day at a local school board meeting.”
Diane Swanson, a professor of management at Kansas State University who specializes in ethics, said she sees “conflicts of interest at every turn.”
Swanson said dealings like those at Summit “make it look like the chartered schools are set up to funnel money into private hands. … I have serious concerns whether the primary stakeholders are really being served: the children, parents and the state itself.”
Two years ago, the National Association of Charter School Authorizers rated charter laws and said that Michigan has one of the worst charter school laws in the nation.
Of particular note, the report said Michigan’s standards for renewing a charter are too low, the law doesn’t provide for automatic closure if a school is academically failing and doesn’t include minimum quality standards for authorizers. It also said the law doesn’t require authorizers to produce an annual report on the academic performance of its schools.
In brief, a public school with low test scores may be closed and turned over to a charter operator. A charter schools with low test scores will never be closed.
That’s Billionaire Betsy’s idea of the way education should run. Anyone who steps up is eligible to get a charter. For-profit companies run 80% of the schools. With no accountability, no transparency, no oversight, no conflict of interest laws.
Call your Senator. Call his or her office in Washington. Call her/his office in your state and/or district. Say NO to DeVos.
Charter school contracting is so complex, there are so many layers and entities involved that it can be difficult to zero in on what’s going on but I don’t understand why Michigan can’t reach at least the authorizers of these schools.
The authorizers are public entities in Michigan. They get a cut out of every charter dollar. Why do they continue to open more and more of these schools when they can’t properly regulate the schools they have now? Are they doing it for the money? Are charters a cash cow for these universities?
“Cancilliari, who was involved in starting multiple charter schools, is fighting her dismissal in Wayne County Circuit Court. Summit North has countersued, saying she had a “secret arrangement” with the management company and its president to receive “hidden commissions and kickbacks,” and later sought to hide the deal by having the money paid to her husband’s company.
“Everything was fully disclosed, known not only by our school boards, but also CMU. And the ones that financially benefited the most from us growing charter schools were the authorizers themselves — millions and millions of dollars,” Cancilliari told the Free Press on Friday.”
You know, losing money is one thing, but someone getting injured is another.
If the schools aren’t properly regulated on finances, can we assume they’re properly regulated on safety? Are they complying with fire codes all the other safety regulations they’re supposed to be following? People throw off this “wild west” description like regulation is no big deal, but part of the reason schools are heavily regulated is because they contain large groups of children.
If charter promoters think not regulating finances gives them bad press and hurts “the brand” just wait until there’s a safety issue at one of these unregulated schools. People will go to prison.
You’re absolutely right–the charter authorizers are getting 3% off the top in MI. And universities are the biggest beneficiaries. Most claim to be “innovating” using their Education departments’ research and scholarship, using charters as “laboratories.”
The Grand Traverse Academy (another notorious, scandal-ridden charter whose founder, Steve Ingersoll, just got convicted and sentenced to 40 months in federal prison) ran through $3.5 million in MY tax dollars before his little empire was investigated. GTA’s authorizer, Lake Superior State University, got $270,000 annually to authorize and “oversee.” What overseeing amounts to is attending quarterly Board meetings. Evidently LSSU did not attend the meeting where the GTA Board decided to write off $1.6 million spent by Ingersoll as “bad debt.”
The charter industry is VERY powerful in MI, and very well-funded. Charter scandals and corruption all over the state are ignored by local prosecutors and the AG. And the chartering agencies are are complicit. LSSU takes in some $5 million annually. That’s a revenue stream they’ve come to depend on, because IHEs are also having their state and federal funding slashed. It’s a vicious cycle.
Betsy Devos is poison and should not be allowed to run anything let alone the dept of education for the us. Take a look at Detroit schools. take a look at dearborne schools in the once great state of michigan which is now a hell hole filled with right to work for less employees and a school system run to the ground with their charters being the LOWEST PERFORMING schools in the nation. Yes, people, Devos is a debutante who never had a job, grew up rich, married rich and now wants to turn nyc into detroit…..not..gonna happen there will be a revelution before this lame duck thinks she can come here and turn nyc into detroit.
Excellent summary–and looking forward to learning the reason you’re not including the Free Press series, which really marked a turning point in the MI general public’s viewpoint and expanded perspective: Oh. Maybe charters aren’t going to save us from failing public schools?? Sometimes, you have to hit people repeatedly over the head with corruption before they pay attention.
One addendum: the DeVos family–which has wielded enormous political power in MI, for some five decades–also underwrote two earlier attempts to make school vouchers legal. One was in 1970, the other in 1978, usually referred to as Parochaid. I couldn’t vote in 1970, but I was a novice teacher in 1978 and clearly remember participating in call banks and GOTV efforts sponsored by my union. Both of those referendums went down in flames by large margins. The Santayana quote about remembering history or being doomed to repeat it applies here.
The DeVos conglomerate came late to charters–they were eventually convinced by then-Governor John Engler that charters were a back door to using public money for privately managed education. Theirs has been a long, slow, carefully managed campaign–a thousand tiny holes in the great ship of public education.
It’s going to be an absolute orgy of looting, which will make the Gilded Age and the Harding administration look like the League of Women Voters.
The main hope for public education’s survival is a falling-out among thieves, with the charter crooks in conflict with the voucher crooks, and hopefully a realization by the public that it’s being robbed and its children abused.
Local newspapers are key. There was no attention to the problems with Ohio’s charter sector until one newspaper investigated and the rest followed. The General Assembly and the Ohio Department of Education did absolutely nothing- in fact, they promoted charters relentlessly for 15 years.
Nothing happened until local newspapers took it on. They were shamed into acting.
It’s true in Michigan too. The Detroit Free Press series broke the stranglehold of the ed reform echo chamber. They forced a real public debate, one that wasn’t dominated by national ed reform lobbyists and captured lawmakers.
Sadly the only consistent reporting on the Ohio charter mess and privatization is being done by Plunderbund, a small blog. Whatever reporting the larger papers in the state do is usually based on the footwork of Plunderbund.
Sometimes local media do a really good job but it still takes X amount of time for it to sink in.
There was local reporting in the problems with charter schools for 5 years. Every newspaper in the state. They were STILL expanding them. AFTER the local reporting in Toledo ed reformers “flooded” (their word) Toledo with charter schools.
They knew. They opened more schools anyway.
When profit is concerned, evidence doesn’t matter
Can ed reformers really deny that charters are a back door to vouchers?
We’re watching that happen right now. They’re all backing various voucher proposals. It seems silly to continue to deny something that is occurring right in front of us.
20 years ago people said “this will lead to privatization of public schools” and 20 years later that is EXACTLY what is happening. The people who warned about this were right and ed reformers were wrong. Denying it at this point is ludicrous.
Perhaps Trump’s search for cabinet members was similar to that for celebrities to perform for his inauguration (ugh). No qualified people would apply for fear of tarnishing their reputations so he went for the billionaire know-nothings like DeVos.
Trump and DeVos should use their real skills and knowledge to build a towering temple for the perpetual petulant penitents cult.
Cross posted at http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/The-Rotten-State-of-Charte-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Cabinet_Donald-Trump-Cabinet_Education_Experience-170105-635.html#comment637992
with this comment whites links at that address.
CALL YOU SENATOR… Phone calls work. They tie up the office. Let your senator know you won’t stand for this.
There been NO DISCUSSION BY THE CANDIDATES OR THE MEDIA, OR ANYONE about the legislative take-over of the public school systems, that Diane Ravitch covers at her site and by the NPE — the privatization of our public education by the state legislatures whichmy series here, re-posts withcommentary that ties it all together.
This coordinated assault on the very institution of education IS ongoing and HIDDEN. State legislatures rest the control of local schools from parents and teachers, and give them to the corporate entities –charter schools with no oversight or transparency!
Will we allow our children to grow into adulthood, guided by what they see and hear on television and the internet, with no real analysis and discussion in schools, to offer a glimpse of observable reality, evidence base facts…truth?
Consider what happens when our citizens know only what is disseminated by these guys. North Carolina likes the Koch Brothersfinancing civics lessons!
Our very democracy, and the freedoms that it guarantees is being undermined at its core, by letting the GOP ‘get em’ young’, in schools that they control, thanks to legislative initiatives like the ones on the ballot in many states this year. My series nails the states that have fallen to state legislatures — with not an educator on board who cares aboutLEARNING!.
‘Kids’ are not children for long — they will vote and run this nation in the ink of an eye.
Thus our children are often taught a version of history and science that is as free with the facts as the internet and the present political campaign.
What kind of nation will there be in a few decades, when the Constitution has been re-written to fit the ideology of the tea-party — the facts altered by the charlatans who inhabit the Congress and the Governor’s mansions?
There will be a ‘new reality’ spun by the puppet masters of the EIC EDUCATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
E.D. Hirsch, famously pointed out that “Democracy Depends on Shared Knowledge.”
Our INSTITUTION of Public Education was the bedrock to pass on the laws and foundations of our democracy — the rules for justice!
All of this depends on schools where truth rules, and facts cannot be altered, where evidence is required and where children grow into adults while reading about the reality of the way things actually were in the past — the truth about humanity’s best an worst moments.
What else is key is that the state’s largest district, I’m guessing Detroit, has been devoid of white liberal middle class children for going on 40 years. Those kids’ parents would have forced the district to stay honest, even with marginal local control. This would not be happening without the white flight writ large that is Michigan. Barring an economic miracle and widespread walkout, I can’t say I have much hope for MI
Only black majority districts get taken over and milked for profit
What is needed, for all Trump picks, and all Dem picks too, is a list of how much they PERSONALLY profited. People don’t understand privatization. They do understand greed.
Thank you for this information.