Progress Ohio has compiled a list of recent charter school scandals, covering only the past four years. Someone should take on the job of making the list comprehensive. But this is long enough.
This is an industry wracked with self-dealing, profiteering, political pay-offs, fraud, and corruption.
Please read the article and see for yourself.
And the amazing thing is that Arne Duncan’s Department of Education gave Ohio an additional $71 million to open more charter schools, apparently with complete indifference to what was happening on the ground.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Okay so there are scandals in public schools (and probably more of them because there are so many more public schools) but what might be a good comparison to do next is the difference between how public school scandals are treated and charter school scandals are treated because (in Ohio anyway) it really goes to the issue of “public entity” versus “private entity”.
The White Hat debacle in Ohio is a good example. That was handled as a private contract dispute. There was a state interest that was pursued by one attorney general but not by the next. A supposedly “public” school, funded 100% with public money, and it was handled as a contract case.
That would NEVER happen in a public school. The issue would be treated as a public entity problem with all the remedies and process that come with that.
These are the “governance” issues ed reformers either deny or ignore and people should understand them! People should understand that there’s a huge difference between parents suing on a contract and a “scandal” handled as a PUBLIC issue.
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Here’s another example. This is Columbus Public Schools- a “data rigging scandal” – it had to do with attendance figures.
Here’s (part of) how it was treated:
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2016/02/17/Dozens_of_Columbus_schools_principals_offered_license_suspension_deal.html
Compare that to ECOT- an attendance scandal- and you start to see that contract schools really ARE different and the ed reform attempt to say these two systems are both “public” leaves out a lot of information.
A charter is a contract between the state and a private entity. There are then sub-contracts for “the school” or “the facility” or “operations”. This is a VERY DIFFERENT structure than public schools and people should give serious thought to whether this is “governance” they want and intended.
The new thing in ed reform is to insist it doesn’t matter- that a private school is a public school is a charter school- but this is simply not true and people need to know what they are signing up for with a privatized system. Maybe they don’t care now – I think they do care but it’s gospel in ed reform that they don’t but they may care later as public school systems disappear and are replaced with contract or voucher systems.
People need to think about this and consider downsides and upsides. “It doesn’t matter” is just nonsense.
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And, U.S. Sen. Brown, with full knowledge that Ohio is gerrymandered guaranteeing Republican dominance, wrote in a public letter, posted at his government site, that “students could benefit greatly” from the grant. As a typical politician, he crafted a letter to have it both ways. His letter included warning about Ohio’s privatization disaster.
Brown’s unwillingness to work to aid his fellow Democrat’s campaign for Senate provides him with the perfect situation- able to claim concern for the 90%, voting for laws to to help them, while knowing that the laws will never be passed by a Republican Senate, House and President.
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The Akron Beacon Journal has a reporter, Doug Livingston, who doesn’t serve the education agenda of the richest 0.1%. Last time I looked, the Journal was owned by Canadians, a country striving to be a democracy next to their southern neighbor’s oligarchy.
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I’m amused this morning because they now have 5 different studies where vouchers don’t “work” (in ed reform terms, which means test scores).
What’s amusing about it is these are private schools and for the last 20 years I have been hearing how “government” schools are the problem and labor unions are the problems and these schools aren’t “government” schools and most of them don’t have labor unions.
Might be time to re-examine the ‘ol “we hate government schools, we hate labor unions” belief system in ed reform because if it were true wouldn’t private schools be doing BETTER than public schools, almost across the board?
There’s a kind of romanticism about religious schools that is really persistent in the US. It’s as if they think it’s 1959 and these schools are still staffed by nuns. I don’t know where it comes from – novels? Movies?
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Chiara,
Most religious schools are staffed by underpaid uncertified teachers. This is not how we prepare for the 21st century and “global competition,” with nations that have highly educated teachers.
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The fail of the sects of Mormon polygamists, educating their children, is obvious.
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