Ben Chavis was leader of the American Indian Model Schools, a group of three small charter schools in Oakland that captured headlines and the hearts of conservatives. He stepped down after being charged with multiple federal felony charges involving federal money used to lease space from buildings Chavis owned and a state audit claiming that $3.8 million of the schools’ funding had been transferred to his and his wife’s business accounts.
After a six-year investigation, all charges have been dropped, and Chavis will pay a fine of $100.
“A former Oakland charter school director known for boosting student test scores through humiliation and harsh discipline has avoided jail time following a six-year federal investigation into allegations of fraud.
“Ben Chavis, who ran the American Indian Model Schools, will spend one year on probation and pay a $100 fine in a plea deal with federal investigators, according to court documents.
“Chavis had faced the prospect of decades in prison in connection with six felony charges of mail fraud and money laundering filed in 2017 following an IRS and FBI investigation into his financial dealings related to the schools.
“Those charges were dropped and Chavis pleaded guilty to one count of submitting false information on federal documents….
”He was known for his frequent belittling and humiliation of students and harsh language. His use of profanity and racial slurs was well documented.
“In one case, Chavis cut the hair of a student accused of stealing. Another who called a classmate a derogatory name was required to wear a note that said, “I’m an (expletive)…..”
Chavis changed the demographics of the school, replacing American Indians with Asian Americans. Scores rose. Chavis won the praise of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and many conservative commentators for his tough, no-excuses, anti-union views and practices.
“In 2011, an audit by the Oakland Unified School District, which oversees the charter schools, found Chavis directed $3.8 million in school funds to businesses he and his wife owned. He resigned in 2012.
“The Oakland school board’s efforts to close the schools that year failed and the three charters continue to operate.
“The federal charges followed a state investigation that found fiscal improprieties showing Chavis reportedly applied for and received more than $1 million in federal grant funding from 2006 to 2012 that he said would be used for the charter schools. The money was instead used for lease payments on properties Chavis owned, according to a grand jury indictment.”
There has been no further explanation.
Chavis will pay a fine of $100.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
He also boosted those amazing (!) test scores by virtually shutting out SPED from his schools. One school has less than 5%; the other two have around 3%. The district rate for SPED is approx. 12.7%. The puff piece on Chavis courtesy of our friends (not!) at the WSJ was nauseating.
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Jason Riley of the WSJ wrote the puff piece about Chavis. Riley has been advocating for public funding of private schools and no-excuses charter schools for years. He is an extreme ideologue.
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I keep saying this: Jim Crow is well and alive in America.
The way minority and and poor children are treated is nothing short of child abuse.
We really have to NAME these actions for what they are.
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Who authorized these charter schools? Who is getting payola for looking the aother way?
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Why, Oakland Unified, of course…that’s the ultimate racket about charters. No matter what you do, California charter law says test scores trump (sorry) all else. As long as you can game your scores so that your school looks better than the comparison schools, the school gets to stay open. Charters are basically given carte blanche to get away with whatever they want…
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Shameless looting continues—pls forward this blogpost to both Biden and Sanders, all 20 Dem Pres. candidates should read it to now why we insist they declare a robust education policy disenfranchising charters.
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Ira,
I am speechless.
From a reader in Oakland:
“This was the indictment: “used federal grant money to lease properties to house the schools. These properties were owned or leased by companies he controlled, which is an illegal conflict of interest, according to the indictment. When Chavis’ companies leased properties to the schools, he charged a substantially higher rent — as much as $15,000 a month on one property. On grant applications, Chavis allegedly withheld that he had any stake in the companies, which would be a crime.
“The grant applications and leasing documents were signed by Chavis. In one case a lease specifies “all correspondence and business activities shall take place with the lessor and Dr. Ben Chavis exclusively.” Sending these documents, which the Department of Justice believes Chavis knew to be illegal, constitutes the mail fraud charges.”
“The amount cited in the federal indictment was $1.1M; that amount represented the federal grant money that he used. The $3.8M included real estate deals, lease agreements, and consulting contracts.”
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“on April 1st, Georgia Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter convicted 11 Atlanta educators on charges of racketeering, ultimately sentencing eight of them to jail time.
The men and women at the center of the Atlanta cheating scandal have been found guilty of manipulating test answers and inflating scores on state standardized tests. Pending appeal, they will do hard time for it. The Fulton County courtroom was host to a surreal scene as teachers and principals were led away in handcuffs, all of them first-time, non-violent offenders.
https://thebestschools.org/magazine/atlanta-teaching-scandal/
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Ah, the American legal system. . .
. . . the best adjudications that money can buy!
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A six-year federal investigation ends while Donald Trump’s AG, William Barr, the man that believes in an Imperial Presidency, is the kleptocrat in charge of the Justice Department.
Expect more white collar criminals like Donald Trump to get pats on the head and a whisper in their ear that says, “Way to go! Don’t forget to make that big donation to Trump’s 2020 campaign” as the Trump Administration makes white-collar crime legal.
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The Atlanta teachers got a racketeering conviction for changing answers on a bubble test, and most of them got prison time as well. Chavis gets a slap on the wrist and charges dropped. Who is getting paid?
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And “who pays” for those decisions?
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I wonder if Betsy DeVos was a character witness. Millions of dollars went into his bank account.
A rich man steals millions and he’s called a banker or a hedge fund manager.
A billionaire peddles opioids and hundreds of thousands die, and his family name is engraved on museums and universities.
A poor man steals a loaf of bread and goes to jail.
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A poor man steals a loaf of bread and goes to jail. A rich man steals millions of dollars and ends up paying a $100 fine and no jail.
This sounds like the plot of “Les Miserables” and we all know how that ended, The French Revolution, and it is estimated that 40,000 French people, including their king and queen, lost their heads to the angry mob of poor citizens.
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I have a fairly new job that involves bar and restaurant licensing in Chicago. In order to get a City license, you have to submit a ton of paperwork, among which is proof that you have a legal place in which to run your business. You have to submit proof of ownership or a valid, executed lease. You also have to submit corporate documents showing who owns and manages your business and, if there is an on-site manager not otherwise reflected in all of that, you have to provide an executed Management Agreement with the name of the manager in charge.
Are the requirement for opening a charter school any less? Does the charter oversight body not expect to see that there is a legal place of business and do they not want to see who is running that business and how that business is run? So, either such documentation is not required, which would be shameful, or it is required, and the oversight body looked at these documents, saw the self-dealing and approved the charter anyway, which is even more shameful. Either way, it seems to me that a large chunk of the blame for this is on the charter “oversight” bodies that allow these kinds of practices to go on. And since these people are government officials, directly or indirectly answerable to the voters, it really seems like we could find ways to hold them accountable.
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Oakland’s charters have practically no oversight. The Office of Charter Schools isn’t staffed with the required number of employees (calculated based on the number of charters)to do the job. They just nod, smile, move along, move along, thanks for letting us know….
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I dunno, I don’t think that “we’re understaffed” argument flies. If the people on the oversight board are halfway decent human beings, they should understand that they’re responsible for the education and well-being of children, so they still need to be completely thorough as far as investigating every single charter application. If that means that they can’t get to every application in a timely manner and the charter opening process is slowed down, so be it.
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Totally agree. It isn’t really about staffing so much as there is no political will to do anything about oversight. There isn’t any leadership in OUSD right now that is willing to take a stand and declare “enough is enough”. They just keep enabling all this bad behavior and the kids suffer.
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oh, that exact attitude is so PREVALENT: Yes, you can tell us about your problem or why your are upset, but move along then, we’re done with you…
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Chavis set up an LLC in Nevada, Lumbee Holdings. Pretty sure that’s where he funneled all that money. This was a great local article from Robeson County, NC. No puffery. They detail all the leases and how he was able to charge the charters these exorbitant rents. Your tax dollars straight into his pocket. All for the kids…
https://www.robesonian.com/news/97929/chavis-indicted-for-money-laundering-mail-fraud-2
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“Chavis directed $3.8 million in [Oakland public] school funds to businesses he and his wife owned.”
vs.
“Dr. Chavis’ conduct, while a violation of federal law, did not cause measurable financial losses to the United States or another identifiable victim,” according to the federal sentencing memo.”
So what are Oakland public schools, chopped liver?
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Who cares about $3.8 million? Chicken feed.
Who cares that he directed a federal charter school grant to his own needs?
Meh.
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At this unfortunate moment in history, ALL public schools are chopped liver, according to Betsy….
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Wow. And at what think-tank-echo chamber sinecure has this pillar of integrity and educational rectitude arrived?
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I read that he is now lecturing about how to fix education.
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Oh, of course he is!
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“Failure to Fixes”. . .
Seems to be one of the new false concepts promoted by edudeformers and privateers, eh!
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The ‘GREAT state of Indiana’ once again proves itself. This is off topic but it shows what happens to poor children. No wonder these children have a rough time in school. There is also gross underfunding of schools in poor areas because a lot of funding comes from property taxes. There has to be a better way to help these kids.
……………………………………………
[NWI Times] ‘Punishing poverty’: Is Indiana’s child welfare system stacked against the poor?
John Watkins The Times
In 2017, Indiana had the third-highest rate of investigations for child abuse and neglect in the country, with at least one investigation for every 10 kids, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ 2019 Child Maltreatment report. The state also had the second-highest rate of victims of abuse and neglect, 18.6 out of every 1,000 kids, behind only Kentucky…
“West Virginia, Montana, Indiana, Arizona — there are too many places in this country where the rate of removal vastly exceeds the national average, and one thing these states don’t have is a disproportionate number of citizens who abuse their children,” said Martin Guggenheim, a professor of family law at New York University.
“What they have is a trigger-happy child welfare system.”
Despite this aggressive approach, the number of deaths from abuse and neglect in Indiana grew from 34 in 2008 to 78 in 2017, when the state had the third-highest reported rate of child fatalities, the federal data shows…
Another common explanation is the opioid epidemic. In 2017, Indiana had the nation’s 14th-highest drug overdose rate, which more than doubled from a decade earlier, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation review of federal data…
https://www.nwitimes.com/news/state-and-regional/punishing-poverty-is-indiana-s-child-welfare-system-stacked-against/article_b2c32729-e08d-5b68-a4ee-9fadd7a6349f.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=user-share
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Title of Ben Chavis’ book is Crazy Like a Fox. One thing he did to separate those students unwilling to work hard was to require (illegally) anyone wanting to enroll in one of this three very high test scoring schools to attend his strict, no excuses, large workload summer school. Students and families not willing to handle the demanding schedule of the school self-select no to enroll in the fall.
FCMAT 2012 audit identified how Ben Chavis managed to transfer the public assets of the American Indian Model public charter school to Ben Chavis’ SAIL summer school. What he did over three years was grow his Sail Summer School into a program that accumulated over $300,000 in its third year. He grew the program each year until all three of the American Indian Model schools were requiring students to attend his SAIL summer school. He charged each student $500 to attend the SAIL summer school. And, then then he took $500 out of the three schools accounts to paid for what he classified on his books as scholarships to attend his SAIL summer schools. In addition to converting school money to his account, it is illegal to require students that do not have units to make up to attend a public summer school, let alone make mandatory that students must attend a privately managed summer school owned by the administrator over the three American Indian privately managed schools. Additionally, Foxy Ben Chavis hired ex-students to teach his SAIL summer school classes paying each student in scholarships and not wages.
Real estate is where the big money is and Foxy Ben Chavis was able to somehow buy a three story building in China town section of Oakland for $7.5 million dollars. After the audit of 2012 and resignation from leadership of the three American Indian Model charter schools, Ben Chavis continued to collect rent on the buildings he owned until in the case of his 171 12th Street, Oakland campus he reportedly sold the campus for the price in bought the property.
The mystery is were did the money go for his 12th Street building that he sold in 2014 because when Ben Chavis was brought to trial in 2019 he had a public defender meaning he established to the court’s satisfaction that he had no financial assets.
Another mystery is where would the management that took over from Ben Chavis get the money to buy the building Ben Chavis was renting to them. Perhaps he has once again out Foxed the Government and that would make him a hero of the right wing willing to do wrong when the Government is the target.
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The other mystery is why the federal government decided to dismiss the case for a man with admirers in high places.
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Geez! Get over it. I see a human being trying to educate the poor, because he’s been there. Good job Dr. Chavis
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Hey, a state audit said that Dr. Chavis moved nearly $4 million from the schools’ bank account to his personal bank account. How educational is that?
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How about a question?
Who is Terrie Carter, Dr. Chavis’s crooked lawyer or a partner in crime?
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