Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, authored this powerful exposé of for-profit charter schools. The report names the nation’s largest for-profit charter chains, which profit not only from skimming tuition money, but from lucrative real estate deals and financial dealings with related for-profit corporations owned by the charter operator.
Between September 2020 and February, 2021, The Network for Public Education identified more than 1,100 charter schools that have contracts with one of 138 for-profit organizations to control the schools’ critical or complete operations, including
- management, personnel, and/or curriculum. Patterns of for-profit management companies directing schools to their related real estate and service corporations is more the rule than the exception among these schools. Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated For Financial Gain exposes how for profit education management organizations use charter schools to direct funds away from children to the pockets of profiteers.
As the report shows, a significant number of “nonprofit” charter schools are operated by for-profit entrepreneurs.
For-profit charters operate with minimal oversight, transparency, and accountability. Like other businesses, they cultivate relationships with politicians to maintain their favored status.
Meanwhile they siphon away money needed by public schools for their high salaries, generous expense accounts, and handsome profits.
#Chartered4Profit exposes that for-profit EMOs like Academica do not exist to support the charter schools… charter schools exist to help Academica’s real estate ventures.
#Chartered4Profit One of the largest EMOs, National Heritage Academies locks schools in with sweeps contracts. All revenue is passed to the for-profit management corporation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Here’s a charter chain lobbying Congress for more money for the federal charter schools subsidy- a subsidy that public schools aren’t eligible for:
“Senator Brown, Senator Portman, and Rep. Beatty,
On behalf of the teachers, students, and families at United Schools Network, thank you for the work you are doing to support high-quality public education in these difficult times. We wanted to take a moment to let you know about our school and the difference we are making in our community.
As you continue to make needed investments in education, we ask you to support programs that allow schools like ours to support more students, like the federal Charter Schools Program, and to ensure that all public schools are treated equally, whether they are managed by a school district or operated as an independent charter school.”
Why is it okay for the ed reform lobby and charter operators to lobby for additional funding for the schools they support and promote (charter and private schools) but NOT okay for public school supporters to lobby for public schools?
Ed reformers advocate on behalf of charter and private school students. Why can’t public school students also have advocates?
If public school supporters and advocates lobbying on behalf of public schools is “self interested” then why isn’t charter and private schools lobbying for public funding “self interested”?
Public school students are not permitted to have advocates? That’s reserved exclusively for charter and voucher promoters?
I’m baffled why these two groups of lobbyists are portrayed so differently, where the lobbyists for the schools ed reform supports (charter and private schools) are lauded as warriors “for the children” and lobbyists for public schools are portrayed as greedy and self interested.
We now have thousands of people who are paid for full time work promoting charters and private school vouchers. It’s a whole industry in Ohio, and that’s just the promotion and marketing of charters- there’s thousands of publicly-paid employees who run the charters themselves- legal, accounting, services, hundreds of contractors who receive their entire income from public funding.
But teachers unions are the only entity in this mix that is “self interested”? Okey doke. Sure.
“Lessons from the Field: Implementing CDC’s K-12 Operational Strategy to Keep Students, Educators, and Staff Safe
Leaders and other representatives of school districts will highlight effective school reopening approaches that have a focus on collaboration and equity.”
Kudos to the Biden Administration for inviting public school leaders to weigh in on…public schools.
Hopefully the last decade of hearing only from the ed reform echo chamber is over.
Chiara The bald fact that this advocate is addressing Congress belies what they are saying: “. . . and to ensure that all public schools are treated equally, whether they are managed by a school district or operated as an independent charter school.”
First, it sounds like charter schools are public schools, and then that all should be treated equally? It’s a convoluted argument modeled on a pretzel. CBK
I am skeptical of the low number of operators in Nor Cal. When looking at the map there are only 3 schools and 1 operator. I beg to differ. there are over 40+ charter schools in Oakland alone. Where are all those management companies? I hope more info will be added to this report.
The government and states are funding 2 systems from one funding stream. One is a succubus.
Please read the report. If those charters have management companies, they are nonprofit management companies. Our report only focuses on for-profit companies.
a succubus with all attached meanings
Kudos go to Darcie Cimarusti who did amazing work putting all of the schools, their addresses, and operators in a master list and did all of the graphics and Little Sis maps, and to Marla who helped me read every audit of a charter school in the State of Florida!!!
Democrats should wake up to the fact that there is lots of money in the non-profit charter school sector as well. Many non-profits turn lots of money to for profit CMOs. Also, many non-profits pay their management far more than comparable positions in public schools. All charters tend to be top heavy with a bloated administration that tax payers have no say in hiring. Once public money becomes private, it goes behind a wall of opacity. IDEA was negotiating to lease a jet. I do not believe there are any public schools that can afford to lease a jet. Lots of charter schools are non-profit in name only.
Charters, whether nonprofit or for-profit—typically spend more on administration than public schools and pay top executives salaries far more than those in public schools.
Diane . . . not to mention that where public schools are grounded in democratic principles and Constitutions, the charters and so-called non-profits and management companies are grounded in whatever corporate or company ethos controls them . . . separated away from their original political ground, on principle.
Judging from how they act, it seems to me that the people who run these corporations and management companies must see public institutions as just another place to take advantage of. Under the zero-sum-game of capitalist principle, students, teachers, and parents become, at best, “customers,” and at worst, pawns to be manipulated for the bottom-line advantage of the corporation. But that’s just judging from how they act. Who knows what’s in their minds. CBK
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The K-12 “reform school” movement that abuses children and teachers is only there for the money.
Here is In the Public Interest weekly magazine on Biden and the movement to privatize. NOTE: “Maryland’s Prince George’s County, which is majority Black, just became the first jurisdiction in the country to sign a public-private partnership to build and maintain public schools.”
ARTICLE
“President Joe Biden is expected to head to Pittsburgh next Wednesday to unveil his infrastructure plan, with a price tag as high as $4 trillion. Speculation so far is promising. Lots of federal funding will be proposed for not only roads and bridges, but also for tackling climate change.
“But what we don’t know yet is this: Will it be explicit about privatization? Will it take a page out of Trump’s playbook, using a smaller pot of public money to “leverage” private investment from Wall Street banks and multinational corporations?
“Will it promote so-called public-private partnerships, which drain money and take decision-making power away from local communities?
“These are important questions. So much is at stake. Particularly, racial justice.
“From slavery to Jim Crow and through the post-civil rights era, fights over infrastructure spending have long been tinged with racism.
“The end of the Civil War brought a wave of new construction to the South, including hospitals, housing and the region’s first public schools. As the Brookings Institution’s Vanessa Williamson has documented, wealthy Southern whites “focused their critique of Reconstruction on rising government debt and excessive spending, painting government by Black people and poor whites as intrinsically corrupt.”
“Fast forward to the 1950s and ‘60s. Once the civil rights movement won battles over desegregation, many white Americans withdrew their backing of well-funded public institutions and services.
“Conservatives began using privatization to attack still-popular public services like trash pick-up without seeming as though they were proposing service cuts.
“More recently, a growing industry of multinational banks, construction firms, and private investors have lobbied state and local policymakers to sign infrastructure public-private partnerships. Private money has been used to build toll roads, water systems, prisons, and an increasing variety of infrastructure.
“Maryland’s Prince George’s County, which is majority Black, just became the first jurisdiction in the country to sign a public-private partnership to build and maintain public schools.
“Poor and working people, particularly those of color, have shouldered the worst outcomes of the privatization trend.
“Privatizing water systems and other infrastructure, including internet services, often has a disproportionate impact on communities of color. It also takes decision-making power away from these communities, contributing to systemic racism.
“Biden has committed his administration to racial equity. If he wants to live up to that, yes, ‘the federal government needs to spend big on infrastructure. But it also has to say ‘no’ to privatization.” (my emphases/CBK)