Carol Corbett Burris was a teacher and principal on Long Island, in New York state for many years. After retiring, she became executive director of the Network for Public Education.
She writes:
Last spring, HBO released Bad Education, which tells the story of how a Roslyn, New York Superintendent named Frank Tassone conspired to steal $11.2 million with the help of his business officer, Pamela Gluckin. Promo materials called the film “the largest public school embezzlement in U.S. history.”
I did not watch it. I am waiting. I am waiting for HBO to release a movie on how a crafty fellow from Australia, Sean McManus, defrauded California taxpayers out of $50 millionvia an elaborate scheme to create phony attendance records to increase revenue to an online charter chain known as A3.
Or the documentary about the tens of millions that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) owes taxpayers for cooking the books on attendance. Or perhaps there will be a mini-series about the fraud and racketeering that charter operator Marcus May engaged in that brought his net worth from $200,000 to $8.5 million in five years and landed him a 20-year sentence in jail.
The truth is, Frank Tassone and his accomplice are small potatoes compared to the preponderance of charter school scandals that happen every day. What is different is how lawmakers respond.
When the Tassone case hit the news, I was a principal in a neighboring district. The New York State Legislature came down hard with unfunded mandates on public schools.
We all had to hire external auditors and internal auditors that went over every receipt, no matter how small. Simple things like collecting money for field trips or a club’s T-shirt sale suddenly became a big deal. Although there was no evidence that any other district was engaging in anything like what happened in Roslyn, every district transaction came under scrutiny.
Whether those regulations and their expenses were justified or not is irrelevant. What is relevant is that despite the years and years of scandal in the charter sector, state legislatures never change laws or impose new rules. For-profits run schools doing business with their related companies behind a wall of secrecy, and lawmakers do not worry a bit.
I am puzzled. Why can’t charter schools be as transparent as public schools? Why is the ability to easily engage in fraud necessary to promote innovation?
No one has been able to answer my question yet.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Why don’t legislators deal with charter school fraud? Simple – some f them are complicit because they either own for profit companies or they profit financially, either through investment or campaign donations. They get re-elected until they land key committee assignments that allow them to advance bills that benefit their companies and then use political maneuvers to get the votes to get their bills passed into law.
Exactly right.
The people who make the laws are benefitting.
And much of what goes on is actually legal because of the ways the laws were quite purposefully written.
“until they land key committee assignments” — YES, the plan is long term
“The state says the now-closed Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow still owes tens of millions of dollars for students it didn’t have but was paid to educate. Last year, an audit of what was the state’s largest online charter school was turned over to the Franklin County Prosecutor and the federal government for possible criminal charges.”
If you knew how aggressively Ohio pursues ordinary citizens for unpaid debt you would be outraged at the kid glove treatment ECOT has gotten.
The state of Ohio once sent armed agents into Columbus City schools for an audit of cooked books on attendance. People were prosecuted and they went to jail.
Not a single charter school owner or employee has been held accountable in any way for what is the largest fraud case in state history.
There is no way to explain this disparate treatment other than favorable treatment of charter schools over public schools, due to the power and clout of the ed reform lobby in this ed reform-dominated state.
Public schools get hammered for fraud and charter schools get a complete pass.
It wasn’t just the owners and employees at ECOT who got a complete pass- ECOT has an authorizer, paid to oversee the school. ECOT has a whole slew of lawyers and accountants who work for the ed reform industry and signed off on the fraud year after year.
Not one has been held accountable in any way. Not by the state and not by federal prosecutors.
This industry has a LOT of political clout. They’re accountable to no one.
ECOT was allowed to steal 60 million dollars because ECOT had powerful friends, the leading light of the “ed reform movement” lavished praise on the school year after year after year after year.
National ed reformers actively promoted and marketed the school – there’s been zero accountability for that too.
Jeb Bush is never asked why he spent 10 years promoting this fraudulent company. Like all ed reform failures, it was simply buried and never mentioned again.
The market ethos that prevails in the United States, prioritizes private profit as an unalienable right over public wellbeing. Corruption is an assumed cost of doing business– “collateral damage”–whereas regulation of private business in anathema. Alternatively, common good (an increasingly, democracy), especially if beneficiaries are poor or people of color, is expendable, particularly when it limits wealth and power of the few.
This is how the “accountability hawks” in ed reform treat a scandal in a public school district:
“A top-down culture of data manipulation and employee intimidation was uncovered by a special audit of the Columbus City School District released in a press conference held today by Auditor of State Dave Yost.
“This is a story of tears and sadness,” Auditor Yost said.
Auditors and investigators conducted work based on nine objectives (attached) and reviewed information for the period of July 1, 2010 through June 30, 2011. Overall, the special audit found a troubling lack of documentation and records, inconsistently followed business rules, and unacceptably high data error rates.
Throughout the course of the investigation, Auditor of State staff conducted interviews with more than 40 principals and assistant principals, more than 230 teachers, the available Regional Executive Directors (REDs), more than 20 secretaries and other office personnel, and 25 current and former employees of the Kingswood Data Center. As the audit work progressed, it became clear that a culture existed in Columbus City Schools in which staff at all levels believed data needed to be manipulated or they would face negative consequences to their careers.”
ECOT is how they treat their own schools- a complete pass.
For some reason the State of Ohio can launch and complete a massive investigation into Columbus City Schools but ECOT is untouchable.
Pure corruption and ideologically motivated favoritism. Goes all the way to the top.
Outstanding piece. There are signs of cracks in the Charter Protection wall. Success Academy way forced to compensate millions of dollars to former students with learning disabilities and other issues who were on a list to get forced out of the school through use of suspensions and other means. It is a positive sign they are being held accountable.
When charter schools commit fraud or embezzlement, the money that is lost is generally money that has been extracted from the budgets of public schools. Perhaps it is time for public schools to fight back in the courts if there are legitimate grounds to do so. Perhaps there are grounds for public school parents to sue when public school students face larger class size or the loss of supportive services like school nurses, libraries, music and art classes, etc. The whole system is based on robbing Peter to pay Paul, and public schools can do little to defend their coffers. Recently, in many red states, governors are shifting charter authorization to the state level so they local communities have no way to control the amount of money that goes to charters and/or vouchers. Public school budgets become the host to an unlimited numbers of funding parasites.
“No one has been able to answer my question yet…”
The largest element of fakery is a category that is imputed-
that is MADE UP.
If equality under the law is the hallmark of “Democracy”,
the ability to easily engage in fraud, SANCTIONED BY LAW
is the hallmark of Aristocracy.
The vote of “WE the People” doesn’t undermine the power of
theUNELECTED dictators calling the shots or dropping the
bombs.
So when it comes to ILLUSIONS a group holds dear, we
need to ask: Who benefits from these illusions, Who suffers?
The proof is still in the pudding…
I am researching our local charter schools on Pro-publica’s non-profit Explorer. Our city has all “non-profit” charter scams so far.
What should people look for to get these fake charities audited by the I.R.S. ?
For example, I’m looking over the public records of a charter school chain near me. The “Executive Director” has no education experience or credentials, purports to be a “reverend pastor”, and lives in a million-dollar home far, far away from the impoverished community he allegedly works in.
The blatant corruption of the non-profits sector is the main reason Charter schools exist in the first place, it seems obvious.
Is there anything that can be done to make them accountable?
The Boards that are supposed to regulate these bogus charitable organizations are not doing the job.
Non profit is a gigantic loophole in the tax law that you could drive an oil tanker through — and some oil tanker owners probably do.
College Board, with a billion dollar revenue stream and execs who get paid over half a million dollars a year is the poster child for the joke that is the non profit category.
To categorize a company as “non-profit” is actually an invitation to corruption because a non-profit must not show a profit.
So any potential “profit” gets converted to salaries and bonuses, which is very convenient for scam artists running the illegitimate nonprofits who can just pay themselves and their business partners more when revenue exceeds spending.
Any line and any distinction, at all, could similarly categorized as an invitation to corruption.
All this just reads like bias. Private sectors learned all these tricks from watching the things public schools do.
Projection is the easiest source of inspiration.