The IDEA charter chain in Texas was one of Betsy DeVos’s favorite grantees. She handed over $200 million from the federal Charter Schools Program to IDEA to spur its expansion. With so much money, the management of IDEA indulged in luxuries. They planned to lease a private jet for $2 million a year but backed off because of adverse publicity. They bought season box seats at the San Antonio Spurs basketball games. When the founder resigned, he was given a $1 million golden parachute.
But the IDEA spending spree didn’t end there. The board of the charter chain received a whistleblower’s letter and commissioned an independent audit of its finances. When the audit was completed, the board fired the chief executive officer and the chief operating officer. Go to this link to read the board’s letter to the public and its recognition of the leadership’s corruption.
This scandal goes to the heart of the basic lie behind the charter industry: their lobbyists have waged bitter fights against transparency and accountability. They have sold the lie that private entrepreneurs should get millions and millions of public dollars without oversight. “Trust us,” they said. They lied.
In state after state, charter schools do not get better test scores than public schools, unless they choose their students carefully and kick out the ones they don’t want.
The IDEA scandal should bring renewed scrutiny to the federal Charter Schools Program, which currently receives $440 million a year. As the Network for Public Education documented in two reports (see here and here), about 37% of the federally-funded charter schools either never opened or close within a few years. There is now a campaign in Congress, led by the charter lobby, to increase its funding from $440 million to $500 million per year.
Let’s be clear: the charter school industry is amply funded by billionaires, mostly hedge fund managers as well as Silicon Valley titans and billionaires like Charles Koch and the Walton Family. It attracts the support of libertarians and right wingers who want to privatize public schools.
The federal Charter Schools Program should NOT be expanded. It should be eliminated.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It is ridiculous that taxpayers are forced to pay for private schools that undermine the public schools that most students attend. Research has demonstrated that they provide no real value add, and they cause massive disruption. There is zero evidence that shows that private charters schools are better unless they are highly selective. Charters are political entities that appease billionaires and undermine authentic public education. They enhance segregation and isolation and undermine the stability of local communities. President Biden promised a new day for education during his campaign. His so-called new day is a lot like the old one that includes the same old test and punishment regimen and funneling copious amounts of accountable tax dollars to the voracious charter lobby.
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Here in California, we are dealing with CCSA(California Charter School Association) stoking fears that the introduction of AB 1316 will end charter schools. Of course, that’s a huge misrepresentation of the facts. But, although CCSA claims it had a hand in blowing the whistle on the A3 charter scandal which was the reason for the two year moratorium on new online charters, what AB 1316 attempts to do is to first make changes in how online charters are funded, but also beef up the yearly audits and oversight of all charters. So, I would say in response to CCSA that AB 1316 instead attempts to reign in charters that cheat and steal at will as did A3 and many others listed as having taken advantage of the many loopholes in CA charter law.
The point being that CCSA and other like-minded organizations around the country must know that bills like AB 1316 won’t end charter schools, but will slowly but surely limit the opportunity for charters to lie, cheat and steal public funds. So the real question is……will charters survive once the profit motive is removed? Maybe, just maybe, only the charter schools that operate within the law will remain in operation. That alone would be a reason for CCSA to panic. Take away the profit motive and POOF…..many may indeed disappear.
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They’ll bury this in the ed reform echo chamber. All negative news about charters is buried immediately and ANY critical analysis of the privatized school systems they designed and promote is forbidden.
What was interesting to me about the letter (belatedly) admitting the theft was the complete absence of any outside regulatory action.
They’ve set up an honor system and they’ve put every charter into it. Either the charter itself finds and admits the irregularity or it never comes to light. In this instance the charter didn’t even find it. A whistleblower did.
Well, we’re about to embark on a huge national experiment in the quality of ed reform governance systems with the huge voucher proposals they jammed thru all over the country. There’s no regulation or quality control at all and they own the whole thing.
There’s not even the slightest attempt to analyze the privatized systems they have set up- it’s 100% lockstep cheerleading. You say “voucher or charter” they all applaud.
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Unfortunately, there is no honor among thieves, including the corporate ones. We continue to use tax dollars to fund this unaccountable nonsense the undermines public schools.
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https://www.publiccharters.org/latest-news/2021/05/26/national-alliance-statement-idea-schools-investigation
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Pay attention to the corporate board, too. They did no oversight if they didn’t audit finances and there’s no way to hold them accountable or even find out what they did or didn’t do.
They’ll tell us what they think we should know. An honor system.
Compare how ed reformers treat the privatized systems they designed – no regulation- with the public systems they hope to abolish. They police public schools constantly, yet none of that “rigor” extends to the schools they promote and market.
Why should public schools accept ed reform directives when they don’t police their own private and charter schools? Why would public schools accept this biased standard, especially coming from people who contribute absolutely nothing to our schools and energetically lobby against them?
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“Matt Barnum
IDEA is one of the country’s fastest growing charter school networks and has now seen its two founders depart amidst allegations of misuse of the schools’ funding”
One would think the ed reform echo chamber would take this as a warning that hiring hundreds of paid cheerleaders to design publicly-funded systems bears examination, but it won’t.
There’s no analysis at all of the privatized systems they design. As long as they meet the ideological requirements (privately-owned and run, anti-union, no democratic governance or regulation) they’re meeting the standard.
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When Columbus Public Schools submitted fraudulent attendance numbers the ed reform-captured state government sent armed agents in to seize records. People went to jail.
Now we’ll get to watch the kid glove approach charters get. We saw it in Ohio. Charters were responsible for the largest fraud in state history- not a single person has been held accountable in any way. No arrests. No compensation paid. We’re just out 60 million dollars. One can assume a bunch of that ended up in charter operators personal bank accounts but no one ever looked.
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No one could have predicted the over hyped and over sold “coding bootcamps” and “income share agreements” would be used to rob students:
“Three former students are pursuing action against Lambda School, alleging that the coding boot camp falsely advertised both its job placement rates and the nature of its business model, while not having a license to operate in California. The three students are represented by the nonprofit organization National Student Legal Defense Network.
Lambda is a for-profit coding boot camp that operates short-term programs. While tuition for the six- to 12-month programs is officially set at $30,000, the company operates mostly using income-share agreements. Lambda students are not asked to pay until they are employed at a job making at least $50,000. After that, the school takes 17 percent of income for two years.”
Ed reformers now run job training and vocational ed. Expect a lot more of these. It’s going to make the for profit college fraud look small.
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The “charter lobby” includes the state church conferences influencing politicians to legislate for school choice.
Some of them work in concert with the Koch network for school choice rallies in state capitols.
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a telling pairing of words: church conferences/Koch network/choice rallies
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I hope life after Betsy will be better for all students.
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Go look at any of the ed reform sites or high profile national ed reformers and try to find this story.
The ed reform echo chamber won’t be discussing it, or even recognizing it exists.
I mean, come on. These people are a large collection of full time, paid charter cheerleaders.
This is a huge charter chain- they employ 6000 teachers who are paid with public funds and no one in ed reform is even going to mention there was no real auditing or oversight of millions and millions in public funds? That the only audits were internal and conducted by the charter chain itself?
And they want to design privatized K-12 systems all over the country? They refuse to even examine the privatized systems they have already designed because that would get in the way of lobbying for more privatization.
There’s no real “analysis” of any of this- a “success” is more charters and vouchers and a “failure” is an existing public school that isn’t privatized.
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[…] Texas there was the IDEA scandal. IDEA promised great performance for poor kids and everyone thought they were the best thing since […]
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[…] Texas there was the IDEA scandal. IDEA promised great performance for poor kids and everyone thought they were the best thing since […]
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Hello. I applied before with you. I try to just update my application. since is already there. Thanks
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Interesting. I’ve been saying that charters are money laundering operations for years. But I find IDEA Ft. Worth to be the better schools!
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