Jeff Bryant is one of the best informed writers about charter schools in the nation. He is chief correspondent for Our Schools and director of the Education Opportunity Network. He explains here why the charter industry is using misinformation to stop a Democratic proposal to ban federal funding for for-profit charter schools.
He begins:
The top lobbying group for the charter school industry is rushing to preserve millions in funds from the federal government that flow to charter operators that have turned their K-12 schools into profit-making enterprises, often in low-income communities of color.
The group, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools (NAPCS), objects to a provision in the House Appropriations Committee’s proposed 2022 education budget that closes loopholes that have long been exploited by charter school operators that profit from their schools through management contracts, real estate deals, and other business arrangements. NAPCS also objects to the legislation’s proposal to cut 9 percent from the federal government’s troubled Charter Schools Program (CSP).
The House budget proposal, which was passed out of the majority Democratic committee “in a party-line vote,” according to the Hill, has been praised by numerous education groups, including the National School Boards Association, the National Education Association, and the National Center for Learning Disabilities, for, among many things, more than doubling Title I funding for schools serving low-income children, providing over $3 billion more to educate students with disabilities, and increasing federal spending on K-12 education programs, Education Week reports.
The legislation mostly aligns with the President Biden administration’s proposed budget for K-12 spending, as reported by Chalkbeat in April 2021, and the provision ending federal funding of for-profit charter school operators reflects Biden’s pledge, made in his presidential campaign, to “not support any federal money for for-profit charter schools, period.”
The For-Profit Charter Problem
The specific provision regarding for-profit charters that NAPCS objects to states, “None of the funds made available by this Act or any other Act may be awarded to a charter school that contracts with a for-profit entity to operate, oversee or manage the activities of the school.”
Controversies over for-profit charter school operators are long-standing and largely unresolved…
As University of South Carolina law professor Derek Black explains on his personal blog, “Most states require charter schools to be nonprofit. To make money, some of them have simply entered into contracts with separate for-profit companies that they also own. These companies do make money off students.”
A 2021 report by the Network for Public Education (NPE)—an organization co-founded by education historian Diane Ravitch that advocates for public schools—examined more than 1,000 charter schools that were contracted with for-profit management companies and found that the schools’ nonprofit boards were often mere fronts for profit-making enterprises that use the charter schools they operate to “maximize their profits through self-dealing, excessive fees, real estate transactions, and under-serving students who need the most expensive services.”
Among the practices that for-profit charter operators employ, according to the NPE report, is to establish “sweeps contracts” that “give for-profits the authority to run all school services in exchange for all or nearly all of the school’s revenue.”
The report also “identified over 440 charter schools operated for profit that received grants totaling approximately $158 million between 2006 and 2017,” from the CSP, despite “strict regulations” against awarding CSP funds to charter schools operated by for-profit entities…
NAPCS’s president and CEO Nina Rees told a CNN reporter that the legislation “could impact schools that contract out for cafeteria services, special education services, or back office staff…”
After the CNN article was published, it was updated with a quote from Connecticut Representative Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat who chairs the House committee that drafted the proposal, who called NAPCS’s petition campaign “a well-funded misinformation campaign,” and said, “The language [of the proposed legislation] is clearly focused on ending the practice of charters accepting federal funds only to have the school run by a low-quality, for-profit company rife with conflicts of interest.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Privatization is a turf war. Once for-profits start making money from their scheme, it is difficult to walk back the recklessness because so much billionaire money is behind the scheme. The charter lobby has been taking federal dollars for granted as though they are entitled to those dollars. EMO or CMOs are unaccountable “pass through” entities that are private mechanisms for hiding corporate profit. Democrats should stand firm on eliminating the wasteful for profit management companies that bury the charter industry’s profits behind an opaque wall of private ownership.
Oh, Diane, but EVERYONE knows charter lobbyists are self-sacrificing saints who work only for the good of the children, while public school lobbyists are evil union thugs who are wholly “self interested”.
If you want to see the absolutely ridiculous levels of pro-charter and anti-public school bias in ed reform you have only to look at how they treat charter lobbyists as compared with pubic school lobbyists.
A genuinely “agnostic” movement would take the claims of lobbyists for both groups with a grain of salt, but ed reformers don’t do that- they cheerlead the charter lobby in lockstep and utterly demonize the public school lobby. That’s pro-charter, anti-public school bias, and ed reform is such an echo chamber they don’t even see it.
Ed reformers like to feign outrage at the salaries of teachers unions officials, but have you ever seen any mention of how much ed reformers themselves are paid? How much do the leaders of the charter lobby make? Why is Randi Weingarten’s salary an outrage and the salaries of the ed reform echo chamber NOT an outrage?
Because the echo chamber has a clear anti-public school bias, that’s why.
Public schools should cut the ed reform echo chamber loose not because they cheerlead charters and vouchers. Public schools should cut the ed reform echo chamber loose because they perform no useful or productive work of any kind that benefits public schools or public school students. Hiring ed reformers is a bad investment for public schools. They add no value to our schools.
Amusing to watch the pro-charter/voucher anti-public school ed reform lobby rush to protect for-profit charters when compared with their complete lack of advocacy (or productive or useful work) for PUBLIC schools.
Why should public schools accept directives, scolding or mandates from a “movement” that returns absolutely no value to public schools or public school students?
These folks get nothing accomplished for public schools. Why are public schools expected to listen to them?
Time for public schools to break free from the ed reform echo chamber. It hasn’t benefitted students in public schools- it was a bad investment for our schools and students.
So far this year ed reformers have lobbied for vouchers and they’ve lobbied for charters. They haven’t lifted a finger on behalf of students who attend public schools. Again.
Should students in public schools get advocates? Do they deserve advocates? They’re not going to get them in this “movement” so public schools had better start doing that work.
If Randy Weingarten’s salary at is outrageous, as ed reformers claim, where is the analysis of the ed reform echo chamber salaries?
How much do charter lobbyists make? How much do the lobbyists for the Walton and Gates education agenda make? How much are they paying the head of “50 CAN” and all the other tens of ed reform groups that spend their entire working lives promoting charters and vouchers?
How much do the people who work for Jeb Bush’s privatization lobby shop make?
If they’re interested in Weingarten’s salary theyshould be interested in how much their fellow echo chamber members are making too, but oddly we get no discussion at all of that.
B.I.A.S. Ed reform is an echo chamber. They’re anti-public school and pro-charter and voucher and only people who are inside the echo chamber can possibly miss it- it’s obvious to anyone on the outside.
Chiara, well said.
Leaders of the education choice movement—including charter schools, advocacy groups, and think tanks—are very well paid. AFT posts Randi’s compensation on its tax forms. Too bad we don’t have comparable information on those who work for “reform.”
there’s the million dollar question: How much do charter lobbyists make?
I read a lot of ed reformers because I genuinely believe they no longer see how uniformly negative they are when discussing public schools.
One can read acoss the whole echo chamber and never encounter a single positive mention of a public school or even public school STUDENT. Compare with the exclusively positive coverage of ANY charter or private school and ask yourself if these people should be running public school policy. They simply don’t support the existence of our schools:
https://www.crpe.org/thelens/bolder-leadership-needed-keep-students-safe-and-learning-next-year
It’s across the echo chamber- every single mention of any public school will be negative and every single mention of every charter/private school will be positive.
And public schools are paying these people to advise on public schools? Why? They contribute nothing to our schools. They haven’t contributed anything of value to our schools for the last twenty years. We may as well paid the consulting fees to the charter lobby- the two groups are indistinguishable.
My advice to public schools is this- find and hire people who support public schools to advise on public schools. You’ll have to go OUTSIDE the echo chamber to find any, but it’s about time we heard from someone else anyway.
Nina Rees was a deputy assistant to former Vice President Dick Cheney. I did not know that until I read Jeff Bryant’s article just now. Her association with Darth Cheney is telling. She should be made to wear a large badge identifying herself as a Cheney acolyte wherever she goes. Now I see it, by handing out profits to management companies instead of providing services to students, the NA”P”CS is shooting its supporters in the face. Evil Dick is back! Mission Accomplished! Let’s invade Iraq! Again!
Many charter schools are just money laundering fronts for charter management businesses. Rees knows that. Her claiming that defunding for-profit managers would prohibit all schools from hiring food and transportation services is exactly what Cheney would do. It’s a great, big lie. She’s trying to get us to look for WMDs while she gets the government to give more money to weapons and mercenary contractors. Nina, there are no weapons of mass destruction in charter regulation.
Here’s the ed reform outlet, The 74, uncritically promoting the pro-privatization agenda of the Walton Foundation, as “news”:
It’s great because they’re ALL paid by the same wealthy, anti-public school foundation:
“Bruno V. Manno is senior adviser to the Walton Family Foundation’s K-12 Program. The foundation provides financial support to The 74 and to some of the organizations named in this essay.”
Just one big happy echo chamber, no dissenting opinions presented or even considered.
It’s laughable that this is presented as “science” or something public schools should rely on to set policy. It is 100% political advocacy and marketing. That the last 3 secretaries of the US Department of Education all followed it lockstep is embarrassing for the United States. This isn’t a “debate”. It’s marketing. And it has utterly captured education policy to the exclusion of all other views and opinions.
Public school students deserve policy people who support public schools and public school students. They don’t have any in ed reform. We need to find them some.
https://www.the74million.org/article/manno-parents-civic-entrepreneurs-rebuild-k-12-schooling-from-scratch-in-a-way-thats-student-focused-parent-directed-and-pluralistic/
The tale of EdChoice leadership is stranger than fiction. Until 2019, the organization was co-chaired by Patrick Byrne and Rose Friedman. If the Byrne name sounds familiar, he’s one of the most well-known Trump election conspiracists along with Sidney Powell. Byrne was until 2019, CEO of Overstock. He and his family provided the most funding for Utah’s voucher and other forms of school choice legislation.
In 2019, Bryne also announced he had a romantic relationship with Maria Butina (she stood trial and was convicted as a foreign agent). Butina is currently working as a television host at the Russian television network, RT.
At Wikipedia, we can read about Byrne and his account of a Nashville suicide
bombing /missile strike to destroy a spy hub used by AT&T and the NSA.
And, not much less strange about EdChoice, the 8 “fellows” pictured at the site include faculty from Kennesaw STATE University, Albany STATE University, University of Missouri-Columbia, Western Carolina University, and the University of Texas. Also in the list, a person from the Charles Koch Foundation, which is totally predictable.
Commenter Chiara writes about taxpayers paying for staff who have greater interest in dismantling public education than assisting it. Clearly, state taxpayers are funding college professors at public universities who are equally engaged in the ed privatizing agenda.
Thanks Diane!
ALEC – the American Legislative Exchange Council – is a right-wing cookie-cutter legislation factory long known for its advocacy of charter chains, vouchers and the “disruption model” of public education. Apparently ALEC is now spreading its influence outside the realm of pumping out anti-teacher union laws and is now entering the arena of anti-Constitution disinformation fantasy.
The “Big Lie” – the agitprop asserting Trump actually won a fraudulent election – despite 60 extirpated junk lawsuits (recall Sydney Powell’s mea culpa) and the legal certification of results by all 50 states – has fueled a conflagration of voting protections in various states and has critically weakened many Americans’ faith in our elections.
ALEC’s treasurer and second-in-line for national chair Karen Fann (R) engineered the sham audit in Arizona and like much of ALEC’s mendacious duplicity is planning on xeroxing the exact Arizona Fraudit blueprint to destabilize the voting systems in many other states. Far from corporations pretending they do not support the undermining of US elections, this proves corporations are instrumental in funding the effort to destroy American democracy and enshrine minority white male rule via vote suppression (laws formulated to negate urban and minority votes), vote subversion (controlling the actual vote counting rooms to steal elections) and The Big Lie.
ALEC has placed itself – and by extension all if its corporate backers – squarely on the side of violent insurrection, deadly vaccine disinformation and divisive legally vapid election lies designed to enable an emergent emboldened American kleptocrat oligarchy. We are well into an asymmetrical war.