Rob Levine, charter skeptic, photographer, and charter critic, recently discovered that the Hmong College Prep Academy had hired one of its loudest critics.
He writes:
BY NOW MOST people who follow education in Minnesota are aware of the Hmong College Prep Academy’s illegal $5 million investment in a hedge fund that ended up losing $4.3 million, costing the power couple who run the segregated St. Paul-based charter school their jobs and casting doubt on the long term viability of the institution.
As the messy saga unfolded, an opaque school finance and consulting outfit called The Anton Group weighed in on the scandal with two blog posts, the first in June of 2021, and the second in late September. In a nutshell, Anton’s assessment was: This is fraud! The following month, something weird happened: Despite Anton’s very public criticisms of HCPA, the company landed a $100k contract to clean up the mess. A month after that, Anton’s Finance Officer became the Chief Financial Officer of the school itself. And sometime between that second blog post in September and the hiring of Anton in October those two blog posts were deleted.
As Levine puts it, “Charter school decided to feed the hand that bit it.”
Please note that Rob Levine asked me to correct the way I wrote the last line.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Or to feed the hand that twists its tail?
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nice one
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“Was this an innocent case of institutions giving in to their critics and trying to do the right thing, or was it a case of getting a severe critic to back down by bringing them onboard?”
Oh, I think it’s pretty clear what happened here.
It would be interesting to see how many people are employed in providing ancillary services to charter schools and what those people make. We see tens of outraged ed reform editorials about public employees, but oddly the echo chamber never does any financial analysis of the privatized sector they promote and market.
It seems like if they’re interested in “transparency” they’d apply that to their own sector, but they never do.It really doesn’t bode well for when they reach their goal of privatizing all schools. They systems will be MARKEDLY less transparent, and that’s even withpout their huge lobbying push for vouchers. There won’t be any financials on publicly funded private schools at all.
Public schools will be “the transparent sector” while ed reform creates an opaque (but publicly funded) privatized sector. This is the “governance” these folks engineered. They write all the charter and voucher laws.
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We’re going to see fraud explode with the completely unregulated voucher schemes ed reformers pushed all over the country.
It will be up to local media to cover it, since the echo chamber does no real analysis of their own work. The “analysis” will continue to be “vouchers are a huge success!” – it’s already the “analysis” and most of the programs they pushed haven’t even started yet.
They’re handing out billions to anyone who calls themselves a “school” or “provides educational services”. The fraud is going to be off the charts. We may see our first billion dollar ed reform scandal and it will probably be in Ohio. Ohio and Indiana share the dubious distinction of having the two biggest ed reform fraud scandals to date. Add vouchers with no oversight (or the oversight conducted by voucher lobbyists) and watch that spike. I give it five years. It will take that long before it becomes impossible to ignore or cover up.
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Chiara,
Ohio had the ECOT scandal.
California had the A3 scandal.
Both involved virtual charter operators.
California has clawed back $215 million from A3.
I don’t think Ohio has recovered anything from the ECOT man William Lager for his phantom students and inflated attendance rolls.
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Completely unbiased ed reform echo chamber outlet prints and promotes another blatantly anti-labor union screed:
https://www.the74million.org/article/antonucci-the-top-10-most-evocative-revealing-quotes-about-teachers-unions-and-education-of-2021/
I don’t mind that the echo chamber are anti-public school and anti-labor union. It’s an ideology and they’re allowed to have it. I just think they should clue the public in and drop the self-serving nonsense that they’re “agnostics”. It’s not true and anyone who reads ed reformers knows it’s not true.
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“And what about TAG’s behavior? It’s highly suspicious – pouring the opprobrium on a school only to rush in to put out the fire – for a price.”
This quote is from Rob Levine’s complete article. I went to it because from Diane’s excerpt it is not clear to me what is going on here. Well, Levine’s complete piece is not clear either.
Chiara writes “Oh, I think it’s pretty clear what happened here…oddly, the echo chamber never does any financial analysis of the privatized sector they promote and market.”
It’s not at all clear to me if this is “an innocent case of institutions…trying to do the right thing or was it a case of getting a severe critic to back down by bringing them onboard?” –Levine. I assume the latter option is intended to mean that a crooked deal was made so fraud can continue to the mutual benefit of both the school and The Anton Group (TAG).
Levine needs to be more clear in his writing and go further in his analysis, for those of us who live far from Minnesota and know nothing about this situation. Or, clarify that he knows no further details.
It would also be nice to have a more detailed discussion here on the blog, rather than assume the worst and make this blog into an opposing echo chamber. I for one, think it is indeed possible that there are sincere, rational, law-abiding advocates for certain types of charter schools who are outraged by mismanagement and fraud.
I also think it is possible there might exist a few honest, for-profit management companies who would jump at the opportunity to straighten out a mess like Hmong Academy.
Is this the case with The Anton Group (TAG)? I can’t tell from Levine’s article or the comments here, so far. I understand that a lot remains unknown, but would appreciate it if any responders to my post here would stick to additional factual details–if known–and not just argue about what they see as obvious.
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I see bad behavior on both sides here. One – The Anton Group – ramped up pressure on the school, then sought work from them – as it removed its criticism from the web. What is that called? Then when they got the job cleaning up the mess they hired their own for the CFO job! Helluva business model.
For the school itself – looks like they wanted to get rid of a severe critic, and they did it by offering them a contract. And it worked – the firm removed the criticism! Slimy all around.
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And the point is not that ‘fraud can continue’ – I’d be surprised if that happened. The point is the slimy behavior of Anton in ramping up pressure on a school, getting a contract, and removing the pressure. And on the school for being a party to that.
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Rob, thank you for the clarifications. I am generally suspicious of charter schools, but would need more information to conclude with you that this is necessarily “slimy” and that The Anton Group is at fault. Perhaps they merely want to present a positive face going forward…turn over a new leaf.
Many years ago I worked in wholesale bulk distribution to retail outlets. I discovered a competitor was not only paying a “fee” of $1 for every carton he sold through the purchasing agent at one large retail outlet, but that this competitor was also “skimming” product, also known as selling “short weight.”
This large retail outlet was not a customer of mine, and I knew nothing about this fraud until I went to the purchasing agent and asked for some of his business. He told me openly that I would have to pay him–under the table–$1 for every carton he bought from me, AND that I could skim a little product from each container for my own gain, just like the other supplier was doing.
Would it have been “slimy” for me to expose this, take over the account myself, and then move on beyond the past fraud to focus on a positive, honest and legitimate future? Maybe TAG deleted those emails for that reason.
In my case those many years ago, I had a private meeting with the CEO of that retail outlet, who told me he was aware of the situation, and it was an unfortunate but necessary cost of doing business: his purchasing agent’s methods insured a reliable source of quality product. I stuck with my smaller, more personal, and above-board customers.
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I think there is an episode of “The Sopranos” in which a scam like this is the central conceit.
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“illegal $5 million investment in a hedge fund that ended up losing $4.3 million, costing the power couple who run the segregated St. Paul-based charter school their jobs”
That’s all it cost them for an “illegal investment”?
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Yep! Plus just revealed they got like $400k severance!
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But no legal penalty for losing $4.3 million in public funds in a very bad investment?
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Diane – that remains to be seen. The state AG is investigating now.
“Hmong College Prep school faces investigation by attorney general after hedge fund investment loss ”
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Rob, I changed the last sentence as you requested to reflect your meaning more accurately.
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