The Network for Public Education has released a new report on for-profit charters, which grew during the pandemic years. The report is titled Chartered for Profit II: Pandemic Profiteering. It builds on the findings of a report published by NPE in 2021. For-profit charters not only divert money away from the public schools, which enroll the vast majority of students in every state, but they skim off profits that should have been spent on students and teachers. The report details the nefarious deals that enrich the charter operators. Every citizen who cares about our future should be aware of the facts detailed in this report. We believe readers will be genuinely shocked by the findings in this report, which shows how scammers and grifters have gotten a stronghold in the charter industry, to the detriment of students, teachers, and taxpayers.
Here is the executive summary:
In March of 2021, the Network for Public Education published Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain. In this follow-up report on the charter for-profit sector, we chronicle its expansion during the years of the Covid-19 pandemic by reporting growth in the number of schools, the number of for-profit corporations that run them, and student enrollment.
Acccording to our research, the for-profit sector dominated the charter school sector during the pandemic years. As the pandemic wore on – the percentage of charter schools run by for-profits jumped from 15 percent to 16.6 percent of the charter sector. This is a far greater percentage than is reported by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, which inexplicably does not report schools run by for-profit Education Management Organizations (EMOs) that control only one or two schools. These micro-EMOS comprise nearly half of all for-profit EMOs.
However, the number of schools run for profit underestimates the true growth of for-profit schooling during Covid 19. The percentage of students attending a charter school designed to produce a profit for its management company soared. According to the Common Core of Data of the National Center for Education Statistics, the total student enrollment in charter schools during the second year of the pandemic (the 2021-2022 school year) was 3,676,635. Student enrollment in for-profit-run charter schools jumped to 731,406 that year.
That means that 20 percent of all charter school students, 1 in 5, were enrolled in a charter school managed by a for-profit management corporation by the pandemic’s end.
More disturbing is that 27 percent of the students attending for-profit-run schools were enrolled in low-quality virtual charter schools that teach students either exclusively or primarily online. That was in 2021. During the prior year (2020) the number was even higher.
Those who defend for-profit charter schooling claim it is no different from public schools using vendors for transportation services or to purchase textbooks. However, as this report explains, for-profit chartering is very different from vendors who supply discreet products and services. We detail the various ways in which the owners of EMOs extract profit via a lack of oversight and regulation that fails to protect taxpayers from sweetheart deals, sweeps contracts, and related party transactions designed to enrich EMO owners, their friends and their family members. And we explain how the acquisition of real estate and exploitative lease and purchase agreements drive the expansion of for-profit-run charter schools and, in some cases, put the school at financial risk.
Chartered For-Profit II: Pandemic Profiteering makes a case for substantive state and national reform so that the best interests of students and taxpayers trump financial gain. Like our first report, it provides insight into the most controversial sector of the charter school world—charters operated for financial gain.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I agree that for-profit charter schools are a bad idea, and several states don’t allow them.
But there are serious problems in the traditional public schools, one of which is abuse of students (see link below). From the article:
“Hundreds of Chicago Public Schools teachers sexually groomed, assaulted and raped CPS students last school year.
That’s according to the report released this week by the CPS Office of the Inspector General (OIG), which said it received more than 600 “adult on student” misconduct allegations for the 2021-22 school year, substantiating more than half of them and initiating criminal charges in 16 cases.”
Whenever there is a problem at even one charter school, this blog cites it as proof that all charter schools are awful. Does this same standard apply to traditional public schools? Why has this data received almost no news coverage?
https://chicagocitywire.com/stories/638582935-i-m-ready-to-f-right-now-i-m-not-gonna-be-gentle-either-oig-report-details-cps-teachers-sexual-grooming-assaults-of-their-students
““Hundreds of Chicago Public Schools teachers sexually groomed, assaulted and raped CPS students last school year.”
Ha, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ad infinitum.
Do you always disseminate such insinuating falsehoods?
The data was compiled and released by the Office of the Inspector General of the Chicago Public Schools. You obviously don’t care about the appalling behavior described by that office.
No discussion of this story on this blog – not the preferred narrative.
Brenda,
I don’t know of everything that happens in every district in the US. I deplore sexual misconduct, whether it happens in public schools, charter schools, religious schools, or private boarding schools. In the past decade, there have been scandals involving teachers and students in all these sectors. I usually don’t write about them, because they are an aberration in any sector. The elite private boarding schools, where tuition may run to $70,000 a year, has been spotlighted by the media for these problems. I usually ignore them because no school in any sector has a policy of encouraging sexual misconduct.
However, the for-profit schools do have a policy of profiting by boosting enrollment. They mostly get bad results but they keep growing.
You got that right, err, correct, Duane! In poker there’s a thing called a tell. One of the easiest tells today is anyone who uses the word “groomer” in any of its connotations in a political context. It exposes someone convinced they are in possession of a truth that is, in their minds, vital for the world to know and act upon, but quite honestly, just crazy. What makes it crazier is they are convinced people who actually pay attention to the real world are crazy. And they’re fundamentally impacting our governance and lives. We really are in the deepest of doo-doos.
Misstated one thing above. They don’t think we are crazy, they know, in their minds, that we are evil. That, by extension, makes us illegitimate to have any say whatsoever in public policy and we should accept any rules and restrictions on our lives or behavior that are made by authorities. Like scientologists, they really believe that. And the most cynical of the leaders they follow so devoutly know it and build their political strategies around and with it.
I notice again how Duane and GregB dodge the issue of a surprisingly large number of sexual predation cases in the Chicago Public Schools. The inspectors for CPS revealed that data – not ring-wing publications or anyone else. This blogs commenters are 100% shills for the traditional public school world, the most extreme partisans. At least Ms. Ravitch had the decency to condem that criminal behavior. To the commenters it’s nothing to see here, move along now.
Of course, I condemn sexual predators. They can be found in charter schools, public schools, religious schools, and elite private schools. The elite boarding schools have had numerous sex scandals, with teens and adults sequestered on a remote campus and in close daily contact. Virtual charter schools keep children away from human contact, but the kids get a lousy education.
Dare I mention, Ms. Conway, the priest predator problem?
Oh, I have to publicly denounce sexual assaults, rapes, etc. . . to be kosher in your mind. Wow!
Such a goddess are ye to declare so. May I bow down and lick thine feet?
Good one, Duane! I would like to associate myself to your comment.
Wonder why these lies get them worked up when it’s likely sexual predators live in their neighborhoods and might even be in their families? Could it be that they really have another agenda? I feel confident in speaking for Duane in asserting that we do not feel the need to spread lies to assert our political beliefs. We may not agree, but we don’t lie.
For further confirmation of the mental illness of people like Brenda, check out this clip of Ryan Zinke, thankfully cloaked in a comedy routine, where it belongs. A bureaucracy of government employees is, according to these loons, the “Deep State.” We’re going to have two years of certified mental illness bring this government and possibly the world economy to its metaphorical knees and set the stage for an authoritarian “savior.”
Priest predator problem? How about Matt Schlapp “me in the groin,” Larry “wide stance” Craig, Roy “hey, little girl!” Moore, Mark “loves me some page boys” Foley, and, of course, Matt “ain’t gonna make those Roy Moore mistakes” Gaetz and Jim “I didn’t see no male rape” Jordan? Time to call these people what they are. Hypocritical liars who want a white supremacist, male-dominated (as long as the public persona is heterosexual) authoritarian state with a fictional interpretation of the Constitution to give their abomination “legal” standing.
I don’t think that we have to choose between sexual misconduct in public schools and paying for-profit schools. Both are bad.
There is no problem with any public school that justifiably licenses private businesses to rob funds from public school students. Two wrongs don’t make a right. There cannot be two parallel, publicly funded, competing systems of education. It’s like taking food off the plate of your oldest child to give seconds to her younger sibling because you like her better. It’s just plain wrong.
Thanks for the insights into the endless cycle of profiteering in the charter school industry. Thanks to Carol Burris and her team for gaining access to information that is difficult to obtain once funds go between the deliberately opaque wall of private ownership. It exposes the many schemes that for profit corporations use to amplify, hide their profits and steal public real estate. For profits are failing to academically serve our young people well, but there is little interest on the part of most representatives to suspend their operations.
“During his Presidential campaign, then-candidate Joe Biden was clear and firm. He is opposed to for-profit charter schools, and he vowed to ensure that they would no longer be eligible to receive federal funds. Under federal law, only public, not private entities can receive federal funding.”
What steps have been taken by the federal government to eliminate sweeps contracts, unethical for-profit cyber schools and unscrupulous EMOs as per Biden’s campaign promise?
Biden’s Department of Education adopted new regulations to ban for-profit charters from the federal Charter Schools Program. The charter industry fought hard to block it, but they lost. The burden of regulating for-profit charters falls mostly to the states. So many legislatures have been bought off, that it’s hard to get them to stop the scams.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Learn how how scammers and grifters have gotten a stronghold in the charter K-12 school industry, to the detriment of students, teachers, and taxpayers.
shouldn’t “discreet” be “discrete”
Cynthia, thank you for catching the spelling error! It will be fixed.