Privatizers have boasted for years that charter schools are superior to public schools because students should not be confined to schools by their zip code (I.e. their neighborhood). But a charter school in Philadelphia used student zip codes to exclude kids from their “lottery.” The lottery was rigged to keep out kids from certain neighborhoods.
Each of the 800-plus Philadelphia families who applied for seats at a nationally recognized charter school thought their children had a fair shot at a spot in this year’s upcoming freshman class. Pennsylvania law guarantees it.
But some had no chance at all.
A top executive at Franklin Towne Charter High School said this year’s lottery was fixed, with students from certain zip codes shut out, and others eliminated because they — or their older siblings — exhibited academic or behavioral problems. Some children were also excluded because Franklin Towne’s chief executive didn’t want to take anyone from a particular charter elementary school, in the event he might have to pay for their transportation.
Patrick Field, Franklin Towne’s chief academic officer and an administrator at the school for 17 years, said the lottery tampering was ordered by Joseph Venditti, the longtime former CEO. Venditti abruptly resigned Feb. 27, citing health reasons, after Field alerted the charter’s board chair about the lottery issues…
The Inquirer reviewed a summary of the January lottery results showing that 205 students of 813 who applied were offered seats. The accepted students came from 22 zip codes; in 17 other city zip codes, none of the students who applied got in.
It is astronomically unlikely — with odds of 1,296 trillion — that no students would be selected from those zip codes if Franklin Towne conducted a random lottery as is required, an Inquirer analysis found.
Field, who is still employed by Franklin Towne, said he chose to alert authorities and come forward to The Inquirer because children are being cheated, and becausetaxpayers are footing the bill. Charters are independently run but publicly funded.
“As an administrator in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania, I don’t have a choice,” Field said. “As an ethical person, I’m just heartbroken that we’re doing this at a school that I’ve given so much of my life to.”
A high school of 1,300 in Bridesburg, Franklin Towne boasts strong academics, with a 97% graduation rate in 2021. It previously was named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education.
The charter also has fielded allegations over its enrollment practices. Though it’s required to admit students from across the city, Franklin Towne’s enrollment is primarily white — a demographic mismatch in a primarily Black school district — a concern raised in 2018 at a School Reform Commission meeting. It has previously been accused of discriminating against special-education students.
Mercedes Schneider reviewed the story and found that it sounded “fishy.” A mostly-white school in a mostly-black district? And no one knew? The selection process at this charter school has been funny for a long time.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
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Franklin Towne is the an example of how developers work hand in hand with city government. Selective charter schools are often the way developers can ensure that a mostly white student body will attend a charter school. Contributions to local politicians are the way developers clear a path to gain access to public funds. This is what happens when education is commodified to serve the interests of private operators that use public funds, but have no accountability or oversight. This blog and the local news have reported on Franklin Towne’s long history of corruption and manipulation with the assistance of the city government. https://dianeravitch.net/?s=franklin+towne
Who would have imagined? Modern redlining.
Redlining for exclusion and profit. This is how charter schools and developers protect their investment paid for by public dollars.
Paraphrasing Captain Louis Renault
“I’m appalled, appalled that there is cheating going on here.”
PA is long long overdue for charter school reform. The PA legislators need to address Charter school fraud and mismanagement. The Center for Popular Democracy makes these recommendations to improve protections against Future Fraud: “The state should enact other legal protections such as a statewide False Claims Act that encourage whistleblowers to report instances of fraud.
The state should impose a moratorium on new charter schools until the state oversight system is adequately reformed.”
Pennsylvania should also ban for-profit charters and CMOS.
Is “rigging” the lottery kinder than not “rigging” the lottery, but making the parents attend multiple pre-enrollment meetings so that all but the most motivated parents are screened out, and THEN having your “model teachers” demonstrate the model techniques that are so highly rewarded – targeting and publicly humiliating and punishing kids you don’t want to teach so that their parents “voluntarily” dis-enroll them.
Is simply “rigging” the lottery kinder than if the CEO went on national television to inform Americans that at some of her charters with virtually no white kids, she OFTEN has to tell parents how violent their very young elementary school kids are because their violent very young children PUNCHED their wonderful, perfect, barely trained charter teacher who was trained by those “model” teachers demonstrating their “techniques”.
In terms of integrity, I prefer the BASIS Charter model, where the charter makes it clear they have absolutely no interest teaching any student who isn’t ready to begin taking AP classes in middle school, over the liars who say they welcome every kid, especially the very disadvantaged kids “trapped in failing public schools” but push out so many of those kids. Or rig the lottery so they don’t get seats.
If charters simply admitted they are NOT interested in teaching most of the severely disadvantaged kids from failing public schools, but only the ones who give them bragging rights, we can have a very useful and public discussion about whether the public school system should create their own choice schools for the most motivated kids whose public schools are primarily poor and underfunded. Or whether it is better to privatize that part of teaching, so the profits of teaching only the easiest to teach students can be privatized.
Then we can have a similar discussion about whether those who support private charters who get to cherry pick the easiest to teach kids also support setting up health insurance companies that Medicare gives lots of money to so that healthy seniors can get basic health care while healthy and sent to the public system if they have an illness that can’t be cured inexpensively.
After all, isn’t America all about figuring out a system that privatizes the profits and socializes the risks?
There’s no need to rig admissions if you just churn through all the unwanted children until you get to the students on the waiting list who you want to teach.
But rather than to demonize very young children and make racists very happy by going on national tv and explaining how so often very young students in a high performing charter with virtually no white students punch their teachers, and rather than to rig a lottery, I wish charter operators would just come clean the way BASIS does. There are a lot of students they don’t want to teach. The students they do want to teach just happen to need less resources. That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.
Charter school success is smoke and mirrors, a house of cards, a wizard of Oz behind a curtain — a trick.