What an embarrassment for the U.S. Department of Education!
Carol Burris writes on Valerie Strauss’s Washington Post blog, “The Answer Sheet,” that Secretary Miguel Cardona just awarded one of its largest grants ever to expand a Hillsdale College charter school in Ohio. Hillsdale is closely tied to the conservative Christian movement and to Republican leaders such as Donald Trump, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, and Governor Bill Lee of Tennessee.
Hillsdale’s history program is called “the 1776 curriculum,” intended to refute the ideas of journalist Nicole Hannah-Jones’ controversial “1619 Project.” Hannah-Jones argued that American history began with the arrival of African slaves in 1619. To counter her narrative, the Trump administration in its waning days created “the 1776 Commission” to produce a quick version of a patriotic history. On President Biden’s first day in office, he abolished the 1776 Commission. Hillsdale College, however, continued the work of writing a full U.S. history curriculum based on the work of the 1776 Commission and made it available to schools that wanted history as it used to be taught: with great men, high ideals, and unblemished patriotism.
Hillsdale is now associated with a chain of charter schools that have adopted its Christian worldview and the 1776 curriculum. As Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education explains, a Hillsdale charter just won nearly $2 million from the federal Charter Schools Program. CSP is administered by the U.S. Department of Education. The charter made claims about its location and its demographics that are “misleading.”
Trying to think of an analogy to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona giving a large grant to a Hillsdale charter school: imagine Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos giving $2 million to a charter school for transgender children. Neither seems likely. But one scenario happened.
Valerie Strauss introduces Burris’s column.
A recent federal audit had a bit of bad news for the U.S. Education Department’s Charter Schools Program (CSP), which has provided more than $2.5 billion in grants to help open or expand charter schools. The audit by the department’s Office of Inspector General found that the CSP office may not have had “reliable information needed to make informed decisions” about continuing funding for charter schools with program grants.
There was more in the audit, which you can read about here, but this post looks at a different problem facing the CSP: schools with highly problematic applications that win millions of dollars of federal money anyway.
Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated, some of them as for-profit entities, and they educate about 7 percent of U.S. schoolchildren. The 30-year-old charter sector has been riddled with financial and other scandals over the years, although supporters say that the problems these schools face are expected growing pains and that they offer families an important option to schools in publicly funded districts. Critics say that they are part of the movement to privatize public education and that some states have lax charter school laws that do not properly regulate them.
This post was written by Carol Burris, an award-winning former New York high school principal and now executive director of the advocacy group called Network for Public Education, which is an alliance of organizations that advocates for the improvement of public education and seeks legislative reform of charter schools. Burris has written previously on the charter school program for Answer Sheet (for example, here and here). She has chronicled how the program spent hundreds of millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened or closed not long after opening.
Burris writes about the funding application of a charter school in Ohio, the Cincinnati Classical Academy, and says that her organization, along with a group of Ohio legislators and other organizations, have asked Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to rescind the school’s nearly $2 million CSP grant. I asked the school to comment and will add its response if I get one. I asked the Education Department about the letter, and a spokesman said this in an email:
“The U.S. Department of Education (Department) is committed to supporting state and local efforts to increase school diversity and reduce racial and socio-economic isolation in schools, including through the Charter School Program (CSP). There are multiple safeguards in place to ensure the integrity of CSP applications and funded grants. For example, all CSP applicants must provide attestations confirming the accuracy of information submitted in their application. False, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or claims may subject applicants to criminal, civil, or administrative penalties. Such safeguards are in place to help ensure charter schools serve communities well.”
By Carol Burris
An invitation to fiction writing. That is how Mike Winerip described the federal Charter School Program (CSP) grant process in a 2012 New York Times story, a characterization based on his investigation of a New Jersey charter school, which, despite three failed attempts to open and an application full of “misrepresentations,” had secured a CSP grant.
This issues didn’t go away. The All Football Club of Lancaster, Pa., an unauthorized charter school with no community support, submitted an often-incoherent application and yet won $1.2 million in 2020. A school run by a for-profit operator immersed in self-dealings and a segregation academy turned charter school cashed in on a North Carolina grant.
But the prize for the most inventive story to secure a CSP grant may belong to the Cincinnati Classical Academy (CCA), a Hillsdale College member school, for securing a nearly $2 million grant. CCA, which prides itself on teaching virtue, asked for the grant on the basis of its claim that it was closing the achievement gap and serving disadvantaged students, never reporting that only 16 percent of its students are economically disadvantaged and that 2 percent are Black — a starkly different student body from the overwhelmingly disadvantaged and majority-Black Cincinnati Public School students, who, CCA says, it wants to save from poverty.
Cincinnati Classical Academy
Cincinnati Classical Academy is located on a cul-de-sac in a leafy residential suburb of Cincinnati called Reading. The school’s website features a motto and a coat of arms, and plays a video showing the school building with a cross atop a tower at the entrance as well as a large American flag. It currently runs from kindergarten through seventh grade but says it plans to add a grade each year until it becomes a full K-12 school.
It takes considerable digging on its website to realize that CCA is a charter school, not a tuition-free Christian private academy. Its headmaster’s message speaks of morals, virtue and “old-fashioned” methods. Pictures of the gymnasium show a large crucifix on the wall next to an American flag. In a photograph of a school hallway lined with posters depicting the school’s virtues, Mary and the infant Jesus from Botticelli’s “Madonna of the Magnificat” illustrates the virtue of humility. To illustrate gratitude, CCA shows a family praying before a meal.
Nearly all of the uniformed children featured on the website are White. There is no mention of a provision for free lunch on the school’s webpage, which features catered lunches students can purchase in full or a la carte.
Although CCA is only in its second year, it has the status of being a member school of Hillsdale College’s K-12 initiative, which entitles it to free curriculum, training and consultation from the small, nondenominational, conservative Christian college in Michigan. Hillsdale President Larry Arnn is an ally of former president Donald Trump as well as of Trump’s former education secretary, Betsy DeVos, and “distinguished fellow” Christopher Rufo, an activist who has fueled the culture wars.
Hillsdale provides support for CCA through its Barney Charter School Initiative, which began in 2010 with a half-million-dollar contribution from the Barney Family Foundation and which has opened a few dozen charter schools across the country. Hillsdale College’s mission is to maintain “by precept and example the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith,” while the mission of its K-12 charter schools includes a call for “moral virtue.” A Hillsdale K-12 civics and U.S. history curriculum released in 2021 praises conservative values, criticizes liberal ones and distorts civil rights history.
According to its 990 tax forms, the Barney Family Foundation gives to health and child-centered charities along with Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Hoover Institution, the Heartland Institute, the State Policy Network, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice, the Heritage Foundation, and other right-wing foundations and think tanks.
Stephen Barney, a trustee emeritus on the Hillsdale College Board, has been one of its most generous donors. Between 2010 and 2019, the Network for Public Education identified more than $4 million earmarked for Hillsdale from Barney’s foundation, excluding unlisted donations in 2011 and or donations before or after those years.
Despite Hillsdale College’s frequent boasts of rejecting federal money (and the federal regulations that come with it, including Title IV provisions), the college’s affiliated charter schools eagerly dip into the federal Charter School Program through state entitlement grants. To date, the Network for Public Education has identified more than $16.75 million given to Hillsdale charters for school start-ups or expansions.
The grant to CCA is the first given directly by the federal department to a Hillsdale-connected charter school.
The questionable narrative
Applicants for Charter Schools Program Developer Grants fill out extensive applications in making the case for why their schools deserve the funds. According to the Federal Register, which calls for applications, the first purpose of the CSP is to “expand opportunities for all students, particularly for children with disabilities, English learners, and other traditionally underserved students, to attend charter schools.”
However, CCA caters to the well-served in disproportionately high numbers. State records show that it had no English language learners in 2022-2023 when it applied. Students with disabilities were enrolled at less than half the rate of the Cincinnati Public Schools. More than 80 percent of the students in Cincinnati Public Schools were economically disadvantaged compared to fewer than 17 percent at CCA. Other charter schools in Hamilton County had no problem attracting economically disadvantaged students; their average rate topped 85 percent.
The only category in which CCA exceeds a demographic of Cincinnati Public Schools is White students. More than 82 percent of CCA students are White, compared to 20 percent in the public school district.
So what can a school like this do to get a grant intended for schools that serve underserved kids? It didn’t reveal itself.
CCA cited Cincinnati Public Schools demographics to make its case in its application even though it is located in the Reading Community City School District, which is whiter, wealthier and has better ratings. Then it provided another handful of schools within five miles for comparison, none of which are in Cincinnati Public Schools. The school also talked in its application about closing the achievement gap and serving diverse, underserved students even though its unrevealed Black student population (2.4 percent) is so tiny the state does not even give it a gap-closing measure.
But where the school best revealed itself is in its list of goals and objectives. Not only did it fail to share its lack of diversity, it included no goals or objectives to address it. The application does not discuss the need to increase the number of English language learners, homeless children, students with disabilities, or students who get free or reduced-price lunches to level the enormous gap between the school’s proportions and the greater Cincinnati area.
If achieved, the goals in the application prepared by Kentucky’s Adkins and Company and signed off by the president of the school’s governing board will not disrupt the status quo. CCA will be able to meet them and keep the federal dollars flowing for four years while maintaining the reality projected on its website — that it is a magnet for White, Christian conservative families to escape the area’s diverse schools.
The CSP review process
If you have ever applied for a mortgage, you remember the extraordinarily detailed evidence you must provide to support every claim. That is not the case when “free government money” for charter schools is at stake.
The curious lack of a demographic profile of the school’s students was never a concern for the reviewers. CCA received the highest score of all applicants — 101. One of the three reviewers gave the school a perfect score. You can find the application and the reviewers’ scoring here.
Reviewers, who are solicited from the charter school world, were satisfied that “comprehensive data is provided, revealing the underperformance of Cincinnati public schools and underscoring the necessity for a high-quality alternative that offers families a viable choice,” even though the school is not a part of Cincinnati Public Schools.
The reviewers bought the same old narrative — a high-poverty district is bad, so bring in a charter school. They parroted back what the applicant said and praised Hillsdale College’s Barney Charter School Program.
Inexplicably, given the CSP’s checkered history, the Education Department increased the maximum amount of Developer Grants per charter school from $1.5 million to $2 million this year, and CCA got nearly every penny of the limit: a grant for $1,991,846. Grants are usually for five years, but CCA had been open for a year when it applied, so it got a four-year grant. The average amount per year is $300,000 but the Education Department gave CCA nearly half a million dollars a year — on the basis of claims that even cursory checks on state data or a visit to the school’s website would show to be untrue.
Back in Ohio, public education advocacy groups are outraged but not surprised. Bill Phillis, the executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, told me that the charter industry in his state “has been rife with financial and academic fraud and corruption.” He also said the CCA’s application for a development grant, with its “deception and disingenuous information,” is “typical of the charter industry in Ohio.”
The Network for Public Education sent a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona protesting the grant and asking that it be rescinded. It was signed by Phillis’s coalition, along with U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio), five state legislators who represent the area, the Ohio PTA, both state teachers unions, the Cincinnati NAACP, and more than a dozen public education, civil rights, local teacher associations and advocacy groups.
Other 2023 CSP awardees are being challenged. The St. Louis Board of Education has passed a resolution protesting the more than $35 million CSP grant received by the billionaire-funded Opportunity Trust to open more charter schools in Missouri — nearly all of which will, because of state law, be located in St. Louis or Kansas City. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
“The group misrepresented its relationship with SLPS in its application to the U.S. Department of Education, the resolution states. The school board “does not have a working relationship with the Opportunity Trust, does not collaborate with the Opportunity Trust and has opposed efforts by the Opportunity Trust to enact legislation to divert district funds to charter schools,” it [the resolution] reads.”
CSP grant applications that have been misleading and deceptive have still been rewarded with millions of taxpayer dollars from CSP. Whether the source of the problem is the department’s process, a less-than-rigorous application, the reviewer selection process or faulty regulations, awards that are based on disingenuous claims and deceit do not serve children or taxpayers well.
Until something changes, the statement that applicants sign — “I am aware that any false, fictitious, or fraudulent statements or claims may subject me to criminal, civil, or administrative penalties. (U.S. Code, Title 18, Section 1001)” — should be enforced, and the secretary should use his authority to terminate the grant.
If Cardona wants people to hate the government for its corruption, he’s found the way.
Since Notre Dame and the Catholic Church are the source for the religious charter schools and Hillsdale is a merger of protestant evangelicals and right wing Catholics, it’s easy to conclude Jefferson was correct. In every age, in every country, the priest aligns with the despot. Jefferson should have added to the statement, the link between government and despots.
Shameful. He awarded 2 million to Christian fascists.
In his presidential campaign Biden promised to get rid of the wasteful, pork laden, special interest boondoggle known as the federal Charter Schools Program. Instead, he made only minor adjustments to the existing program, and the special interest slush fund continues to be an embarrassment to the administration.
In March of this year Biden made a speech at the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. He said,“History matters,” Biden said at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. “The truth matters, notwithstanding what the other team is trying to hide. They’re trying to hide the truth.” The hypocrisy of this CSP award is appalling. Not only does Hillsdale College support the whitewashing of history, it routinely discriminates against students of color and LBGT youth. As recently as June of this year, the President made a speech opposing discrimination based on sexual orientation. He said, “In America, no person should face discrimination simply because of who they are or who they love. ” Hillsdale College routinely engages in overt discrimination against protected classes of people. It is absurd that The DOE should award $2 million dollars of public funds to Hillsdale College, an extremist conservative organization that is infamous for its discriminatory practice.
This is maddening, but we shouldn’t be surprised. It is similar to what has happened to Medicare. Mr. Biden had the opportunity to stop TFG’s DCE plan to kill traditional Medicare by herding ALL Medicare enrollees into privately run networks.
Instead, Mr. Biden hired a door revolver (Liz Fowler) who is not only keeping the renamed program alive, but has publicly stated the Biden’s administration’s goal is to mandate ALL Medicare enrollees will be assigned into privately run networks by 2030.
I understand the need to treat lightly on Mr. Biden because of dangerous Republican candidates for POTUS, but must Mr. Biden continue the worst of their policies? Must he hand over our dollars to hateful Christian Dominionists? Must he satisfy the greed of his Wall Street funders by making sure the Carlyle Group and other private equity vultures sink their teeth into Medicare?
The MSM silence on total Medicare privatization and charter school corruption is disgraceful.
I understand Mr. Biden is LOTE, but when I see this disregard for the public good, but does that mean we prioritize Wall Street and religious extremists?
Very disheartening.
Thanks for your comment. Speaking of media, they adhere to the Christian narrative which the public interprets as protestant. The cover for the Catholic Conferences’ voter mobilization efforts aimed at legislative initiatives and their lobbying with GOP lawmakers is a primary reason for the success of the right wing.
History will expose the ruse but, too little , too late. Historian David Kertzer made the correction to church PR about 80 years after the rise of Hitler and Mussolini.
Sending praise to the Network for Public Education and to the US House Representative for Cincinnati, Democrat Greg Landsmen, who signed the letter to Cardona, criticizing the grant.
Omg! I thought he was better than this. So SAD.
If Cardona is responsible, Biden should fire him. If Cardona’s staff are responsible for issuing the grant, Cardona is doing a lousy job in either providing direction or in choosing people to serve the public.
Agree! Sickening.
Perhaps a protest petition is in order. It may also help to get the unions, civil rights and social justice groups to sign on in support as well.
I am not in favor of abolishing the Department of Education, as the far right demands. But I’m hard pressed to name a Secretary of Education who has defended public education and those who work in our schools. Anyone got a nominee?
The GOP wants to eliminate the department of education so states can discriminate at will and not be held accountable. Dr. Leslie T. Fenwick was more experienced and a far better candidate than Dr. Cardona. We are never going to get effective leadership when administrations pack the DOE with deformers.https://dianeravitch.net/2021/02/08/biden-administration-adds-reformers-to-key-roles-in-department-of-education/
Leslie Fenwick is brilliant. This would never have happened on her watch. I can only assume that the administration decided to choose a nonentity.
To be more clear, I was really trying to think of a past Secretary who has served us well. I’ve come up blank.
You could have knocked me over with a feather 🪶 hearing this news.
Has Cardona been asleep? Did he wake up from the longest nap?
How could he?
He never impressed me as too bright, even bright enough for his important assignment. When Cardona was given the stage to discuss teaching, he often repeated that, “teachers want respect” – everyone agreed, but that was way too mild and shallow of an answer when given the spotlight to support the teaching profession. Never any ‘meat on the bone’ answers.
Now we know…..he’s truly ’something else’. Please explain what is he doing? How could he? This came from….who knows where!
I was having a good day until I read this shocking news.
He just stepped & crunched all our classroom chalk, unplugged the smart boards, cancelled recess and announced that kids would have no more class parties, ever 🎈🥸
Can’t we find a truly decent, intelligent, experienced, savvy, ethical, socially skilled, reliable and dedicated EDUCATOR – a REAL EDUCATOR to head this Department?
Sickened, Shocked & Dismayed in ATL🍑
He is in over his head.
He was chosen to make no waves but he keeps splashing with dumb unforced errors like this one.
Washington DC, like every state capital, are bubbles, mostly cut off from reality and the world. That bubble was built a long time ago by corporate and deep pocket special interests and grew a much thicker skin after Citizens United.
I don’t think NPE has the budget for a full time lobbyist’s office in Washington and definitely not in each of the fifty state capitals. Even volunteers cost money, unless the volunteer has deep pockets and doesn’t mind spending the money it takes.
The Destroy Public Education industry supporting charters and vouchers has deep, dark-money pockets.
The National Alliance for Charter Schools spent $336,850
Total Lobbying Expenditures, 2023
[Regarding NACS – I prefer to think of that acronym as Nasty Ass Charter Schools.]
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?id=D000054386
If the NACS has a lobbyist (or more than one) working everyday inside one or more of the state and federal capital bubbles, and NES isn’t competing equally, then people like Cardona are only hear BS from NACS. NACS may have also managed to plant someone on his staff to whisper in his ear everyday.
That drip, drip, drip PR and propoganda BS from NACS [et. al.] becomes a powerful voice that is developing relationships with their elected and/or appointed targets, without anyone else in the ring. Most professional lobbyists are experts doing that.
Lloyd, you are so right. NACS spent $2 million on its annual conference. NPE spent $120,000.
Very true, Lloyd. Ideas need money to spread
Teach for Awhile salted – and paid for – aides to our elected representatives; there was one in my senator Elizabeth Warren’s office for a few years. During the 2016 MA battle against lifting the charter cap, we spent some time educating her about the dangers charters presented.
Christine,
You probably know this. A California billionaire named Arthur Rock gave TFA the funding to place a TFA person in every Congressional that wanted a free staff member to advise about education. Of course they protected TFA earmarks and charter funding.
I think we might have some names mixed up. The USDOE is run by Bill Gates, not Miguel Cardona.
Been that way for a long, long time
I admit to having a sort of bad habit. I listen to Christian radio on occasion. I used to do it even more some years ago. I kept catching them say things that were either false or exaggerated.
The thought occurred to me today when I revisited a Christian radio station was that these broadcasts were God-washing falsehood the way Saudi Arabia tries to sports wash its image. They would play some familiar hymn (I love old hymns) and then play an interview with a radical America first type. Those who don’t know any better are roped in like a golf fan watching LIV.
Roy,
You are a great guy. I’m so glad you contribute here. I learn from you.
The comment I made was stimulated by a conversation with a guy who drives and works on trucks. Our conversation turned political as we discussed the economy. He is a great guy, serving as a foster parent for many years. He estimated that he had seen over a thousand foster kids, working with law enforcement to place children of people arrested. Great guy, and we parted friends. In our conversation, he laid out his program for economics in the country. It sounded like Elizabeth Warren, but he was vocally for Republicans, something I pointed out as well as I could.
The problem is that the same force that motivated him to keep foster kids, his religious convictions, motivate him to (and I am supposing here) consume media that say things about Christianity that are complimentary, then give information that is either false or leads to false conclusions.
This caused me to think about the controversy over countries that use the innocuous nature of sports to give themselves a positive image. This had also been a way Fox News uses a really good sports broadcast system and remarkably edgy drama to make listeners/viewers stay on Fox to hear what they mistake for news, but what is really a push toward yellow journalism. Unconscious to their reactions to this experiment in association, a great many viewers find themselves accepting contradictory ideas: associating cruelty with Christianity, accepting economic policy contradictory to their beliefs, or believing they live in an increasingly dangerous country when the opposite is mostly true.
My first thought was that it’s an election year and Biden’s strategists advised him to curry favor with the Christian right.
Then I read the comments about the failure to keep promises about the charter industry and Medicare.
No question that Trump must be defeated and jailed (did they take his passport?), but this is extremely disheartening. Tells you who and what ($$$) is really in charge here.
I wanna go home.
It may be that Biden’s advisors are similar to John Podesto, they fear loss of the tech mogul money for his campaign. The advisors must have rejected the concept of the success of Beshears in Kentucky who ran effective ads against school privatization and won. The political advisors for Biden may prefer the status that money gives them rather than securing a majority of voters.
Linked In’s mogul just gave Nikki’s campaign $250,000. She’s the total corporate shill candidate. That mogul usually funds Democrats. Dem strategists don’t want to lose more donors.
I don’t think there’s a hidden motive behind this grant. Biden is not trying to win over evangelical voters. All the peer reviewers come from the charter industry. They didn’t see a problem. Cardona is a babe in the woods.