IDEA, the largest charter chain in Texas, was just placed under conservatorship by the state education agency because of ongoing financial transgressions, self-dealing and conflicts of interest.
The state of Texas gave more than $800 million last year to IDEA. The federal Charter Schools Program—which is rank with waste, fraud, and abuse—has gifted IDEA with $300 million. It was a favorite of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
For years, both the state and the U.S. Department of Education have been aware of IDEA’s profligate spending. This is the charter chain that wanted to lease a 6-passenger private jet for $15 million for its executives. This is the chain that bought luxury box seats for the San Antonio Spurs basketball games. This is the chain that gave its founder a golden parachute of $900,000 when financial abuses forced him out.
When there is so much that is fraudulent in the chain’s spending, can you trust its reports about enrollment, grades, test scores, and graduation rates? Business leaders in San Antonio saw IDEA as a great replacement for public schools. They were hoodwinked.
Texas’ largest charter school network has been placed under conservatorship by the Texas Education Agency after a years-long investigation into improper spending within the system of 143 schools.
The arrangement, announced Wednesday, is part of a settlement agreement between IDEA Public Schools and the TEA. IDEA had been under investigation since 2021 following numerous allegations of financial and operational misconduct.
It was revealed that IDEA officials used public dollars to purchase luxury driver services as well as $15 million to lease a private jet, just two weeks after promising TEA it would be “strictly enforcing” new fiscal responsibility policies put in place in response to ongoing investigations, as reported by San Antonio Express-News.
The revelations led the district to conduct an internal investigation, resulting in the firing of JoAnn Gama, former superintendent and co-founder of IDEA. Gama later filed a lawsuit against IDEA claiming wrongful termination. IDEA came to a $475,000 settlement with Gama in January. This followed co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson’s departure in 2020; he was given a $900,000 severance package.
The charter school district serves about 80,000 students in K-12. The schools are independently run but publicly funded with state dollars, having received about $821 million in state funding in 2023-2024 school year.
Under conservatorship, the conservators will have the authority to oversee and direct any action of the district, facilitate a needs assessment, conduct onsite inspections and support the creation of a plan to address corrective action concerns. They will also report back to the agency regarding the district’s progress in completing necessary corrective activities.
The conservators will not fully take over the governance of the district. But if the district doesn’t make the necessary corrective measures that the conservators outline for them, a takeover could be possible in the future…
The news follows the TEA takeover of Houston Independent School District in June following years of poor academic performance at a single campus within the district, among other factors.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Charter School Gold Rush
“Gold Rush era was marked by lawlessness: duels, murders in broad daylight, public hangings, jail breakouts, and vigilantism were everyday occurrences.”
https://calisphere.org/exhibitions/11/murder-and-mayhem-gold-rush-era/#:~:text=The%20Gold%20Rush%20era%20was,and%20vigilantism%20were%20everyday%20occurrences.
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Sending unaccountable public dollars to private companies is a license to steal for grifters. Privatization is often a way for private contractors to get access to public money, inflate costs, misuse and embezzle funds. Privatization often ends up costing more than the same accountable public service. Philadelphia recently recovered two former mismanaged public schools from Aspira. The newly hired principal of Olney High School commented that it would have made more sense to adequately fund public schools than turning them over to grifting amateurs. If we want public services to serve us well, we must invest in them.
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Retired Teacher,
I so AGREE with you. Both Charters and Vouchers have no oversight and is nothing more than a way to get public money without any accountability.
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Gasp! A scandal in a Charter School – who would have thought?
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A state investigating and placing a charter chain under conservatorship instead of sweeping everything under the rug is what’s surprising.
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So is this why Governor Abbott wants private school vouchers? That way nobody can determine where the Billions of dollars go.
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IDEA Charters were one of Betsy DeVos’ favorite Charter School “Chains!” Seems it has been involved in an unbelievable level of fraud. There is a reason that the wealthy decide to become “Educational Reformers” and open for profit (even if they claim they aren’t for profit they rent the schools the buildings they use at exorbitant rents and create “management” companies that manage the schools, again for a exorbitant fee, and thus turning a non-profit into a “for profit”. This should be the iceberg that sinks Charter Schools, but don’t bet on it.
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The charter lobby is well-funded.
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Unfortunately we live just a few miles from Betsy and Dick Jr.s estate on Lake Macatawa (Holland, MI). Betsy plays games in Michigan politics. Check out “Ottawa Impact” who is bankrupting what was one of the best run county governments in Michigan. Betsy has been frustrated by fact that we, the citizens of Michigan, amended our constitution years ago to outlaw vouchers or any other method to transfer our tax money to any private or sectarian school.
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Surely, it’s frustrating to a billionaire to discover that she can’t buy whatever she wants.
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CHARTER SCHOOL FINANCIAL FRAUD: The impartial, non-political watchdog Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education issued a report warning that so much taxpayer money is being skimmed away from America’s genuine public schools and pocketed by private corporate “school choice” charter school operators that the IG investigation declared: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting goals.” It is billionaire hedge fund managers who are behind the charter school scam in order to get their hands on public school buildings and property — they are skimming hundreds of millions of dollars from public schools and are betraying America’s public schools and the children of America.
THERE’S NO SUCH THING as a “public charter school”. Charter school operators spend a lot of taxpayer money telling taxpayers that charter schools are “public” schools — but they are not. As the Supreme Courts of Washington State and New York State have ruled, charter schools are actually private schools because THEY FAIL TO PASS THE MINIMUM TEST for being genuine public schools; that is — They aren’t run by school boards who are elected by, and therefore under the control of and accountable to voting taxpayers, that is, THE PUBLIC. All — ALL — charter schools are corporations run by private parties or are religious organizations. Taxpayers have no say in how their tax dollars are spent in charter schools.
CHARTER STUDENTS LOSE GROUND: The Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) — which is funded by pro-charter organizations — has reported that in the case of popular online charter schools, students actually lose ground in both reading and math — but online charter schools are the fastest-growing type of charter school because they make it easiest to skim away public tax dollars. CREDO has been conducting years-long research into the educational quality of charter schools and yet even this charter-school-funded research center’s findings are that in general charter schools don’t do any better academically than genuine public schools.
THE RACIAL RESEGREGATION of America’s school systems by the private charter school industry is so blatant and illegal that both the NAACP and ACLU have called for a stop to the formation of any more charter schools. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA summed it up, stating that charter schools are “a civil rights failure.” The catch-phrase “school choice” was concocted by racists following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that required racial integration in public schools. After that, racist organizations used racist politicians to conduct a decades-long attack that underfunded public schools and crippled their ability to provide the full measure of education and to “prove” that public schools were “failing”. That public school “failure” is an issue manufactured by racists organizations and politicians is well-documented in the book “The Manufactured Crisis”.
INDOCTRINATION: Charter schools provide the perfect environment for subtly (or not so subtly) weaving a political and/or social view into every lesson. Instead of a nationally shared perspective, America ends up with a fragmented view of what our nation is all about.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/03/29/report-the-department-of-education-has-spent-1-billion-on-charter-school-waste-and-fraud/#ab1fbdb27b64
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Meanwhile in Houston ISD. Takeover Tyrant Mike Miles has moved on a union leader for daring to criticize him & his gestapo school reform program.
Houston Education Association President Michelle Williams, who leads the smaller of Houston’s two teachers unions, was removed from her teaching post at an Houston ISD elementary school Wednesday and assigned to work at a bus depot while the district moves to terminate her over her social media activity.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/hisd-michelle-williams-reassigned-18709919.php
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Meanwhile in Houston ISD. Takeover Tyrant Mike Miles has moved on a union leader for daring to criticize him & his gestapo school reform program.
Houston Education Association President Michelle Williams, who leads the smaller of Houston’s two teachers unions, was removed from her teaching post at an Houston ISD elementary school Wednesday and assigned to work at a bus depot while the district moves to terminate her over her social media activity.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/hisd-michelle-williams-reassigned-18709919.php
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Biden totally rocked tonight. One of the best political speeches I’ve heard in my long lifetime.
Diane has said many times that if this guy had a Democratic Congress, he would be as great a president as FDR was.
I totally agree.
Let’s make that happen.
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Bob,
I was about to write exactly that.
I wish Biden were younger but he’s not.
But, my God, he gave a great speech!
He nailed every issue.
It was clear that his goal is to revive the middle class, to restore women’s right and voting rights, to rebuild unions, and to create good jobs.
That twit Marjorie Taylor Greene wore a MAGA hat, which was totally classless and inappropriate.
The contrast between this sane, experienced, decent man and his predecessor could not be sharper.
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amen
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Interesting read on the challenges faced by Texas IDEA Charter Schools. In the ever-evolving education landscape, it’s crucial for institutions to navigate complexities effectively.
On a different note, if you’re in Islamabad and exploring ways to enhance visibility for educational initiatives, connecting with a reliable digital marketing agency islamabad could be beneficial.
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Scammers gonna scam.
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In other news, the United States proves once again that it has a “Just Us” system rather than a justice system by arresting and charging Steve Nikoui but not Marjorie Taylor Greene. Nikoui, whose son was killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan, was arrested and ejected from Biden’s 2024 SOTU for shouting “Abbey Gate” during Biden’s speech. Greene, on the other hand, who violated decorum by wearing a MAGA hat to the SOTU and shouting at Biden throughout the speech, suffered no consequences for her hillbilly raucousness.
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