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North Carolina: State Auditor Faults Charter School for Inflating Enrollment, Misusing State $$$

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2022 //
1

The NC Pulse reports that another charter school in North Carolina bit the dust under a cloud of financial improprieties.

Office of the State Auditor found that Bridges Academy in Wilkes County falsified student enrollment records, misused charter school money to support a preschool and failed to submit required tax forms in 2019.

State Auditor Beth Wood released the audit of the K-8 school on Wednesday. The school relinquished its charter last summer amid allegations of financial irregularities and what its own board of directors described as “insurmountable financial challenges.”

The state auditor will turn her office’s findings over to the District Attorney’s Office in Prosecutorial District 34. The district includes all of Alleghany, Ashe, Wilkes and Yadkin counties. The findings will also be shared with the Internal Revenue Service and the North Carolina Department of Revenue.

The audit shows that for the 2020-21 school year, Bridges Academy’s director and finance officer falsified student enrollment records by reporting 72 students who were not enrolled in the schools.

The two admitted that they began inflating enrollment eight years earlier, mainly in early grades to avoid detection. Students in grades K-2 aren’t required to take state tests and don’t show up on testing rosters…

Bridges Academy was also found to have used $78,576 in state money intended for the charter school to support the operations of a preschool, despite charging tuition for children to attend the preschool.

“The charter school funding provided by DPI was intended for the education of kindergarten through eighth grade students,” the audit said. “However, at least $78,576 of the funding was used for the operation of the preschool to close the gap between the revenues and expenses.”

In 2019 and 2020, Bridges also failed to report nearly $500,000 in payments to the director, instructional and support staff, the audit found.

That means the IRS likely collected fewer taxes from the organization than was owed…

Here are key recommendations made by the Office of the State Auditor:

  • DPI should seek repayment of $404,971 from Bridges Academy, or the Receiver, for the state funds received as a result of the falsified student enrollment records.
  • DPI should consider reviewing the enrollment history of Bridges Academy and determine if the school received funding for falsified students in previous years.
  • DPI should seek repayment of $78,576 from Bridges Academy, or the Receiver, for state charter school funds that were utilized to support the preschool.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, North Carolina, Scandal

Tennessee: Why Did the Education Commissioner Forget to Mention Her Husband in Her Disclosure Statement?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2022 //
14

The Tennessee Holler asks a pertinent question:

Why did Commissioner of Education Penny Schwinn fail to mention her husband’s employer in her disclosure statement?

The Holler wrote:

This week some eagle-eyed Hollerers pointed out TN Ed Commissioner Penny Schwinn left TNTP, the company where her husband works, off of her source of income disclosure.

She listed it last year, but not this year, despite the fact that he remains on their website as a “Leadership Coach.”

This is especially noteworthy since TNTP was a recipient of an $16 MILLION contract from the Tennessee Education Department, a department Schwinn is in charge of… a fact that was not lost on legislators who raised the “Conflict of Schwinnterest” issue in committee last session.

Was leaving TNTP off the disclosure an oversight on Penny’s part? Was it intentional? Are they no longer married? Is he no longer at the company?

These are questions someone should ask, and we will next time we see her.

It’s worth noting that Schwinn has a history of conflicts of interest and self-dealing. They’ve been hallmarks of her career, showing up in both Delaware and Texas, her stops along the way since starting a charter school in Sacramento. She also ran for school board in Sacramento, where she was supported by Michelle Rhee, whose charters lobbyist organization 50 CAN now is affiliated with charter school lobbyist Victor Evans at Tennessee Can, who is now vocally pushing through the new TISA funding overhaul plan from Governor Lee, even standing with him at press conferences.

Victor does NOT want to talk to us about the connection between Michelle Rhee at his parent company and Schwinn, no matter how hard we try.

There is more. Open the link and follow the story.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Rhee, Michelle, Scandals, Tennessee

California: Charter School Enrollment Drops for First Time in Three Decades

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2022 //
28

The persistent charter school boasting looks empty after years of turmoil. Schools opening and closing, high teacher turnover, unfulfilled promises. Result: California saw a decline in charter enrollment for the first time in three decades.

It’s not for a lack of money to promote charters. The big money is still there. The California Charter Schools Association is still a wealthy and powerful organization.

Something has changed. Could it be that parents are choosing their local public schools?

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry

Mercedes Schneider: D.C. Fires 2 Experienced Educators for Refusing to Adopt “No Excuses” Program

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2022 //
3

Mercedes Schneider writes here about the plight of two experienced Black educators who were fired by District of Columbia officials for refusing to adopt a scripted “no excuses” program developed by the Relay “Graduate School of Education.” I put scare quotes around the last four words because Relay is not really a graduate school of any kinds. It was created by a group of charter chains to teach the methods favored by charter schools—strict discipline, no-excuses, and the pedagogical strategies to raise test scores. Unlike real graduate schools, it has no campus, no library, no faculty with earned doctorates, no programs in research and the social sciences.

The educators—one of them a veteran principal—objected to the Relay approach and thought it contributed to the school-to-prison pipeline. They were fired, and they are suing, all out of their own pockets. I will help them as best I can. Tom Ultican write about them here.

Schneider wrote:

Below are excerpts fron a lawsuit put forth by two former employees of DC’s Boone Elementary School, who took issue with DC Public Schools (DCPS) higher admin wishing to impose controversial scripted and harsh practices at the direction of the so-named Relay Graduate School of Education (“graduate school” as a brand name and worth as much as my legally changing my own name to “Mercedes Schneider, MD” to deceptively promote the idea that I practice medicine).

Former Boone principal, Carolyn Jackson-King, repeatedly voiced her concerns about DCPS pooling lower-income, predominately Black schools under the jurisdiction of Relay and the fact that the administrator overseeing this requirement was formerly with “no excuses” KIPP schools (as in highly-scripted conformity at the expense of developing critical thinking and self-value for low-income students). Jackson-King even collected data to support no need for this concocted “Relay remediation” plan for Boone students, to no avail. Within one year, she was brought from being a principal deemed worthy of mentoring others to one released from her duties as principal and given the lowest rating of her career.

Fellow Boone employee and director of strategy and logistics, Marlon Ray, was arguably singled out and punitively required to work in person throughout the pre-vaccination period of COVID and later terminated due to “reduction in force” after he filed a 2020 whistleblower suit with the Office of Inspector General (OIG) about Relay, including contracts and payments under two distinct codings and that did not line up.

Jackson-King and Ray are suing DCPS and requesting a jury trial “to remedy the effects of the illegal conduct described [in the suit]” and to “award damages for back pay and other monetary losses” incurred by DCPS “[having] violated the provisions of District of Columbia law recited [in the suit].”

The lawsuit itself is 35 pages long and is posted at the end of this piece. I wish I could post the entire document as I believe it is worth a full read for its value on many fronts, including how those in education reform are able to all-too-quickly position themselves in upper administration and through their connections promote other entites selling ill-informed ideas that are contrary to sound educational practice; how such education businesses are often particularly positioned to prey on lower income students and students of color; how genuinely concerned, career-invested stakeholders are often wrongfully punished for voicing their concerns and seeking remedy (including being told that the issue should be kept “in house,” a strategy also often employed by domestic abusers), and how the underdog often has to pay out of pocket to seek relief in the courts.

Please continue reading. The educators acted ethically. The district punished them for acting ethically.

Categories Character, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Curriculum, District of Columbia, Education Industry

Valerie Strauss: Gov. DeSantis’ War on Public Education

By dianeravitch
May 1, 2022 //
29

Valerie Strauss of the Washington Post recently summarized the efforts by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to destroy public schools in his state.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has been fighting with the Walt Disney Co. for weeks now since it angered him by criticizing a law he championed that limits discussions of gender issues in public school classrooms. But his attacks on public school districts began just as soon as he took office in 2019.

DeSantis had been governor barely a month when he offered a new definition of public education that eliminated the traditional division between public and private schools. To DeSantis and his allies, “public education” includes any school — including religious ones — that receives public funding through voucher and similar programs. “Look, if it’s public dollars, it’s public education,” he said in February 2019. “In Florida, public education is going to have a meaning that is directed by the parents, where the parents are the drivers because they know what’s best for their kids.”

That was the start of what has evolved into the most aggressive anti-public education battle waged by any governor in the country. In the past year — and especially in recent months — as he has worked to amass more than $100 million for his 2022 reelection campaign, and possibly for a 2024 Republican presidential run, he has quickened the pace of his attacks.

He has, among other things: limited what teachers can say in classrooms about race, gender and other topics and appointed anti-public education figures to his administration, including a QAnon supporter, and, as education commissioner, an employee of a charter school management organization. He has also legally empowered parents to sue school districts as part of his “parental rights” initiative and micromanaged and limited the power of local school districts.

In what his critics say is a revealing move about their educational intentions, DeSantis and Florida legislators routinely exempt charter and private/religious schools from many of the restrictions and actions they take against public school districts. For example, the law that restricts classroom discussions on gender and sex education — known as the Parental Rights in Education law — applies to a state statute dealing with school board powers, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The Florida Department of Education did not respond to a query about this.

DeSantis and his like-minded compatriots make no secret about wanting to privatize public education — arguably the country’s most important civic institution. Their “school choice” movement means expanding alternatives to public school district. They include charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately managed — as well as voucher and similar programs that use taxpayer money to pay for tuition and other costs at private and religious schools. These schools can legally discriminate against LGBTQ and other students and adults.

To these activists, public schools are not the mainstay of America’s democratic system of government that tries to instill civic values to students from different racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Rather, as the libertarian Cato Institute says on its website: “Government schooling often forces citizens into political combat. Different families have different priorities on topics ranging from academics and the arts to questions of morality and religion. No single school can possibly reflect the wide range of mutually exclusive views on these fundamental subjects.”
Critics say this mind-set rejects the notion that America is a melting pot that flourishes by the coming together of people from different places, backgrounds, races and religions. They also say that school “choice” efforts to use public funding for private and privately run education take vital resources away from the public districts that enroll the vast majority of the country’s schoolchildren.

They point out that the public has no way to hold private and many charter schools accountable, because their operations are not transparent. There is irony, they say, in the fact that the people pushing the “parental rights” movement seeking transparency in public school districts don’t demand it of nonpublic schools that they want funded with public funds.

Last year, DeSantis visited a Catholic school in Hialeah to sign a bill that greatly expanded voucher programs while reducing public oversight. Originally intended for students from low-income families, DeSantis’s administration now also allows vouchers to go to a family of four earning nearly $100,000.

He has also played a leading role in the right-wing movement to restrict what teachers can and can’t say in the classroom about subjects including race, racism, gender and sex education. On April 22, he signed into law the “Stop WOKE Act,” which limits how race-related topics can be discussed in public school classrooms and workplace training, while essentially accusing public school teachers of trying to indoctrinate students.

About three weeks earlier, on March 28, he signed what critics dubbed the “don’t say gay” bill that limits teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity. While numerous similar bills have been considered in legislatures in years past, it was DeSantis who pushed through the first one to become law.

On April 15, his administration announced that it had rejected publisher-submitted math textbooks books for including passages his administration doesn’t like, including those it says are about critical race theory and social-emotional learning.

DeSantis’s appointments to his administration reveal his attitude about public education. On April 21, he nominated state Sen. Manny Diaz (R) — who works at an affiliate of Academica, a for-profit Miami-based charter school management firm — as the state’s new education commissioner. Diaz will almost certainly be approved by the Florida Board of Education.

Diaz — who is chief operating officer of Doral College, a private college owned by Academica — has been instrumental in the legislature in expanding charter school growth. Florida, where charter schools have virtually no oversight, has seen a raft of financial scandals related to the industry.

Ten days before appointing Diaz, DeSantis’s administration appointed Esther Byrd, an office manager at her husband’s law firm, to the Board of Education. Byrd has on social media expressed sympathy with QAnon beliefs and offered a defense of those “peacefully protesting” the confirmation of the 2020 presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021, when the U.S. Capitol was overrun by a pro-Trump mob. She has alluded to “coming civil wars.” According to the Florida Times-Union, she and her husband, state Rep. Cord Byrd (R), flew a QAnon flag on their boat.

DeSantis also appointed to the Board of Education radiologist Grazie Pozo Christie, a senior fellow for the Catholic Association who wrote an article a few years ago saying the best thing parents can do for their children is to take them out of public schools.


Last October, while discussing “parental rights” in education and touting mask-optional policies at a news conference, DeSantis invited Quisha King, a leader of the right-wing Moms for Liberty group, to join him. King has called for “a mass exodus from the public school system.”

During the pandemic, DeSantis became a leader among governors of the anti-mask movement when he issued a ban on mask mandates in public schools — and then proceeded to penalize districts that required masks in compliance with federal government recommendations. His administration withheld the salaries of some superintendents and school board members that defied him — prompting the Biden administration to promise to make up for the deficit. He has also backed a plan to withhold a total of $200 million in different funding from districts that angered him.

His wrath at local school boards that don’t do his bidding has blown apart the Republican Party’s traditional stance that local education is the business of local issues. In March, one of the bills he signed into law included a provision that limits local school board terms to 12 years — without asking local voters if that’s what they wanted.
He also established a charter school commissioner office inside the Florida Department of Education, which has the power to approve or reject applications for charter schools without local school district input. Even the National Association of Charter School Authorizers thought it was a bad idea, writing on its website:

“Once a school is approved, the Commission would have no other authorizing responsibilities and the local district would be required to do all other authorizing duties. This goes against national best practice. … This is a bad idea since research shows that an authorizer’s commitment and capacity are essential to strong charter schools.

Last June, the DeSantis administration intervened in a local decision by the Hillsborough County School Board, which met to discuss a dozen proposals to open charter schools or extend the operating agreements on others. After it voted to close four existing charters, it received a letter from the Florida Department of Education saying that unless it kept those schools open, it would lose millions of dollars in state funding.

Finally, whatever the governor’s reason, Florida was the last state to tell the U.S. Education Department how it intended to use $2.3 billion in federal American Rescue Plan funds, which had been approved by Congress to help public schools recover from the pandemic. The deadline for states to apply for the money was in June 2021. Months later, on Oct. 4, Ian Rosenblum, then deputy assistant secretary for policy and programs in the U.S. Education Department, sent a letter to the DeSantis administration noting that Florida’s delay in applying for the funding was creating “unnecessary uncertainty” for school districts that needed the cash. Florida filed it a few days later.

DeSantis’s star power in the school “choice” movement is such that one of its longtime leading figures, former education secretary Betsy DeVos — who has called public education a “dead end” — solicited DeSantis’s help to promote a petition in her home state of Michigan to establish a voucherlike program. She and her family have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to DeSantis.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Evil, Florida, For-Profit, Funding, Racism, Religion, School Choice, Vouchers

San Antonio: IDEA Charter School Vice Proncipal Arrested for Punching 5-Year-Old

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2022 //
18

The vice principal of an IDEA charter school in San Antonio was arrested for punching a 5-year-old child.

Betsy DeVos, when U.S .Secretary of Education, gave the IDEA chain more than $200 million from the federal Charter Schools Program to expand.

SAN ANTONIO – An area elementary school vice principal is in custody and charged with assault after she “lost control” and attacked a 5-year-old student in her office, according to Sheriff Javier Salazar.

The incident happened April 22 at an IDEA elementary school in the 10100 block of Kriewald Road, but the sheriff’s office wasn’t made aware of the situation until Wednesday, April 27.

According to Salazar, a mother told deputies that her five-year-old son, who attends the school, was assaulted by the school’s vice principal, 53-year-old Tara Coleman Hunter in her office..

The child admitted that he became “unruly” while in Hunter’s office and struck her. However, the situation escalated further when Hunter “lost control” and attacked the child, Salazar said.

“This was handled way inappropriately,” the sheriff said during a news conference Thursday.

Hunter punched the child in the face or head and pushed him into a file cabinet, according to the sheriff. This caused the child to develop a bump on his head and bruising.

The child was out of control, but the adult should know how to deal with an unruly child without resorting to physical assault.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Childhood, Discipline, Education Industry, San Antonio, Students, Texas

Time to Reform the Federal Charter School Program

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2022 //
28

I wrote this article that was published in the New York Daily News. It could be subtitled: “Lies that the Charter Lobby Says to Protect Its Money Pit.”

Fix this wasteful federal charter-school fund

By Diane Ravitch

New York Daily News

April 28, 2022 at 5:00 am

The federal Charter School Programs (CSP) began in 1995 as a modest program intended to jump-start new, independent, publicly funded schools free of most regulations. The idea was to free educators from bureaucracy and enable them to create laboratories of innovative practices that could be used to improve district schools. At the time, there were only about 100 charter schools in the nation. It was a bold idea. Having worked in the George H.W. Bush administration, I supported it.

Soon, however, entrepreneurs with no background in education at all realized that the new funding stream could present a profit-making opportunity.

Businessman Ron Packard, with experience at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, saw a chance to use federal funds to help build the highly profitable K12 Inc. online charter chain (now called Stride), which gets dismal academic results but paid him $19 million during a four-year period.

J.C. Huizenga, the Waste Management heir, used federal CSP dollars to launch his for-profit National Heritage Academies, which helped him amass a real estate empire.

Marcus May, now serving time in prison for massive fraud, got substantial funding from the feds for his New Point Education Partner charter schools, some of which he used to buy a yacht and enjoy extravagant vacations.

Marcus May, the CEO of charter school management company Newpoint Education Partners, was found guilty of racketeering and fraud. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison and fined $5 million.

The program that began with only $6 million has grown into a $440 million fund rife with fraud, waste and abuse. Now there are more than 7,000 charters. The Network for Public Education, an organization I lead, prepared a report called “Still Asleep at the Wheel,” which used data from the U.S. Department of Education to show that 12% of the schools that got federal tax dollars never even opened and another 25% closed within a few years, but the federal money often landed in the entrepreneurs’ bank accounts.

Almost three decades later, the Biden administration has proposed modest reforms to restore the program’s original purposes, such as barring for-profit charter operators. The charter industry has reacted to his effort to regulate the program with outrage, falsely claiming that he is trying to shut down charter schools. Rather than supporting reform, commentators from the Washington Post to the far-right-wing Newsmax have pummeled the proposed regulations.

Opinion pieces defending the status quo sound as if they were written by the charter industry’s lobbyists. Their lies have become so bold that the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Rosa DeLauro, issued a scathing condemnation, lambasting the “unserious efforts and false claims” advanced by the “national trade organization of low-quality for-profit companies,” arguments that according to DeLauro are intended to “shift outrage and attention away from the risky, low-quality for-profit charter schools they represent.”

What these proposed regulations will do is make sure that federal funds do not flow to charter schools operated by for-profit corporations. The for-profit operators can still open schools if their state allows them, but they won’t get federal dollars to do it.

The regulations would give a few bonus (priority) points to charter schools that try to be good neighbors with local public schools and find ways to share ideas and services. Is it a requirement? No. But remember, cooperation between charters and publics was one of the original purposes of the program. It makes sense that both sectors should share best practices.

Contrary to the critics’ claims, the local public schools would not have to be over-enrolled for a charter school to get a grant. The proposed regulations are clear. Over-enrollment is only one of many ways that a new charter school can demonstrate that it is needed.

Some critics claim that the regulations will force new charters to be diverse, but this is not true. Under the changes, charter schools in areas where there is no racial diversity would still be able to get CSP funds. And if you are in a diverse community and you want to open a white-flight charter school you can still do it, but not with federal start-up funds. CSP money should not be used to fund white-flight charters.

Finally, the regulations would require states to supervise how the money is being spent — something that has been sorely lacking. That would be a big improvement over the status quo, which has wasted a billion dollars since 1995 on schools that never opened or opened and eventually closed.

Conservatives always prided themselves on being good stewards of tax dollars. There is nothing conservative about refusing to regulate a federal program that hands over $440 million a year to entrepreneurs and grifters without oversight.

Ravitch is president of the Network for Public Education, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that exists to support and improve public schools. An education historian recently retired from New York University, she served as assistant secretary of education for research under U.S. Secretary of Education Lamar Alexander.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud

Jeb Bush: Let’s Get Back to Destroying Public Schools

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2022 //
48

Say this for Jeb Bush: he is not dissuaded by failure. No matter how many studies show the failure of vouchers, he doesn’t care. No matter how many studies show that charter schools do not get better results than public schools, he doesn’t care. No matter how many grifters have drained millions through privatization of schools, he doesn’t care. No matter how little evidence he has for any of his proposals, he still pushes them.

His ideas are old and tired and incoherent. But count on him to package them as fresh and innovative, which they are not.

He is the male counterpart to Betsy DeVos.

He just cares about destroying public schools.

He wrote recently in The Miami Herald:

Last month marked two years since the pandemic swept across the country, causing the largest disruption to our nation’s education system in modern history. But at last, this spring brings an academic revival of sorts. Schools are remaining open, mask mandates are disappearing and plexiglass dividers between students in their classrooms are coming down.

In the rush to return to normal, we owe it to our nation’s children to emerge from this pandemic transformed, not by going backwards, but ready to forge a better future for them with all we’ve learned.

Our starting point is challenging. Prior to the pandemic, America’s public schools were struggling to serve the needs of students, and since the pandemic, a study by McKinsey found students have fallen months behind as a result of school closures and disruptions. There were severe impacts on student mental health, too. Pew Charitable Trusts found students are reporting significantly increased levels of grief, anxiety and depression.

It’s also no surprise that there’s a growing distrust in public education. A survey by Ipsos found trust in teachers declined during the pandemic, and there’s been a subsequent decrease in the number of students enrolling in public school.

Those are serious setbacks, but there are reasons for optimism. The pandemic put a spotlight on a myriad of possibilities for the future of education. Notably, it illustrated a desperate need by families for a broadened ecosystem of options for their children, with funding flexibility to create more equity in choice. And it elevated the power of parents to blaze new educational pathways for their children.

The Associated Press recently reported that homeschooling remains a popular choice for parents, despite schools reopening. And, private schools and public charter schools have witnessed increased enrollment. But choice, in and of itself, isn’t enough. Policymakers must continue to seek new ways to unbundle education systems, transforming old approaches into new and better learning options.

In Indiana, lawmakers, led by House Speaker Todd Huston, took the first step toward creating the nation’s first “parent-teacher compact” law. This innovative policy would allow parents to directly hire teachers. Educators would continue to be paid by the state and receive their health and retirement benefits, but this policy would enable parents and educators to enter into a peer-to-peer relationship to benefit individual students, without the hurdle of a district middleman. This individualized approach to education would give educators more freedom, families more flexibility and individual students the personalized experience they may need.

As we unbundle education, we need to reimagine all aspects of how education is delivered to students. One approach is enacting new part-time enrollment policies. Right now, students are defined by the school in which they’re enrolled.

Lawmakers can improve the education experience by allowing students to have more flexibility, whereby a student can enroll in their local public school and easily access a portion of their education funding to also enroll part-time in a private school, with an online provider, or engage in another learning experience that benefits the child’s education.

Another approach that complements unbundling is rethinking education transportation options. Last year, Gov. Doug Ducey awarded $18 million in grants to modernize Arizona’s K-12 transportation system, including direct-to-family grants to help close transportation gaps. In Oklahoma this year, Gov. Kevin Stitt proposed changing Oklahoma’s school transportation funding formula to expand how public school buses can serve students. And Florida’s Legislature recently passed legislation to create a new $15 million transportation grant program that encourages districts to create innovate approaches to school transportation, including carpooling and ride sharing apps, for both school-of-choice families and traditional school students.

Those are just a few examples, and we must continually look for more ways to unbundle and reimagine education. The pandemic saw an explosion of families, in all communities and from all demographics, embrace micro schools, homeschooling and customized learning pods. Rather than trying to limit these families, we should give them access to direct funds to further personalize and benefit their child’s out-of-school learning experience.

That’s what Gov. Brad Little has championed in Idaho. In response to school closures in 2020, Little used federal emergency COVID relief funds to provide direct grants to families to support students who were no longer learning in school. And this year, Little signed the Empowering Parents Grant Program into law, giving qualifying families up to $3,000 to use for tutoring, educational material, digital devices or internet connectivity….

Transforming our nation’s education system and ensuring students receive the individualized experience to unlock potential and lifelong success require continual forward momentum, especially after two years of disruptions. We have to keep moving, keep reimagining, keep transforming. This commitment to excellence is a point of pride for Florida.

Last year, Florida’s Legislature passed some of the most significant improvements and expansions to the state’s school-choice programs. And this year, lawmakers strengthened the charter school law, expanded the Florida Empowerment scholarship program, created a new financial literacy requirement for high school graduates and ensured parents are better informed of their child’s progress through online diagnostic progress monitoring and end-of-year summative tests.

This Pied Piper plays a tune meant to deceive. Ignore him.

Categories Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, School Choice, Vouchers

Gloria Nolan: Why I Quit the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2022 //
7

Gloria Nolan is a parent of children enrolled in St. Louis public schools. She recently joined the board of the Network for Public Education.

She wrote the following article, which was published in the St.Louis Post-Dispatch.

She begins:

For about three years I worked for an organization that was invested in growing the charter school movement locally and around the country. Thankfully, I moved on, and now I fully support charter school reform, such as the reforms included in the new regulations for the federal charter school program proposed by Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona. Here is why.

I fully began to realize what I was a part of during lunch when I had a chance to talk to the chief executive of The Opportunity Trust, Eric Scroggins. I rattled off a list of ideas I had for turning the public schools in the St. Louis district around.

That wouldn’t work, he responded. He said the objective was to burn the system down.

For Opportunity Trust and so-called reform movements like it, the key to school improvement is to replace public schools with charter schools, or public schools that act like charter schools. That is when I lost all faith in what charter proponents were selling.

And where do these charter schools go to get start-up and expansion funds? The federal Charter School Program…

The same special interest groups that promote organizations like The Opportunity Trust are fighting the very reasonable rules that [Secretary Miguel] Cardona has proposed to help clean up the mess. With a campaign of misinformation, the charter lobby led by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools promotes the extreme right’s support for stopping the proposed regulations.

As a Black woman, I find it hard to believe any news outlet that promotes fearmongering about critical race theory and features an op-ed that criticizes the regulations because their frequent use of the words “diversity” and “racial” has the best interests of my children at heart…

The one regulation that the charter lobby objects to the most is the requirement to do an impact analysis to see if the school is needed or wanted by the community. Given that more than 40% of charter schools close within their first 10 years, an impact sounds like common sense to me. This particular regulation is also in line with the implementation of the City-Wide Planning Committee and its call for a moratorium on the opening of new schools. The guidelines here locally were met with strong opposition from The Opportunity Trust and its supporters.

I have been on the inside of the reform/charter school movement. Its ultimate objective is to destroy our public school system by replacing it with a system of charter and voucher schools. These new regulations will not stop that. I wish they were stronger. But at the very least they could help ensure that our federal tax dollars will be given to charter schools that have better intentions than many of the schools that are receiving Charter School Program grants now.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Missouri, Parents, St. Louis

NPE Letter about Regulating Federal Charter Funds Signed by 101 Organizations

By dianeravitch
April 26, 2022 //
6

Please read the letter from the Network for Public Education to the U.S. Department of Zeducation, supporting its proposed regulations for federal funding of charter schools.

The letter was signed by 96 organizations.

On behalf of the undersigned organizations, we submit the following response to the Department of Education’s request for comments related to the proposed priorities, requirements, definitions, and selection criteria of the Charter Schools Program (CSP). We commend the Department for proposing thoughtful and well-reasoned regulations that will end funding to start or expand charter schools managed in whole or substantially by for-profit organizations, provide greater supervision to the program, ensure that the charter school does not increase segregation and via impact analysis, demonstrate that the charter school is truly needed.

The Charter Schools Program (CSP) is a statutorily established grant program that began in 1994 with the purpose of expanding high-quality charter schools when charter schools were experimental and intended to supplement, not supplant, public schools. Since its modest beginnings, the program has expanded as has the charter school sector. The CSP has been responsible, in great part, for the expansion of the charter sector and therefore indirectly responsible for problems in the charter sector that include the frequent closures of charter schools, the drain on public school funding, and the fraud and mismanagement that is frequently reported in the press. We believe that your proposed regulations are a good first step in addressing those problems.

We the undersigned further believe that all charter schools, like public schools, must provide their students with a free education that guards students’ civil rights, provides a rich educational opportunity and protects their health and safety. Further, we believe that any school that is financed by the public must ensure that tax dollars are judiciously spent in compliance with the law. That means we support compliance with open meetings and public records laws; prohibitions against profiteering as enforced by conflict of interest, financial disclosure, and auditing requirements. We believe that all students deserve to be taught by teachers who have met state certification requirements in a classroom where they have an opportunity to engage with their teacher and their peers. We do not support virtual charter schools which are ineffective in meeting the academic and socio-emotional needs of students.

Eliminating CSP Funding to Charter Schools Managed by For-profit Corporations

We strongly support the proposed regulations to ensure that charter schools operated by for-profit corporations do not receive CSP grants.

The federal definition of a public school under IDEA and ESEA is “a nonprofit institutional day or residential school, including a public elementary charter school, that provides elementary education, as determined under State law.” 20 U. S.C. §§ 1401(6) (IDEA), 7801(18) (ESEA) Similarly, the statutes define a “secondary school” as “a nonprofit institutional day or residential school, including a public secondary charter school, that provides secondary education, as determined under State law․” 20 U.S.C. §§ 1401(27) (IDEA), 7801(38) (ESEA).

Former for-profit entities have created non-profit facades that allow the for-profit and its related organizations to run and profit from the charter school, following the judgment of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Arizona State Bd. For Charter Schools v. U.S. Dept. of Educ. in 2006 (464 F.3d 1003).[i]

Ineffective provisions undermine the present regulations against the disbursement of funds from the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) to charter schools operated by for-profit entities. We identified over 440 charter schools operated for profit that received grants totaling approximately $158 million between 2006 and 2017, including CSP grants to schools managed with for-profit sweeps contracts.[ii]

The relationship between a for-profit charter school management organization, commonly referred to as an EMO, is quite different from the relationship between a vendor who provides a single service. A school can sever a bus contract and still have a building, desks, curriculum, and teachers. However, in cases where charter schools have attempted to fire the for-profit operator, they find it impossible to do without destroying the schools in the process.

Many for-profit organizations operate by steering business to their for-profit-related entities. They are often located at the same address, and the owner of the management company or a member of the immediate family is the owner of the related entity. Therefore, it is recommended that wherever references to for-profit organizations appear, the phrase “and its related entities” is added.

Recommendations:

(a)   Each charter school receiving CSP funding must provide an assurance that it has not and will not enter into a contract with a for-profit management organization, including a non-profit management organization operated by or on behalf of a for-profit entity, under which the management organization and its related entities exercise(s) full or substantial administrative control over the charter school and, thereby, the CSP project.

Quality Control of Awards and the Importance of Meeting Community Need via Impact Analysis

We strongly support the proposed regulations that seek to bring greater transparency and better judgment to the process of awarding CSP grants. We especially support the inclusion of a community impact analysis.

We are pleased that “the community impact analysis must describe how the plan for the proposed charter school take into account the student demographics of the schools from which students are, or would be, drawn to attend the charter school,” and provide “evidence that demonstrates that the number of charter schools proposed to be opened, replicated, or expanded under the grant does not exceed the number of public schools needed to accommodate the demand in the community.”

More than one in four charter schools close by the end of year five.[iii] A foremost reason for both public school and charter closure and the disruption such closures bring to the lives of children is low enrollment, as seen this past month in Oakland.[iv] In New Orleans, school closures have resulted in children being forced to attend multiple schools during their elementary school years, often traveling long distances. Between 1999 and 2017, nearly one million children were displaced due to the closure of their schools, yet only nine states have significant caps to regulate charter growth.[v]

We applaud language that states, “The community impact analysis must also describe the steps the charter school has taken or will take to ensure that the proposed charter school would not hamper, delay, or in any manner negatively affect any desegregation efforts in the public school districts from which students are, or would be, drawn or in which the charter school is or would be located, including efforts to comply with a court order, statutory obligation, or voluntary efforts to create and maintain desegregated public schools…”

In some states, charter schools have been magnets for white flight from integrated schools.[vi] Other charter schools have attracted high achieving students while discouraging students with special needs from attending.[vii] And, as you know from the letter you received in June of 2021 from 67 public education advocacy and civil rights groups, the North Carolina SE CSP sub-grants were awarded to charter schools that actively exacerbated segregation, serving in some cases, as white flight academies[viii] The information requested by the Department is reasonable and will help reviewers make sound decisions.

In addition to our support for the proposed regulations, we have two additional recommendations to strengthen the impact analysis proposal.

Recommendations: (1) That impact analysis requirements include a profile of the students with disabilities and English Language Learners in the community along with an assurance that the applicant will provide the full range of services that meet the needs of students with disabilities and English Language Learners. (2) That applicants include a signed affidavit provided by district or state education department officials attesting to the accuracy of the information provided.

Regarding proposed rules regarding transparency, we note that in the past, schools were awarded grants without providing even one letter of support[ix], or provided false information indicating support that did not exist.[x]

We also strongly support the requirement state entities provide additional supervision of grants. The Department should require a forensic audit for any charter school applying for CSP consideration. Furthermore, any charter school that does not operate as a classroom-based entity or is operated by a for-profit entity should be barred from being awarded grant money under the CSP. We also believe these requirements can be strengthened by requiring review teams to include at least one reviewer representative from the district public school community and that applications be posted and easily accessible for the public to review and comment upon for a period of no less than 60 days before awarding decisions.

L

Proposed Selection Criterion for CMO Grants

ESSA places the following restriction on grants awarded to State Entities: No State entity may receive a grant under this section for use in a State in which a State entity is currently using a grant received under this section. However, ESSA is silent regarding the awarding of grants to CMOs. This has resulted in CMOs having several active grants at the same time, with new grants being issued without proper inspection of the efficacy of former grants. For example, it has resulted in the IDEA charter CMO receiving six grants in a ten-year period totaling nearly $300 million.[xi] These grants occurred under a leadership structure that engaged in questionable practices, including the attempted yearly lease of a private jet,[xii] related-party transactions, and the rental of a luxury box at San Antonio Spurs games.[xiii]

IDEA received two awards, in 2019 and 2020, totaling more than $188 million even as the 2019 audit of the Inspector General found that IDEA submitted incomplete and inaccurate reports on three prior grants. The IG report also looked at a randomly selected sample of expenses and found that IDEA’s charges to the grants did not always include only allowable and adequately documented non-personnel expenses.

Recommendations:

That department regulations disallow the awarding of grants to any CMO currently using a grant received under the CMO program and that for any grant exceeding $25 million, the Department’s OIG conducts an audit before an additional grant is awarded.

We thank you for the time and thought that went into the proposed regulations.

[i] Arizona State Board for Charter Schools v. Department of Education. No. 05-17349 (9th Cir. 2006)

[ii] Burris, Carol and Darcie Cimarusti. (n.d.) Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain. Network for Public Education. Retrieved on March 23, 2022 from   https://networkforpubliceducation.org/chartered-for-profit/

[iii] Burris, Carol and Pfleger, Ryan. (n.d.) Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures from 1999-2017. Network for Public Education. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Broken-Promises-PDF.pdf

[iv] McBride, Ashley. (2022, February 9). “Oakland school board votes to close seven schools over the next two years.” The Oaklandside. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://oaklandside.org/2022/02/09/oakland-school-board-votes-to-close-seven-schools-over-the-next-two-years/

[v] Burris, Carol and Pfleger, Ryan. (n.d.) Broken Promises: An Analysis of Charter School Closures from 1999-2017. Network for Public Education. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Broken-Promises-PDF.pdf

[vi] Wilson, Erika K. (2019). “The New White Flight.” HeinOnline. Retrieved on March 23, 2022 from https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/dukpup14&div=8&id=&page=

[vii] Mommandi, Wagma and Kevin Welner. (2021, September 10). School’s Choice: How Charter Schools Control Access and Shape Enrollment. Teachers College Press.

[viii] Letter to Secretary Cardona from 67 education and civil rights advocacy organizations. (2021, June 16). Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://networkforpubliceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Letter-to-Secretary-Cardona-re_-North-Carolina-grant-6.16.pdf.

[ix] Strauss, Valerie. (2020, December 3), How a soccer club won a 126 million dollar grant from Betsy Devos’s education department to open a charter school.  The Washington Post. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/12/03/how-soccer-club-won-126-million-grant-devoss-education-department-open-charter-school/

[x] Winerip, Michael. (2012, January, 8). Rejected three times, school may still open soon, and with a grant, too. The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2022, from https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/education/hebrew-charter-school-in-new-jersey-has-grant-to-go-with-application.html.

[xi] Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (n.d.). “Charter Schools Program Grants to Charter Management Organizations for the Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools (CMO Grants).” U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://oese.ed.gov/offices/office-of-discretionary-grants-support-services/charter-school-programs/charter-schools-program-grants-for-replications-and-expansion-of-high-quality-charter-schools/

[xii] DeMatthews, David and David S. Knight. (2020, February 10). “Commentary: Private jets and Spurs tickets? Texas needs more charter school oversight.” My San Antonio. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/commentary/article/Commentary-Charter-school-backlash-shows-why-15045357.php

[xiii] Carpenter, Jacob. (2020, January 30). “After jet backlash, IDEA charter schools curbing more ‘hard to defend” spending.” My San Antonio. Retrieved on March 23, 2022, from https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/education/article/After-jet-backlash-IDEA-charter-schools-curbing-15019295.php

Our Co-Signers

  • Network for Public Education
  • National Education Association
  • Southern Poverty Law Center
  • National Black Caucus of State Legislators
  • Journey for Justice
  • AFSCME        
  • NCBCP/Black Women’s Roundtable
  • National Indian Education Association (NIEA)
  • In the Public Interest
  • Superintendent’s Roundtable
  • Advancement Project National Office
  • Education Deans for Justice and Equity (EDJE)
  • Education Law Center
  • Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance
  • Horace Mann League
  • Badass Teachers Association
  • The Democracy Collaborative
  • Advocates for Public Education Policy
  • Alliance for Philadelphia Public Schools
  • Alliance for Quality Education
  • Arizona Educators United
  • Arizonans for Charter School Accountability
  • California Teachers Association
  • Citizens for Public Schools
  • Class Size Matters
  • Close the Gap
  • Coalition for Equity in Public Schools
  • Colorado PTA
  • Democratic Public Education Caucus of Florida
  • Economic Opportunity Network
  • Education Voters of PA
  • Educators for Democratic Schools
  • El Paso Alliance for Just Schools
  • Empowering Pacific Islander Communities (EPIC)
  • First Focus on Children
  • Florida BATs
  • Florida Council of Churches
  • ­­­­Frey Evaluation
  • Hillsborough Public School Advocates
  • Indiana Coalition for Public Education
  • Indiana Coalition for Public Education – Monroe County
  • Jobs to Move America
  • Kentucky NAACP
  • Knox DSA
  • Long Beach Alliance for Clean Energy
  • MI Ed Justice
  • Michigan Education Association
  • Missouri Jobs with Justice
  • Moms and Dads Now Enduring Surrealistic Stupidity (#MADNESS)
  • Mon Valley Unemployed Committee
  • New Rochelle Federation of United School Employees (FUSE)
  • newCAP (New Community Action Pac)
  • North Carolina Justice Center
  • Northeast Indiana Friends of Public Education
  • Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education
  • Oklahoma Parent Legislative Action Committee
  • Opt Out Georgia
  • Oregon BATs
  • Oregon Save Our Schools
  • Our Children/Our Schools
  • Parents Educating Parents Inc
  • Parents for Public Schools, Inc.
  • Parents for Public Schools, Milwaukee
  • Pastors for Florida Children
  • Pastors for Kentucky Children
  • Pastors for Tennessee Children
  • Pastors for Texas Children
  • Paterson Education Fund
  • PowerSwitch Action
  • Progressive Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party
  • Public Advocacy for Kids
  • Public Education Partners – Ohio
  • Public Schools First NC
  • Public Trust Alliance
  • Richmond for All
  • Rochester Coalition for Public Education
  • Saphron Initiative
  • Save Our Schools NJ (SOSNJ)
  • Schools and Communities United
  • Stand for Schools
  • Step Up Louisiana
  • STL Not for Sale
  • SUPPORT OUR SCHOOLS
  • Support Our Students
  • Tennessee BATs
  • Texas AFT
  • Texas Kids Can’t Wait!
  • United for Florida Children
  • United Methodist Advocates for Public Schools
  • Virginia BATs
  • Virginia Educators United
  • Virginia Public Education Partners
  • WA BATs
  • Wake NCAE
  • Washington Township Parent Council Network
  • Wear Red for Public Ed
  • Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club
  • Wisconsin Alliance for Public Schools/Wisconsin Public Education Network

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Democracy, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, For-Profit
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