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Andrea Gabor: The Dark Money That Underwrote the Charter Campaign in Massachusetts

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2017 //
13

Andrea Gabor writes here about the dark money campaign to persuade voters in Massachusetts to lift the cap on charter schools last November. The dark money came pouring in, but suffered a crushing defeat when voters weighed in. Andrea worked closely with Peggy Wiesenberg, a Massachusetts attorney and parent of three public-school graduates. Peggy wrote to tell me that KIPP is planning to open two new charters in Lynn, Massachusetts, despite the fact that the people of Lynn don’t want more charter schools. Governor Baker, a Republican, has added two new charter supporters to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education; one is a board member of KIPP, the other is a Harvard scholar funded by the Walton Family Foundation:

KIPP plans to expand in Massachusetts by adding two schools in Lynn per a pending request to increase enrollment by 1,014 seats (up from 1,586 in Lynn). The Mass. Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will take up that request in Feb 2018.
See”Charter Amendment Requests Pending BESE Action (Grades, or Maximum Enrollment, or Change to Charter Region)” http://www.doe.mass.edu/news/news.aspx?id=24563

One of the two new BESE members appointed by Gov Baker is on the Board of Trustees of KIPP MA; the other Martin West whose scholarly work has been funded by the Walton Family Foundation.

But, back to the new post by Andrea Gabor:

The New York-based Families for Excellent Schools added about a third of the $45 million spent to push charter schools. Pro-public education advocates spent nearly $16 million.

“Voters defeated Question 2 by a stunning 62-to-38 margin–an endorsement of Massachusetts public schools, which are rated number one in the nation. But not for lack of efforts by organizations like FESA, which allowed a slew of wealthy contributors to hide their identities and their sizeable contributions in support of the referendum. In some cases individuals contributed twice: Once through a ballot committee that was required, by law, to publish names of contributors, and a second substantially greater contribution, in some cases millions more, via FESA.

“At the top of the list of FESA’s secret donors were public officials in the Massachusetts government. Governor Charlie Baker was a leading proponent of Question 2 and backed efforts to impose charter schools in towns, like Brockton, where there was widespread local opposition.

“Normally, nonprofits organized under IRS Code 501(3), such as Families for Excellent Schools (FES), don’t have to reveal the names of donors so long as they are not engaging in political activity. And ordinarily, their affiliated social-welfare nonprofits, organized under IRS Code 501(c)(4), such as FESA, can have some political involvement in electoral politics and keep donors secret, so long as this is not their primary activity. However, if the organization is a vehicle for receiving contributions for a ballot campaign, then the voting public is entitled to know the names of each contributor and the amount donated before the election.”

FES was fined more than $400,000, the largest fine ever imposed by the state for a campaign finance violation.

Here are some of the big donors:

“The campaign-finance disposition agreement has revealed other backers of Question 2 who used FESA contributions to hide the full value of their donations in support of the charter-school referendum including:

“Paul Sagan, Chair of the Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, who contributed $496,000 on August 4 and 5 in addition to his previously disclosed contribution of $100,000 on August 10, 2016.

“Seth Klarman, Investment Manager of the Baupost Group LLC, contributed $3 million within six months of the election in addition to his previously disclosed contribution of $40,000 in September 2015.

“Jonathan Jacobson, Managing Director Highfields Capital Management LP, contributed $2 million in August and October. That’s in addition to the previously disclosed contribution of $40,000 in September 2015 by his wife Joanna, Managing Partner of Strategic Grant Partners, another dark money vehicle, according to Professor Maurice Cunningham of UMass Boston…

“Josh Bekenstein, a Bain Capital investor, and his wife Anita, a private philanthropist, each contributed $750,000 in August and $500,000 on October 2016 for a combined total of $1.5 million, in addition to Josh’s previously disclosed contribution of $40,000 in September 2015.

“Chuck L. Longfield, Founder of Target Analytics and Chief Scientist at Blackbaud, funneled $650,000 to FESA under the name “Chuck Longfield,” in addition to a previously disclosed contribution of $100,000 under the name “Charles Longfield” on August 2016 and $1,000 in November 2015. [The OCPF filings have a discrepancy in the house number associated with Longfield’s contributions—in all likelihood a typographical error.] Longfield went on WBUR radio on October 31, 2016 to explain why he gave $100,000 in support of raising the cap on charter schools, never mentioning the exponentially larger contribution that he made through FESA to lift the cap.

“Martin Mannion, Managing Director of Summit Partners, contributed $100,000 to FESA between August and October 2016 in addition to a disclosed campaign contribution of $30,000 in October 2016.

“Alice Walton contributed $750,000 to FESA on November 2016 in addition to her previously disclosed contribution of $710,000 to Yes On 2, another campaign committee, in July.

“The Boston Globe reports that in addition to paying the fine, and revealing its donors, the group also “agreed with the IRS to dissolve itself, and Families for Excellent Schools, its umbrella group, agreed not to fund-raise or engage in any election-related activity in Massachusetts for four years.”

Gabor says that New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman may look into the “Families for Excellent Schools,” a political group of millionaires and billionaires with no purpose other than to destroy and privatize public schools.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Dark Money, Massachusetts

Walton Family Foundation Planning to Move into Middle-Income Districts in New York City

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2017 //
17

Time for a friendly puff piece from Inside Philanthropy about one of the nation’s most malevolent foundations: The Walton Family Foundation.

Walton has two goals: privatizing education and eliminating teachers’ unions.

It pledged to spend $1 billion to achieve those aims.

It subsidizes many mainstream media, even NPR and Education Week, to make sure that it gets favorable coverage for its nefarious goals.

And now, Inside Philanthropy reports that the Waltons have decided to plunk a couple of million dollars down in New York City and spread the wealth so that some of it goes to traditional antagonists, like Teachers College, Columbia University.

Who funds Inside Philanthropy? I can’t tell from its website. I did notice an earlier article about the Waltons, which claimed that individual members of the Walton family were reaching out to what appear to be liberal organizations, like the Center for American Progress. The writer didn’t even think to ask whether the Walton family members were purchasing the voices and independence of those groups they subsidize.

The Waltons noticed the research about the importance of economic and social integration so they have decided to open seven new charter schools in New York City that will lure in middle-class kids. Thus, in the name of integration, they can both promote privatization of public dollars and do their union-busting at the same time. Why should only poor kids go to charters? Think of the possibilities as Walton millions open charters for middle-class kids too!

Give them points for cleverness.

The Waltons earned their place on this blog’s Wall of Shame, and there is no reason to see anything coming from a family of billionaires that fights unions in their own stores and fights paying a minimum wage and subsidizes the evil American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is devoted to destroying democracy.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, New York City, Privatization, Wall of Shame, Walton Foundation

Stephen Dyer: Comparing Charter Schools to Public Schools in Ohio

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2017 //
10

Stephen Dyer, former legislator and current Fellow at Innovation Ohio, writes:

As you know, I’ve contended for years that if charters receive money and kids from all over the state, their overall performance should be compared with the overall performance of all Ohio school districts.

However, as an exercise, I decided to look at Ohio’s urban building performance versus that of charters. And despite the fact that Ohio’s urban buildings typically have 24% higher rates of disabled students and nearly 25% higher rates of minority students, Ohio urban buildings perform about the same as charters. And this is despite the fact that the 90 lowest performing charters aren’t included because they’ve been carved out of these comparisons by the Ohio General Assembly. http://bit.ly/2hw3fhB

In the report that is linked, he expands:

Ohio’s urban buildings perform just about the same as Ohio’s charter schools.

Here’s the issue though:

Ohio’s urban buildings typically (my short hand for median) have a 26 percent higher rate of disabled children and a 23 percent higher rate of minority children than charter schools.

A remarkable 94 percent of all major urban buildings have more than 95 percent of their students classified as economically disadvantaged. Meanwhile, 65 percent of charters fit that bill.

Yet despite these greater challenges, Ohio’s major urban buildings typically have nearly identical attendance rates, slightly less chronic absenteeism and just about equal report card performance, looking at percentages of A, B, C, D, and F grades. Charters have slightly higher percentages of As, Bs and Cs, and lower percentages of Ds and Fs, but the difference is statistically insignificant.

So despite the fact charters have fewer demographic barriers to success on our test-based report card and about half of their kids don’t even come from the urban districts, charters are still unable to perform significantly better than their major urban counterparts — the most challenged group of schools in the traditional public school system.

Only about 260 of Ohio’s 370 charters are included in this comparison. It’s clear that the other 90 — mostly dropout recovery schools located in urban districts — are among the worst-performing schools in the entire country. So the percentage of poor charter grades is likely far higher than the comparison I’m currently making.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Ohio, Privatization

Kentucky: Legislators Push Charter Schools While Undermining Racial Integration

By dianeravitch
September 27, 2017 //
11

Kentucky is a Republican state with both houses in the hands of the Republican party and a Republican governor. The Republicans are doing their best to undermine public schools. They were late in passing charter legislation, and they passed it only recently. Now the legislature is intent on undoing the racial integration of public schools in Jefferson County (Louisville).

Gay Adelmann, co-founder of Save Our Schools Kentucky, attended a recent legislative session and reported back on the discussion, which had nothing to do with improving public schools and everything to do with implementing the privatization agenda of ALEC.

The Republican legislators blame busing for all the ills of public schools. They think that ending busing will bring a new day to Kentucky. Obviously, none of them has ever read any research on the benefits of racial integration to both white and black students.

After listening to them fulminate about “those children,” she offered her own suggestions:


Faulty arguments repeated the theme: “Imagine what you could do if you ended busing.”

No, imagine what we could do if you:

Fully funded our schools.

Ended high-stakes testing.

Placed students’ interests above adults.

Protected our public schools from corporate threats.

Asked us how you can help!

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Kentucky, Privatization, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Ref Rodriguez: Should He Be Subject to the Same Laws as Everyone Else?

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2017 //
15

Ref Rodriguez was elected to the Los Angeles school board in 2015. He ran against a respected educator named Bennett Kayser and used some extremely negative television ads. Kayser has a physical disability, and one of Ref’s ads showed a shaking hand holding a tea cup, then dropping it. It came as close to stereotyping someone on grounds of physically disability as possible. It was ugly.

Questions were raised about the finances of Ref’s charter chain, about food services.

A small publication called the LA Progressive raised questions about his campaign donations.

Rodriguez’ campaign disclosure filings with the City of Los Angeles show that several staffers of his charter school, Partnerships to Uplift Communities (PUC), gave small donations in December 2014, before a filing deadline at the end of the year. What is odd and striking about several of the donations is that they come from PUC staffers who first made a very small donation early in the month and then, in the last 3 days of the year, suddenly ponied up the largest donation allowed by campaign ethics laws. Six donated the maximum $1,100. One paid $850.;;;

What is highly irregular about this pattern of donations to Rodriguez, however, is the job category of the PUC employees and the timing of their donations.

A janitor, a tutor, a parent organizer, two maintenance workers, a kitchen manager, and an office manager would not raise eyebrows for donating $25, $50, or even $100 to a candidate, as these seven PUC workers did within days of each other in mid-December 2014.

None of that mattered. He won. He was backed by the usual cabal of very wealthy charter supporters who wanted to put one of their own on the school board.

These donations seem to be at the center of an investigation of campaign finance violations by Ref. A number of charges have been filed against him for breaking the law. He stepped down as LAUSD president, but he did not leave the board. It is unseemly for a public official facing criminal charges to stay in a position of authority, but there he is. Doing it.

Peter Cunningham, who used to be Arne Duncan’s communications director and now runs the pro-charter Education Post, funded by the same people who fund California’s charter schools, wrote an article in defense of Ref. He thinks that what Ref did, if he did it, was a mistake made by a rookie. He thinks that it was unfair to bring criminal charges against Ref when others have done the same things and not faced criminal charges. He thinks that the prosecutors in Los Angeles are persecuting Ref “simply because he was elected board president.”

Up until now, no one has alleged that the district attorney was acting improperly. Ref should not be treated unfairly, but then again, he should not get special treatment just because he founded a chain of charter schools and is beloved of Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, and the California Charter Schools Association.

Justice should be swift and unbiased. Let Ref Rodriguez make his case in court, not in the media.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Los Angeles, Privatization

Harvard Shames Itself by Staging a Koch-Sponsored Betsy Lovefest–No Dissenting Voices Allowed

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2017 //
64

The Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University has always been pro-school choice, pro-charters, pro-vouchers.

But now the PEPG–headed by the General of the School Choice Movement Paul Petersen–has outdone itself.

It is staging a two-day celebration of Betsy DeVos and the Trump agenda of public school-bashing, funded by the Koch Brothers and other rightwing foundations.

There is nary a critic of this radical rightwing agenda, not as a presenter or a panelist.

The conference is called “The Future of School Choice.”

The Charles Koch Foundation is a major funder, but after it became clear that his name was embarrassing, it was removed from the list of sponsors.

How shameful that Harvard would lend its name to a one-sided effort to cheer on the destruction of public education and would give a platform to a woman with no academic credentials.

As the writer for the New Republic, Graham Vyse, points out, the Harvard Institute of Politics invited Sean Spicer and Corey Lewandowski to accept fellowships, so the University apparently has low standards.

Apparently Jeff Sessions is about to give a speech about “free speech” in which he will decry “political correctness” on campus, meaning I assume the refusal to debate issues.

Do you think he will single out Harvard’s PEPG for refusing to hold a debate about the future of school choice and excluding those who recognize the civic importance of public education and the failure of charters and vouchers to live up to their claims?

I’m not holding my breath.

I am adding Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance to this blog’s Wall of Shame for its failure to permit even the most minimal expectations of academic and scholarly fairness, and for turning itself into a propaganda mill for the privatization movement, at the behest of Big Money.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Vouchers, Wall of Shame

Peter Greene: Public Schools Should Not Collaborate in Their Own Destruction

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2017 //
18

Peter Greene read a report published by the Center for the Reinention of Public Education at the University of Washington, a leading advocate for charters, choice, and the portfolio model. The report offers advice to district leaders about how public schools can deal with declining enrollments by working with charter schools and putting them on an equal footing as partners, not competitors.

Maybe I am being a Pollyanna, but I see this report as a sign of weakness, a recognition by privatizers that they must develop strategies to get embedded because the tide of public opinion is turning against them. The opinion poll in the conservative journal EdNext recently reported that public support for charters dropped from 51% to 39% in one year. The NAACP statement criticizing charters undermined their claims about being leaders of the civil rights movement. The almost daily reports of charter scandals in many states is undermining their credibility. Betsy DeVos’s enthusiastic embrace hurts their carefully cultivated public image. Watch for more statements aimed at normalizing charters. They are worried.

Peter reviews the CPRE list of problems and remedies and he is not impressed.

So how do we fix all of these things? CRPE has some thoughts.

Districts need to close schools and negotiate contracts that don’t spend so much money. The closing school solution seems to run up against the “don’t take on long-term debts and costs” solution, as schools frequently manage consolidation of schools by taking on construction projects.

They would like to see more partnership, but their example is “if charters find a way to give cheap retirement plans might encourage public systems to adopt similar systems.” So, yeah, charters that want to pay teachers less could, I suppose, try to convince public schools not to outbid them. That’s cooperation, sort of.

And there would need to be city-level strategy sessions. Which should be a hoot as long as nobody ever addresses the underlying zero-sum game that is charter vs. public schools. But that’s not going to happen, since one proposed solution is that districts “publicly identify” their legacy costs in exchange for a charter funding formula that more closely resembles public per-pupil costs:

For example, charter schools might receive less per-pupil funding under such an agreement but would be able to tell the public, with confidence, that charter and district students received the same classroom funding and that charter schools weren’t contributing to a district’s impending insolvency.

Yeah, that doesn’t even make sense. “Getting same classroom funding” doesn’t equal “not sucking public school dry.” So maybe the suggestion here is that charter’s get their funding and public schools admit that they’re insolvent because their buildings and pensions and teacher pay are all just way expensive. In other words, charters agree to get paid public tax dollars, and public schools agree to publicly say it’s their own damn fault they’re having financial problems. Why would public schools want to enter into this deal, exactly? And would the funding formula include all the “philanthropic” contributions to charters?

CRPE also suggests that public schools be given some limited extra funding to be used only as a means of down-sizing. Or if districts can prove they’re shrinking as fast as possible, charters would agree to a voluntary growth slow down. Or some other grand bargain that basically involves charters conducting business as usual while public schools agree to work harder at dying, already.

CRPE also has a list of Things To Discuss and Research Further. Gather more data about how much financial vampirage charters are really committing, and how much is just, you know, other reasons for districts to lose money. More data about “fixed costs” and just generally how teachers are draining money by wanting to be paid. Figure out the greatest number of students the charters could handle, because that’s the ideal, apparently– as many students taken out of public school as possible. More power for superintendents. They don’t say which power, exactly, but context suggests that old favorite– hire, fire and set salaries without stupid rules and unions. Learning from other sectors like energy and healthcare, because they’re just like schools.

Bottom Line

CRPE is correct in one thing– we do have to look at how charters affect the whole local educational eco-system. But their belief in the inevitable supremacy of charters gets in the way of a useful conversation.

The report seems to boil down basically to “Charters and public schools should work together to make employment conditions worse for teachers. Also, they should team up to help charters thrive and to help public schools die more efficiently and without making charters look bad. For The Children.”

Maybe this is supposed to be an innovative approach to the Socratic method, and public schools are just supposed to take a hemlock bath because it would make life easier for charters. But I don’t imagine many takers will line up to take CRPE’s offer. Not even for the children.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

D.C. Charter Operators Agree to Repay $600,000 for Missing $3 Million

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2017 //
8

This looks like a good deal for the leaders of a charter school who were accused of misappropriating
Ropristing $3 million for their personal use. No jail time. A payback of $600,000 and pocket change. And an agreement not to lead any other charters until 2020. The fines apparently will be paid by insurance companies, not the defendants.

“The former leaders of a public charter school for disabled and at-risk teenagers have agreed to settle a District lawsuit alleging they sought to enrich themselves by diverting millions of dollars in taxpayer money meant for the school into private companies they created.

“Donna Montgomery, David Cranford and Paul Dalton, all former managers at Options Public Charter School, agreed to a collective settlement of $575,000, which will be paid to the school that now operates under new leadership as Kingsman Academy. Jeremy Williams, a former chief financial officer of the D.C. Public Charter School Board, who allegedly aided the scheme, agreed to a settlement of $84,237 in a separate deal signed last week. The defendants agreed that they would not serve in a leadership role of any nonprofit corporation in the District until October 2020.

“This settlement ensures that more than $600,000 in misappropriated funds will now go to Kingsman Academy to serve disabled students in the District of Columbia, and will deter future wrongdoing,” said Robert Marus, a spokesman for the Office of the Attorney General. “As the referees for the District’s nonprofit laws, our office will continue to bring actions against any who would misuse funds meant for public or charitable purposes.”

“A statement issued by attorney S.F. Pierson, who represents Dalton, said all three former managers “continue to contest the District’s claims and continue to maintain their position that they managed Options to the highest standards.” Pierson said the former school leaders are “not personally paying” anything to settle the District’s claims. It’s common that insurance plans cover litigation-related costs for nonprofit directors or corporate officers.”

This is a big win for the accused, but a loss for the disabled students, who didn’t get the services intended for them.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Deregulation, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Privatization

Gary Rubinstein: “I Taught at Houston’s XQ Super School” (A MUST READ!)

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
26

This is one of Gary Rubinstein’s best posts ever.

He watched Laurene Powell Jobs’ extravaganza about her efforts to redesign the American high school into XQ Super Schools. The one where she bought time on four networks.

The one where celebrities said again and again that high schools have not changed in 100 years; Gary does a good job of shredding that myth. Yes, high schools have changed in the past 100 years, but some things should never change and will be found in high schools all over the world.

He notes that the show has had no effect. It seems to have disappeared as soon as it was on the air.

But it didn’t disappear for him because he realized that he taught at one of the XQ Super Schools, a high school in Houston that allegedly was a failing school that was miraculously transformed.

Gary shows that it was not the nightmare school that the producers claimed it to be, nor has it had the miraculous transformation that the show now boasts about.

It was a good school when he was there, even though there was a gang population in the ninth grade.

What he discovers is that the school now has a charter school on campus, which apparently serves as a dumping ground for the kids who are not going to graduate. The regular school raised its statistics by pushing out the bad kids.

No miracle there!

But the school does have a really nice garden. That’s new. That’s good. Is that what caused the claimed spike in test scores? Not likely.

He writes:

One thing that this program definitely accomplished is product placement. It seems that one feature of innovative high schools is that students use a lot of laptops and it seems like most of those laptops are Apple products. While iPads were once considered to be something that was going to be a big part of education, the thing most schools are actually using are a type of laptop called a Chromebook, which is an inexpensive Google product. Since the kids in these schools are using Apple laptops, maybe one purpose of this show was to help with Apple’s competition with Google for the education market.

One thing we did not see a lot of in this was overt teacher bashing. I suppose this is why Randi Weingarten attended and tweeted about how wonderful a program this is. Now even though there wasn’t overt teacher bashing, there was some less direct bashing like the part where celebrities were asked what they wish they learned in high school. Based on their answers, the only conclusion is that their teachers must not have taught those things to them very well.

This program didn’t really seem to resonate with anybody and most people on both sides of the education reform wars have pretty much forgotten about it already. It was a colossal waste of money and shows that being rich doesn’t mean that you necessarily have the right to dictate education policy.

I think that it is not an accident that there was no mention of evil unions or miracle charter schools or school choice in this program. My sense is that reformers realize that most of the talking points from Waiting For Superman don’t work anymore. The public has wised up. They don’t believe as much that teacher’s unions are the problem or that charter schools are the solution. So this program is an attempt to get a new rationale that the public can believe and get behind whatever reforms the reformers want to try, which of course will be more union busting and charters and vouchers. So the new thing is that schools haven’t evolved much in the past 100 years and that’s a problem. All that matters is that the public believes there is some problem, whatever it is. It doesn’t need to be the unions, but it must be something so the 100 year thing will likely be repeated a lot of over the next decade as the new villain for them to save us from.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Houston, Innovation, Privatization

Donald Cohen: Why Is Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital Investing in Charter Schools?

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
35

Donald Cohen, executive director of “In the Public Interest,” an organization that fights privatization of public services, writes about the curious combination of people who poured serious money into the Massachusetts charter school battle last fall.

When the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance forced a pro-charter school political organization to reveal its donors, guess which words jumped off the page? Bain Capital.

Of the more than $15 million Families for Excellent Schools spent pushing last November’s controversial ballot initiative to increase the number of charter schools in Massachusetts, $1.4 million came from Bain investors, including Romney’s fellow cofounder Josh Bekenstein.

The initiative was voted down—parents, teachers, and residents mobilized to protect traditional public schools—but until now we had little proof that a shadowy gang of private investors and billionaires were leading the charge.

Donors included the owner of the Oakland Athletics baseball team, the billionaire hedge fund manager Seth Klarman, Alice Walton of the Walmart family fame, and even Massachusetts’s current chairman of Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, the venture capitalist Paul Sagan.

So why does Bain and a handful of billionaires want more charter schools?

We really don’t know, at least yet. Like everything in finance, the tangled knots and paper trails are seemingly endless.

Maybe they’re just being nice and philanthropic, trying to help, as Romney himself once called them, “inner city kids.” But maybe they’re up to something else.

In our report on California’s charter schools, we dug into the $2.5 billion in taxpayer dollars and subsidies spent in the past 15 years to help private groups lease, build, or buy school buildings. Due to a severe lack of regulation, some of this money has ended up in the pockets of investors and executives.

For example, two schools in Stockton, California, are renting space for three and half times the market rate from a company with business ties to the CEO of the charter operator that oversees them.

Los Angeles’s Alliance network of charter schools has received more than $110 million in federal and state taxpayer support for its facilities, which are not owned by the public, but are part of a growing empire of privately owned real estate now worth in excess of $200 million.

The bottom line is, there’s lots of taxpayer money sloshing around in an unregulated market, and few people know where it’s going.

For some well-meaning educators and parents, charter schools are about innovation and alternative learning. But for the investors and billionaires behind the growing charter school industry, they seem to be about something else altogether: private control of taxpayer money.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, For-Profit, Privatization
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