Deion Sanders is a superstar athlete. Texas loves superstar athlete. So, when Sanders decided he wanted to open charter schools, he had no trouble getting a charter in Dallas and another in Fort Worth. His big idea was to combine college prep and athletic prowess. A winning combination.

His first school opened in 2012. It was closed by the state in 2015, because of administrative chaos, a mountain of debt, and dwindling enrollment.

The schools opened with great promise. What could possibly go wrong?

Some spotted the plan as a scam from the outset.

The New York Times saw the school sputtering; it fielded excellent sports teams, but got an F for academics.

When they closed, the funerals were brief.

Here is a timeline of the “spectacular collapse” of the schools.

Carol Burris writes:

Advocates of school choice claim that charters need to be free of regulation and oversight so that they can be innovative.  That lack of regulation and oversight has resulted in a sector that has a substantial share of financial mismanagement, failure and fraud.

Conflicts of interest by board members and employees are allowed in most states. Educators are too often not sufficiently credentialed or screened. There are frequent instances of theft.

None of the above is a prerequisite for innovation.

For the past several months, the Network for Public Education has been logging instances when they come to our attention.

Visit our website here to see what we found. Let us know what we have missed.

Posted by Carol Burris.

During School Choice Week it is important to note that most of the attempts to steer public dollars to private schools and homeschoolers happen not at the federal level, but at the state level. Across the nation, bills are being introduced that are all very similar.

One of those bills was recently introduced in Iowa by Senator Chelgren who claimed he had a business degree from Forbco Management school which the press dubbed “Sizzler University.”

Senator Chelgren had a certificate from a course he took when he worked for the Sizzler Steakhouse when he was a teenager. Forbco Management trains Sizzler employees.

Chelgren’s bill would give public money to parents to use at their discretion for “competent private instruction.” Perhaps he wants other Iowans to take courses at the Sizzler Steakhouse, paid for by taxpayers.  Perhaps other youngsters could attend Hamburger University at McDonalds on the taxpayer dime.

But it is no laughing matter. It is serious business.

Here is what our friends from Iowans for Public Education had to say:

“Senate File 2091 was introduced by Senator Mark Chelgren (R-Ottumwa) on January 23 and assigned to the Ways and Means Committee. The bill is a wide-ranging assault on the foundation of public education in the state of Iowa. If made law, it would divert hundreds of millions of dollars out of public coffers and give it to the parents of private school and homeschool students for them to use at their discretion for “competent private instruction,” according to the wording of the bill.

“This bill would directly divert taxpayer dollars dedicated to public education funding and basically hand it to private religious schools and completely unregulated homeschools,” said Claire Celsi, the Central Iowa organizer for the grassroots group that stands up against efforts to erode public education in Iowa.

Iowa is in the midst of a fiscal crisis because of sagging revenues. Corporate tax cuts over the past ten years have severely restricted the amount of revenue flowing into state coffers. This misguided voucher plan will make things even worse. The legislature is currently mulling how to plug another funding gap caused by Governor Kim Reynolds’ reckless budgeting practices.

“We are waiting for a fiscal note to be prepared to accompany the bill. There will definitely be a huge cost to the taxpayer on legislation like this,” said Randy Richardson, the group’s volunteer legislative monitor.

Karen Nichols, the founder of Iowans for Public Education said, “Our group is comprised of thousands of Iowa parents, students, administrators and average everyday Iowans who are fighting to hang on to our most prized institution – public education.”

“Every other policy or plan that we have as a state, including economic development, workforce development and public health – depends on having an educated and engaged population. Iowa’s public education system has been underfunded for eight years and we cannot afford to fund two parallel systems. The Legislature should fully fund our excellent public schools. Taxpayer money is for public schools. We are completely against this voucher plan,” said Nichols.

Ed Doerr of Americans for Religious Liberty wrote this overview of vouchers.

The most enlightening information in this paper appears on page 11, where he lists the 29 State referenda where the issue was spending public money for religious schools.

Every one of them was defeated.

Voucher proponents like to say that the unions (those evil unions) outspent the voucher advocates, but note that vouchers were defeated even in non-union states. The claim is ridiculous on its face since billionaires like the DeVos family, the Waltons, and the Koch Brothers support vouchers.

The paper should be updated to show how Vouchers have been adopted insidiously in states where the Constitution and the voters oppose them, like Florida.

This explains why privatizers are terrified of referenda. They know they can’t win. The public opposes vouchers. The only way they get adopted is when wealthy donors buy legislators or pour millions into the campaigns of religious zealots.

Linda Lyon, retired Air Force Colonel and President of the Arizona School Boards Association, responds again to our reader Charles, who tried to convince her of the virtues of privatization.

She writes:

“Dear Charles,

You’ve obviously given a lot of thought to your position on school privatization. At 666 words, you covered a lot of ground. I do though, agree with some of your points.

Yes, children can be educated in a diversity of environments and yes, some rich liberals send their children to exclusive private schools. So do, rich conservatives. I believe that anyone has the right to send their child to any school they want, (provided the education is adequate), as long as they pay for it. When my tax dollars are paying for it, I want full accountability, transparency and to know the return on investment. Yes, legislation could be enacted to provide more accountability and transparency, but that isn’t the direction our state legislatures and now, the federal government are headed.

Yes, when the number of students in a school decrease, the fixed costs also eventually decrease. The problem is, the decrease happens over time and the costs are not scaled back with each student that leaves. That means remaining costs must be spread out over fewer students which means larger class sizes, outdated curriculum, older technology and buses and inadequately maintained facilities.

But, you start to lose me when you say that privatizing our schools will not reduce the size of our government. In Arizona alone, we have 60,000 public school teachers. These are government employees. If every public district school is outsourced, that would result in 60,000 fewer government jobs. The goal of the privatizers isn’t though, to save taxpayers money, or to produce better education for our children. In my opinion, it is to increase profits and reduce our ability to self-govern.

You also say you, “cannot fathom the connection between publicly-operated schools and our democratic republic.” Are you really serious? America’s system of public education, where all children are educated (not just the elite), played an important role in creating the greatest middle class in the world and was critical to making the American Dream possible. As for pointing to our current government leaders, (who you infer went to private schools), as proof of the superiority of that option, current events tell me that’s not a real strong argument.

You are correct that non-public (that would be private) schools do not have to accept all applicants. Therein lies the rub! Just as with our military, our public schools provide for the common good. That means, as John Dewey said, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his child, that must we want for all the children of the community. Anything less is unlovely, and left unchecked, destroys our democracy.” I believe the relentless effort to privatize our public schools reduces the opportunity for EVERY child to be all they can be. This ultimately robs our nation of potential and is in the end, unpatriotic.

Linda M. Lyon, Colonel (ret.), USAF”