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Carol Burris: Don’t Let Democratic Candidates Get Away With: “I’m Against For-Profit Charters”

By dianeravitch
July 7, 2019 //
64

 

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes here about the efforts by most Democratic candidates to avoid confronting the dangers of privatization:

When Democratic candidates are questioned about charter schools, many typically reply, “I am against for-profit charter schools.” Everyone cheers. Politicians have created a convenient (and false) dichotomy that says nonprofit charter schools are good, and for-profit charter schools are bad.

Don’t be fooled. There are now only 2 states that allow for-profit charter schools—Arizona and Wisconsin. California changed  its laws. 

However, 35 states allow for-profit Charter Management Organizations (CMOS) to run their nonprofit charter schools. 

40% of the charter schools in Florida are run by for-profit charter management companies. While the individual charter is a nonprofit, it can turn over everything from hiring, to curriculum, to financial management to a for-profit corporation. In Michigan, 80% of the so-called nonprofit charter schools are run by for-profit companies. 

To understand how this arrangement works, read this blog I wrote for the Answer Sheet on Florida’s charter schools. You will read about the Zulueta brothers who were on the board of an Academica charter school even while their for-profit real estate companies, including one in Panama, were leasing property to the schools. 

Let me shock you a bit more. The National Alliance for (so-called) Public Charter Schools recently gave the controversial profiteer, Fernando Zulueta, an award at its national conference!

You probably know the names and reputations of the other big for-profit CMOs—BASIS, National Heritage, Academica, K12 and more.

The question candidates need to answer then are:

 “Do you support for-profit Charter Management Organizations, and if you do not, what are you going to do about them?”

The most important questions to ask, however (and don’t let them off the hook), are whether they support the NAACP moratorium on new charter schools and “Will you stop the the federal funding of new charter schools?”

There is a reason the charter lobby never complains when a candidate says that he/she is against for-profit charter schools. It means nothing will change.

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

Pennsylvania’s Expensive, Ineffective Cyber Charters

By dianeravitch
July 3, 2019 //
5

From the Keystone State Coalition, administered by Lawrence Feinberg:

Started in November 2010, daily postings from the Keystone State Education Coalition now reach more than 4050 Pennsylvania education policymakers – school directors, administrators, legislators, legislative and congressional staffers, Governor’s staff, current/former PA Secretaries of Education, Wolf education transition team members, superintendents, school solicitors, principals, charter school leaders, PTO/PTA officers, parent advocates, teacher leaders, business leaders, faith-based organizations, labor organizations, education professors, members of the press and a broad array of P-16 regulatory agencies, professional associations and education advocacy organizations via emails, website, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

 

These daily emails are archived and searchable at http://keystonestateeducationcoalition.org

Visit us on Facebook at KeystoneStateEducationCoalition

Follow us on Twitter at @lfeinberg

 

Reprise Aug. 2017: Pa. charter schools spend millions of public dollars in advertising to attract students

Public Source By Stephanie Hacke and Mary Niederberger AUG. 29, 2017

PART OF THE SERIES The Charter Effect|

If you’re a parent, it’s likely Facebook knows it.

If you’re not happy with your child’s current school, Facebook probably knows that, too. And you are likely to be hit with paid, highly targeted ads offering alternatives. That’s why when you scroll through your news feed on Facebook you may see a sponsored photo of a wide-eyed child and parent thrilled about their tuition-free, personalized education at a Pennsylvania cyber charter school. If you pay property taxes, you likely paid for this ad campaign. See the ad on the side of the Port Authority bus that shows happy students and a message that Propel Montour High School has spaces available in grades 9 and 10. Your property taxes paid for that, too. Television ads, radio promotions, social media ads and billboards promoting cyber and brick-and-mortar charter schools are everywhere. Some charter operators pay for online keyword searches that prompt their school’s websites to show up first when a parent searches for certain terms related to charter schools or a student’s need for an alternative education setting. In the last three school years, 12 of the state’s 14 cyber charter schools spent more than $21 million combined in taxpayer dollars promoting their schools, PublicSource found through Right-to-Know requests. The Commonwealth Charter Academy spent the most of the cyber charters on advertising; it spent $3.2 million in 2015-16 and $4.4 million in 2016-17.

https://projects.publicsource.org/chartereffect/stories/pennsylvania-charter-schools-spend-millions-of-public-dollars-in-advertising-to-attract-students.html

 

Blogger note: Total cyber charter tuition paid by PA taxpayers from 500 school districts for 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016 was over $1.6 billion; $393.5 million, $398.8 million, $436.1 million and $454.7 million respectively.

In 2016-17, taxpayers in Senate Education Cmte Majority Chairman .@SenLangerholc’s districts had to send over $10.5.3 million to chronically underperforming cybers that their locally elected school boards never authorized. . #SB34 (Schwank) or #HB526 (Sonney) could change that. 

Data source: PDE via PSBA

 

Bedford Area SD $195,903.70
Blacklick Valley SD $172,928.49
Cambria Heights SD $171,102.13
Central Cambria SD $147,481.76
Chestnut Ridge SD $334,862.00
Claysburg-Kimmel SD $108,164.64
Clearfield Area SD $847,317.65
Conemaugh Valley SD $277,810.82
Curwensville Area SD $165,465.87
Dubois Area SD $781,498.59
Everett Area SD $352,172.57
Ferndale Area SD $231,971.23
Forest Hills SD $248,609.94
Glendale SD $157,426.86
Greater Johnstown SD $2,532,971.00
Harmony Area SD $127,540.41
Moshannon Valley SD $200,674.93
Northern Bedford County SD $225,181.66
Northern Cambria SD $251,658.09
Penn Cambria SD $428,637.20
Philipsburg-Osceola Area SD $697,580.57
Portage Area SD $182,599.03
Purchase Line SD $358,211.18
Richland SD $264,415.85
Tussey Mountain SD $253,595.93
West Branch Area SD $323,061.45
Westmont Hilltop SD $0.00
Windber Area SD $467,326.78
  $10,506,170.33

 

 

Has your state senator cosponsored bipartisan SB34?

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billInfo/bill_history.cfm?syear=2019&sind=0&body=S&type=B&bn=34

 

Is your state representative one of the over 70 bipartisan cosponsors of HB526?

https://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/billInfo/bill_history.cfm?syear=2019&sind=0&body=H&type=B&bn=526

 

WHYY Radio Times: Cyber charter schools

Air Date: Friday June 21, 2019 10:00 am; Runtime 49:15

Guests: Margaret Raymond, Susan Spicka, David Hardy

A new study shows that many students enrolled in Pennsylvania’s cyber charter schools are not getting a quality education. A quarter of Pennsylvania’s charter school students use these virtual learning programs as an alternative to attending brick-and-mortar schools. Today, we’ll hear about the damning report, the pros and cons of digital classrooms, and what the future holds for these types of programs. Joining us will be MARGARET RAYMOND, founding director of the organization, CREDO, that released the report, as well as SUSAN SPICKA of Education Voters of PA, and DAVID HARDY, executive director of Excellent Schools Pa, a school choice advocacy organization.

https://whyy.org/episodes/cyber-charter-schools-are-they-working/

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Pennsylvania, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Peter Greene: On Reading “Winners Take All,” a Morality Tale for Our Times

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2019 //
57

Peter Greene read and loved Anand Giridharadas’ Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.

So did I, which is why it is on my short list of books I recommend for summer reading.

Peter writes:

Every so often you come across a book that unpacks and reframes a part of the universe in a way that you can never unsee. Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas has been a book like that for me.

Giridharadas is writing about “the elite charade of changing the world,” and while he is taking a broad look at the way the Betters are trying to influence our country and our world, the connections to education reform are unmistakable. I’m about to go ahead and give my grossly oversimplified take on his work and its intersection with public education; as a general guide, assume everything smart came from his book and everything wrong is my fault. There’s a lot to pack into a blog post, and I will cut corners like crazy; there are so many pull quotes from this book that I have put up an entire supplemental blog post just of quotes from the work. My best recommendation if you find any of this striking is to buy the book…

The elite assumption is that the system that put them on top, the game that they are the winners of, is fair and just and unrigged and not in need of being changed in any major ways. They are not part of the problem, and they are hurt that you would even suggest that was true; they are simply the just winners in a meritocratic system.

So the solutions they will propose meet a couple of standards:

1) It will include no challenge to the fundamentals of the current system.
2) The elites will be in charge (because their eliteness is proof of their fitness to run the show).
3) It will harness entrepreneurial energy (i.e. someone’s going to make money from it).
4) It will hand most of the blame responsibility to the people on the bottom who are being “rescued….”

The fingerprints of this mindset are all over education reform.

* The very notion, popular and bipartisan among the Betters, that education is the fix for everything. All the socio-economic inequity in the country can be solved, not by looking at the system that created that inequity– in fact, we’re not even going to admit that the system had any hand in creating inequity. No the system is swell, and the winners are people who are at the top got there by hard work and wisdom and meritocratic excellence. So, no, we don’t need to look at that system– we just need these people on the bottom to get themselves better educations (including things like grit) so that they can win at the game, too.

* Think Bill Gates, deciding that he needs to rewrite and standardize public education, and will have to circumvent, subvert and co-op the actual government to do it. Nobody elected him Grand Poobah of US Education, but he is perfectly comfortable appointing himself to the job.

* Think the deification of business standards in ed reform, and the notion that the free market will fix the system, that we will know which ideas are working best because they will succeed in the market. Think Eli Broad’s assertion that schools don’t have an education problem, but a business management problem.

* Think the repeated notion that democracy is a problem in education. We need to get rid of elected school boards and we need to give school leaders the kind of freedom that an all-powerful CEO has to create his vision. In ed reform, local control and the democratic process are to be avoided.

* Think the constant rejection of expertise. Reformsters don’t need to talk to teachers. What do teachers know? (If they are really such great shakes, why aren’t they rich?) I’ve succeeded at the game, and the same wisdom that made me a winner at that game will apply to fixing education. No other sorts of wisdom are necessary.

The huge irony of this book, which excoriates the elites and the billionaires who pretend to “save” the world by privatizing it, is that one of the blurbs was written by Bill Gates. He (or more likely, someone in his office) wrote:

In Anand’s thought-provoking book his fresh perspective on solving complex societal problems is admirable. I appreciate his commitment and dedication to spreading social justice.

This is a book that lambastes the likes of Gates. Why did he endorse it?

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

Carol Burris: Who Is Ferdinand Zulueta?

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2019 //
9

Carol Burris wrote this post on learning that the National Charter Schools  Conference was honoring charter chain founder Ferdinand Zulueta.

 

I am dumfounded that Fernando Zulueta is being honored by the National Charter Schools Conference. He and his brother run one of the most notorious for-profit charter management companies in the country, Academica. The Office of Inspector General’s audit of three Academica schools — Excelsior, Mater High and Mater East  found that the Board of the Excelsior charter school, which ended its relationship with Academica in 2013, allowed Academica to find, design and procure facilities, recommend staff, conduct the day-to-day running of the school, assume responsibilities for accounting, budgeting and produce its financial forecast. The for-profit CMO participated in all charter board meetings and made recommendations to the board.

OIG’s audit of the two Mater charter schools identified related party transactions between the for-profit Academica and a real estate company that leased both buildings and security services to the schools.

Although the audit is difficult to follow due to extensive redactions, it is clear that the investigation found inappropriate transactions among the CMO, School Development HG II, L.L.C., School Development East L.L.C., Duke School Properties, L.L.C. and the charter schools.

School Development Corporation HG II owned and leased a building to Mater High School while School Development East owned and leased a building to Mater East. School Development Corporation was owned by a Panamanian company, the Wolfson Hutton Development Company. The directors of the Wolfson Hutton Company were the Zulueta brothers, one of whom is being honored at the Charter Schools Conference. The brothers were the founders of both the Mater Academies and Academica. The details of the complex for-profit web can be found here in an earlier investigative report by the Miami-Dade Public Schools.

According to OIG, there was no evidence that the relationship between the CMO and the real estate company was disclosed to the charter school’s board of directors at the time of the original lease; nor was there any “evidence of a discussion regarding the renewal of the management agreement with Academica or the reasonableness of CMO services or fees.” The original real estate transactions took place while Fernando Zulueta served on the Mater Board.

By 2010, the Zulueta brothers controlled more than $115 million in Florida tax-exempt real estate with the companies collecting about $19 million in lease payments. Many of the charter schools paid rents well above expected rates. Academica not only benefited from renting real estate it owned, it also sold payroll, employer services, construction services, equipment leasing and school services to the schools.

Considering the complicated web of conflicts of interest and raw profiteering, one would think that Academica would have been scaled back. Not at all. Deep-pocket contributions to Florida lawmakers have shielded Academica and other for-profit CMOs from regulations that inhibit their ability to make a profit off taxpayer funds. And then there are the legislators who are profiting from charter schools.

Until 2016, Academica’s closest ally in the capital was Fernando Zulueta’s brother-in-law, [former Florida House Rep.] Erik Fresen. Fresen, a former lobbyist for Academica, served as chairman of the House Education Appropriations even while working as a consultant for a firm called Civica which had contracts with Academica schools.

During his eight years in the legislature, Fresen never bothered to file his taxes, resulting in a 60-day prison sentence after he left office.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

National Charter School Conference Honors Its Heroes

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2019 //
71

One of our readers and frequent commenters—Joe Nathan— was elected to the Charter School Hall of Fame and will be honored at the National Charter Schools Conference. Joe helped to write the first charter law in the nation in Minnesota. He and Ted Kolderie ensured that charters would be deregulated and would not confirm to Albert Shanker’s template on unionized schools approved only by local school districts. Joe continues to insist that charters are “progressive,” even though their most important funders are the Walton Family Foundation (which funds Joe) and their biggest cheerleaders are the rightwing ALEC and Betsy DeVos.

Charters are in the midst of an existential crisis right now after years of boasting about unlimited growth. That growth has stalled, as Democrats distance themselves from charters. A backlash against charters and privatization is in full swing.

Part of that backlash stems from the daily drumbeat of charter scandals, especially the recent indictment of 11 people connected to an $80 million scam in California.

Here is the program of the National Charter Schools Conference.

NCSC will honor not only Joe, but Ferdinand Zulueta, who runs one of the largest for-profit charter chains in Florida, called Academica. The Zulueta Family has amassed a real estate fortune of more than $100 million, thanks to their business acumen and public funds.
National Charter Schools Conference

We are bummed you couldn’t make it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get a little taste of Vegas during the 2019 National Charter Schools Conference (NCSC19)! We will be livestreaming all general sessions and happenings on the Charter Talks stage.

Tune in on our Facebook page for these sessions:

Monday, July 1

Opening General Session (9:30-10:30 a.m. PT): We’re thrilled to welcome back Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, back to the main stage at NCSC19! National Alliance President & CEO Nina Rees will kick-off and lead the first plenary session of NCSC19 with her annual State of the Movement address encouraging us all to share our stories.

And, finally, don’t miss a special guest introduce one of the 2019 Charter School Hall of Fame inductees, Fernando Zulueta, president of Academica!

Charter Talks (11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. PT): Back for a third year, presenters will share a 15-minute compelling presentation that shares a big idea, is a tech demo, delves into an issue, or shares a small idea with a big impact. These Charter Talks pack a punch, so come ready to learn a lot in a small amount of time from interactive, engaging presenters!

  • 11:15 a.m. The Fight for the Best Charter Public Schools in the Nation – Cara Stillings Candal, Pioneer Institute
  • 11:30 a.m. The Life and Times of an Independent Charter School Operator – India Ford, T-Squared Honors Academy
  • 11:45 a.m. College for All: A Personal Odyssey – Robert Lane, Southland College Prep HS

Recording of The 8 Black Hands Podcast (3-4:30 p.m. PT): For the first time ever, we will have a live recording of two podcasts on-site, starting with The 8 Black Hands Podcast. The podcast from four black men (Ray Ankrum, Charles Cole, Sharif El-Mekki, and Chris Stewart) engages in passionate discussions about educating Black minds in a country that has perpetually failed them. Don’t miss the live recording of this powerful podcast!

Tuesday, July 2

Recording of Academica Media’s Charter School Superstars Podcast (10 a.m.-12 p.m. PT): The second live podcast recording at NCSC19 will feature a Q&A session with big players in the charter school movement on the Academic Media podcast.

Unleashing Opportunity and Creativity with Computer Science (12:15-1 p.m. PT): Hadi Partovi, founder of Code.org and creator of the global Hour of Code campaign, talks about the importance of teaching computer science as part of the core academic curriculum in grades K-12, introducing creativity to the classroom, approaches to diversity in computer science, and implementation challenges in schools.

Second General Session and Charter School Rally (3:15-4:30 p.m. PT): The National Alliance is pleased to have Hadi Partovi as our keynote speaker during Tuesday’s general session. Romy Drucker, deputy director of K-12 Education at the Walton Family Foundation and co-founder of The 74, will also give remarks. The General Session will close with a Charter Schools Rally encouraging us all to speak up on behalf of the nation’s 3.2 million charter school students, led by Dr. Howard Fuller, Institute for the Transformation of Learning; Keri Rodrigues, Massachusetts Parents United; and Myrna Casterjón, California Charter Schools Association.

Wednesday, July 3

Closing Session (9-10 a.m. PT): During the closing session of NCSC19, we will be recognizing two more 2019 Charter School Hall of Fame inductees: Joe Nathan, Ph.D., director of the Center for School Change, and Dr. Margaret Fortune, president and CEO of Fortune School. Clifton Taulbert, president of the Freemount Corporation and author of Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored, will be delivering our last keynote session of NCSC19 with his talk on the charter of community—a fitting end to the conference. Kendall Massett, executive director of Delaware Charter School Network and vice chair of the State Leaders Council, will lead the final session.

Don’t forget to follow the conversation throughout the conference on Twitter with #NCSC19!

 

While technology is great, everything is so much better in person—and you can still register onsite at Mandalay Bay. We’d love to have you!

National Alliance for Public Charter Schools   1425 K Street  Suite 900  Washington,  DC   20005   USA
Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Deregulation, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Peter Greene: DeVos Puts Profits Over Students (Are You Surprised?)

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2019 //
10

 

Peter Greene writes here about Betsy DeVos’s recent decision to roll back Obama-era regulations intended to protect students against predatory for-profit colleges. 

Sadly, this is what we have come to expect from a Secretary of Education who is more interested in protecting the free market than protecting students against fraud.

Greene writes that DeVos rolled back

the Obama-era requirement that such schools either show that their graduates actually land jobs, or the school would lose access to all that sweet sweet federal money. That was a powerful piece of leverage, because the for-profit colleges focus on veterans and poor folks with the result that a great deal of the for profit college revenue stream comes from the feds, who loan to the students and pay off the schools, guaranteeing that the for-profits get paid and that the students are in hock to the feds.

Rolling back Obama-era protections is problematic because the Obama administration itself did a super-lousy job of riding herd on these predatory schools. At one point, having announced that they were now by golly going to clamp down those outfits, they turned around and bailed out one of the worst. Then, when that outfit collapsed anyway, the feds let them be sold off to a debt-collection agency.

It was after all that foolishness that the administration finally implemented a gainful employment rule. This was also followed by  students scammed by the for-profit agitating to be released from their debts. The Department of Justice requested that the Department of Education simply release the portion of that debt that they held; they refused.

All of that happened before Trump ever descended the escalator to unleash havoc on US politics; it’s only fair to note that this is, in many ways, a mess that DeVos inherited and which the Obama administration never exactly showed signs of fixing.

Last week, DeVos was sued–again–by a boatload of students stranded in massive debt. The student position is that they were defrauded and their loans should be forgiven.

DeVos’s position about loan forgiveness has been to simply pretend to lose all the paperwork and never process any of the requests to have loans erased. Having ignored the rules for two years, DeVos last year tried to get rid of them, and this week she finally did it.

Hundreds of thousands of students who were defrauded by predatory for-profit colleges are on their own. Shameful.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Corruption, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Higher Education

Jan Resseger: Florida’s Education Disaster

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2019 //
10

 

In this post, Jan Resseger surveys the war against public schools in Florida.

Sue Legg summarized the abject failure of Jeb Bush’s A+ Plan here.

The drive to privatize public schools was masterminded by Jeb Bush, with the help of Betsy DeVos, a compliant Republican Legislature (including some who own or operate charter schools), and a zest to give public money to entrepreneurs and grifters.

Asshe points out, recent legislation requires school districts to share their tax levies with charter schools over which they have no control.

Privatization and school choice are rooted in the desire for profit and segregation.

Despite Jeb Bush’s propaganda campaign, his A+ Plan deserves an F-.

Bush, that educational genius, invented the idea of labeling schools with a single letter.

Floridians now treat school grades as normal, but only 15 states require them, mostly low-performing. states. 

I have said it before and I was say it again: School grades are stupid. They are idiotic. Under Bloomberg as mayor, NYC had school grades for a few years. They were meaningless. The public school in my Brooklyn neighborhood was rated A one year; the Mayor and Joel Klein made a ceremonial visit to the school to congratulate the principal and staff. The next year it got a grade of F. Nothing had changed. Same principal, same staff.

If your child came home with a report card that had only one letter, you would be incensed. Why then should anyone accept a single letter grade for an institution with hundreds of staff and students and multiple programs?

School grades deserve an F. A truly dumb idea. No state should use them.

Education in Florida is a mess that is designed to benefit privateers and harm public schools.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, Florida, For-Profit, Privatization

Peter Greene: How to Make a Profit from Non-Profit Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2019 //
8

 

We have recently heard from political candidates who claim they oppose “for-profit charter schools” but support “non-profit charter schools.”

What they don’t know is that this is a distinction without a difference. Many “non-profit charter schools” are managed by for-profit EMOs (Education Management Organizations). Some are theoretically “non-profit” but pocket big money on their lease agreements (paying exorbitant sums to lease their space from a real estate company who is owned by the charter owner).

Peter Greene explains here how non-profits make a profit. It is legal graft, in which entrepreneurs figure out how to profit from taxpayers’ money intended for students and teachers.

His article originally appeared in Forbes.

He writes:

There is such a thing as a business that specializes in charter schools and real estate. In some states, the government will help finance a real estate development if it’s a charter school, and in general developers have noted an abundance of cash. Though, as one charter real estate loan bond financier told the Wall Street Journal, “There’s a ton of capital coming into the industry. The question is: Does it know what it’s doing?” Many states have found a problem with charters that lease their buildings from their own owners as well.

Why such interest in charter real estate? One reason: the Clinton-eraCommunity Tax Relief Act of 2000 made it possible for funds that invested in charter schools to double their money in seven years. And the finance side can become so convoluted that, as Bruce Baker lays out here, the taxpayers can end up paying for a building twice– and the building still ends up belonging to the charter company.

Management Companies

Once you’ve set up your nonprofit charter school, hire yourself as a for-profit charter management organization. Over the last decade, there have been numerous examples of this arrangement, sometimes called a “sweeps contract,” where the charter school hands as much as 95% of its revenue off to a for-profit management organization. As with real estate, there have been instances where the school’s assets (books, furniture, computers, etc) have been ruled to be the property of the management company— so even if the school tanks, the organizers walk away with assets they can cash in.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Hoax, Privatization

DeVos Hires Advocate for For-Profit Colleges to Oversee Higher Education

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2019 //
13

 

Add this item to the Department of Unbelievable.

Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has hired an advocate of for-profit colleges to oversee higher education for the federal government. DeVos, of course, is known to have invested in for-profit education.

Depending on whom you ask, Diane Auer Jones has returned to the Education Department with either a mission or a vengeance…

Now, as the chief architect of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s higher education agenda, Ms. Jones is leading the charge to overhaul the accreditation system, and, to critics, revive the fortunes of for-profit organizations that operate low-quality education programs that have a track record of shortchanging students and taxpayers.

Jones is in charge of writing new rules for accrediting agencies that oversee higher education.

 

 

Categories Betsy DeVos, Education Industry, For-Profit, Higher Education

Ohio: More Charter Scandals Running on STEAM

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2019 //
4

Bill Phillis writes about Ohio’s connection to the biggest charter school heist in history (so far):

 

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More about the STEAM charters that have connections with the individuals indicted in California for an $80 million charter fraud
Five STEAM charters were “licensed” to operate in Ohio. Two of them, sponsored by Ohio Council of Community Schools, closed after a short period (2 years for one and 4 years for the other.)
Three STEAM charters are still in business as follows:
·       STEAM Academy of Warrensville Heights sponsored by Ohio Council of Community Schools
·       STEAM Academy of Akron sponsored by the Buckeye Community Hope Foundation
·       STEAM Academy of Warren sponsored by the Ohio Department of Education
Three of 11 individuals indicted in California for an $80 million charter fraud case have direct connections to the STEAM charter business enterprise in Ohio.
Other Ohio charter operations have been connected to charter operators indicted in other states. Several months ago some charter operators indicted for charter fraud in Florida had Ohio charter connections. The deregulated charter environment attracts people that relish the possibility of a quick buck.
The Ohio Department of Education and the two other sponsors should initiate an investigation into the operation of STEAM charters in Ohio.
William L. Phillis | Ohio Coalition for Equity & Adequacy of School Funding | 614.228.6540| ohioeanda@sbcglobal.net| www.ohiocoalition.org
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Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization
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