Archives for category: Fraud
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Arizona: Parents Use Voucher Money for Personal Purchases, Not Education

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2018 //
23

Arizona’s State Auditor identified more than $700,000 in voucher money that was mis-spent for cosmetics, music, movies, clothing, sports apparel, and other personal items. Some even tried to withdraw cash with their state-issued debit cards. The state has not recovered any of the money. The legislature passed a bill to expand the voucher program, which gives parents a debit card for their e Peres, to every student in the state. Auditing will be even more difficult. Millions will be wasted. And many of the state’s children will go without an education.

On November 6, Arizonans will vote on whether to give a debit card to every parent in the state. If you don’t want universal vouchers, vote NO on Prop 305.

The Arizona Republic reports:


Arizona parents have made fraudulent purchases and misspent more than $700,000 in public money allocated by the state’s school-voucher style program, and state officials have recouped almost none of that money, a new Auditor General report has found.

The findings are the latest blow to a program that Republicans have touted as a model for school choice that has been replicated nationwide, but has faced serious questions about lax financial oversight.

The audit, released Oct. 25, found the state Department of Education, charged with administering and regulating the program, repeatedly failed to flag accounts at high risk for fraud.

That allowed parents whose children were enrolled in the Empowerment Scholarship Account program to make numerous improper purchases on state-issued debit cards, even after the accounts should have been frozen or closed.

The program began as a way to help parents of children with special needs find the educational services best suited to their kids. In 2017, Republicans in the Legislature expanded the program to make all of the state’s 1.1 million public-school students eligible to use tax money for private school tuition.

A grassroots group of parents and public education advocates who oppose the expansion collected tens of thousands of signatures to refer the law to the ballot as Proposition 305…

A “yes” vote on Proposition 305 keeps the newly expanded program in place. A “no” vote rolls back the 2017 expanded law….

The Auditor General found some parents used the ESA cards for transactions at beauty supply retailers, sports apparel shops and computer technical support providers. Auditors also found repeated attempts by some parents to withdraw cash from the cards, which is not allowed and can result in getting kicked off the program.

The audit also concluded education officials did not properly monitor parents’ spending, even after questionable purchases were denied, including on music albums deemed noneducational, Blu-ray movies, cosmetics and a transaction at a seasonal haunted house.

Categories Arizona, Education Reform, Fraud, Vouchers

Ohio: Before You Vote, Watch This 3-Minute Video

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2018 //
6

This video is about the ECOT scandal, which siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars from Ohio’s public schools.

When you vote, think about the politicians who let this happen.

Categories For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

California: The Out Of Town Billionaires Who Want to Buy and Privatize Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2018 //
22

California has more charter schools than any other state. In part, this is because Governor Jerry Brown is a charter school ally, having opened two charters when he was mayor of Oakland. This great progressive governor had a blind spot about charters and ignored the proliferation of charters that were fraudulent and openly embezzled money from taxpayers to fatten their own wallets.

The study linked below lists the billionaires who bought the LAUSD election in 2017.

These are the same billionaires who are now bankrolling Marshall Tuck in his bid to become State Superintendent of Public Instruction. In that role, he would manage the growth of the charter industry and the decline of public schools. This is exactly the goal of Betsy DeVos.

A vote for Tony Thurmond is a vote to stop privatization and to improve public schools.

See the entire report on “out of town billionaires” here.

Learn the names of those who want to purchase the public sector and hand it over to pother entrepreneurs.

Will the voters be hoaxed?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, California, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Fraud

Mike Pence’s Fake Rabbi Was a Defrocked Fake Rabbi: A Fake Fake Rabbi

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2018 //
39

We will never find out how low they will go.

This one, at least, is funny.

Mike Pence held a rally in Michigan. He wanted to show his respect to the victims of the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. The “rabbi” invited to speak was not Jewish. He was a convert to Christianity and part of a group called “Jews for Jesus,” which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity.

But now it turns out that he was defrocked as a “rabbi.”

He was not only a fake rabbi, he was a fake fake rabbi.

There was a burst of semi-bewildered outrage this week when Mike Pence, the Vice President of the United States, attempted to pay respects to the 11 Jewish victims of an explicitly anti-Semitic attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue two days earlier by appearing with a fake rabbi at his rally in Michigan on Monday. The “rabbi” in question, Loren Jacobs, subscribes to Messianic Judaism, a belief system that sees him spend most of his time essentially trying to convert Jews to Christianity. After all, if you think Jesus was the Messiah, you sound a lot like a Christian, and mainstream Jewish groups do not recognize Messianic Judaism as a Jewish faith.

It was, in general, a gesture of profound ignorance and disrespect. Jacobs, who reportedly attended “the Moody Bible Institute, a conservative Christian institute in Chicago,” invoked Jesus by name in his rally oratory and asked God Himself to back the Republican Party in the midterms. All God’s children, and all that.

But the tragicomedy only continued Wednesday, when NBC News came out with a stupefying new layer to the story. Jacobs is not, in fact, just a Fake Rabbi. He’s a Fake Fake Rabbi, which somehow doesn’t make him a real rabbi.

“Loren Jacobs, who was invited onstage by Vice President Mike Pence to speak at a rally in Michigan for a GOP congressional candidate, was defrocked 15 years ago, according to a spokeswoman for the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations.”

Whatever Pence’s intentions, he certainly did not pay respect to the 11 Jews who were massacred in Pittsburgh, who were real Jews.

Categories Fake, Fraud, Pence

Denis Smith: The Five Most Common Words in Charterdom

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2018 //
17

Denis Smith worked for many years for the Ohio Department of Education. When he retired, he was employed in the office that oversees charter schools. He has written many articles about the scams and frauds that charter operators get away with in Ohio, as well as some that they don’t get away with.

He wrote me recently to say that the five most common words in charterdom are:

“The defendant will please rise.”

Isn’t it interesting that the pro-charter candidates, no matter which school district or city or state they live in, do not admit they are pro-charter.

Apparently the public is catching on, and it is not a good thing to admit that you want more charters.

Suddenly, everyone—even the execrable governor’s Scott Walker and Doug Ducey of AZ—call them selves “the Education Governor” and boast about (lie about) have they have helped public schools. Don’t believe them.

Any candidate funded by the Koch brothers, The Walton Family, Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, or Michael Bloomberg is a Pro-Charter Candidate. They are coming to privatize your public school and replace it with a national corporate chain school.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization

Stephen Dyer: The ECOT Scandal Was Even Worse Than We Knew

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2018 //
17

Stephen Dyer of Innovation Ohio, a lawyer and former Ohio legislator, reports that the ECOT scandal is worse than previously known.

He writes:

New state funding reports indicate that ECOT had nearly 8,000 fake students in its last full year of operation. According to the Ohio Department of Education, its last year of operation, ECOT couldn’t account for about 20 percent of its students. However, the monthly finance reports ODE puts out suggests the number may have been closer to 55 percent.

First of all, the last year ECOT was fully operational was in the 2016-2017 school year. So I’m using that as a baseline for comparison.

In the 16-17 school year, ECOT received $103.6 million for 14,208 students. This year, it’s zero dollars. A lot of news stories have tried to figure out what happened to all those students. One of the challenges appears to be that they may not have actually had all those students….

ECOT graduated about 2,000 students in 2017, but even subtracting out those students from the 7,791 “missing” students means 40 percent of the ECOT total is unaccounted for — about double the rate that was found by ODE.

So there seems to be something going on here.

I would sure like to know how many, if any of the 7,791 students ECOT claimed it had in 2016-2017 that aren’t in charter schools anymore were actually ever there to begin with. Because it looks like the state’s 20 percent assessment may be significantly lower than first thought.

Follow him as he connects the dots.

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, Fraud, Ohio, Scandals, Virtual Charter Schools

Jan Resseger: The Good News About Resistance to Fake Reform

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2018 //
11

Jan Resseger sums up the many reasons to be optimistic about resistance to corporate education Reform.

Among them are the teacher walkouts this spring.

And much more.

The Reformers are no longer making grandiose claims. The evidence is in. They have no secret sauce. Just money. Lots of it.

Summary: Democracy beats billionaires.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud

Disgrace in San Antonio as Charter Vultures Destroy Public Education

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2018 //
27

This article by Tom Ultican tells the sordid story of rich elites who have cynically decided to destroy public education in San Antonio.

They have cumulatively raised at least $200 million to attract charter operators to San Antonio, a figure which includes funding by the U.S. Department of Education and local plutocrats. The lead figure is a very wealthy woman named Victoria Rico, who sits on the boards of multiple charter chains. Rico and her friends have decided to re-engineer and privatize public education in San Antonio. Rico is working closely with Dan Patrick, the State’s lieutenant governor, who loves vouchers, hates public schools, and was the Rush Limbaugh of Texas before winning election to the State Senate.

Was there a vote taken in San Antonio? No. Was the public asked whether they wanted to abandon public education? Of course not. The titans don’t believe in democracy. They know what’s best for other people’s children.

They have hired a superintendent, Pedro Martinez, who was “trained” by the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy, which encourages school closures, privatization, and top-down management. Martinez has worked in school districts but was never a teacher or a principal and apparently knows nothing about pedagogy. Martinez is a member of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, which promotes privatization and technology in the classroom. He is also a big fan of the faux Relay “Graduate School of Education,” which specializes in charter teachers training new teachers for charter schools and has no professors or research programs.

As a native Texan, this whole deal made me physically ill. It stinks to high heaven. Everyone facilitating this private takeover of public schools should be ashamed of themselves.

They are not “doing it for the children.” They are doing it for their own egos. There are more failing charter schools than failing public schools. What right do they have to destroy the public schools of San Antonio? Who elected them? They have won plaudits from Betsy DeVos, the Koch brothers, and ALEC. They should be held accountable for their assault on democracy. I noticed that the Texas philanthropist Charles Butt refused to participate in this unholy cabal; he prefers to invest his fortune in supporting public schools.

I take this opportunity to name Victoria Rico, Pedro Martinez, and all their rightwing enablers to the Wall of Shame.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Chiefs for Change, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Education Industry, Fraud, San Antonio, School Choice, Texas, U.S. Department of Education, Wall of Shame

Jan Resseger: ECOT Made Charters an Election Year Issue in Ohio

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2018 //
4

For years, the politicians in Ohio took campaign contributions from the charter industry, let the charter lobbyists write the law regulating them, and ignored their frauds.

But the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow went bankrupt, and the frauds could no longer be ignored.

Jan Resseger writes here that the ECOT scandal has turned charters into an election issue. This is good news for anyone who cares about accountability and transparency for public funds.

The surprise really ought to be that the 17-year, billion dollar ripoff of tax dollars by the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) has remained among high profile election issues in this 2018 election season. After all, when USA Today profiled 28 American cities which have not yet recovered from the 2008 Recession, 9 of them were in Ohio: Warren, Youngstown, Mansfield, Marion, Lorain, Middletown, Sandusky, Akron and Dayton. Besides the economy, the opioid crisis is devastating parts of the state and healthcare more generally is an issue.

But the ECOT scandal hasn’t died as an issue on voters’ minds. Partly this is due to clever work by public education advocates and Democrats. When ECOT’s property was auctioned off, an anonymous purchaser paid $152 in taxes and fees to buy the costume of ECOT’s mascot, Eddy the Eagle. You can watch Eddy on twitter, @EddyEagleECOT, traveling to political events across the state carrying his “Ask Me About Mike DeWine” sign. DeWine, running as Ohio’s Republican candidate for governor, has been Ohio’s attorney general since 2010 but only filed a lawsuit to recover tax dollars lost to ECOT last winter as the school was being shut down.

Because of the way Ohio distributes state aid and the way its charter school law works, over its 17-year life, ECOT ate up local school operating levy dollars in addition to state aid. A tech-savvy opponent of Ohio’s entrenched Republican majority has now set up https://www.kidsnotcorruption.com/ , an interactive website which describes ECOT: “ECOT THE SCANDAL: Wondering just how bad is the ECOT scandal? Well, you should be angry because ECOT is the biggest taxpayer ripoff in Ohio history and Republicans are responsible. Sadly, it’s our kids who were hurt.” At this website it is possible to track how much each Ohio school district has lost to ECOT over the years: for example, from Cleveland’s schools, $ 39,405,981; from Columbus’ schools, $591,000,000; from Cincinnati’s schools, $ 14,648,988.

Several local school districts have now initiated legal action on their own against ECOT to recover lost funds, and three other school districts so far have filed in court to argue that they do not want Attorney General Mike DeWine, who earlier this year filed to recover funds from ECOT, representing them. The Dayton Daily News‘ Josh Sweigart reports: “Springfield City Schools is joining Dayton Public Schools and the Logan-Hocking School District in arguing in court that they don’t want the state representing them in getting money from ECOT. The school districts argue that Attorney General Mike DeWine—the Republican candidate for governor—is soft on charter schools and has received campaign donations from ECOT founder Bill Lager… DPS and Springfield are both working with the Cleveland-based law firm Cohen, Rosenthal and Kramer. The firm is working on a contingency fee, meaning it gets paid only if the districts succeed… (T)he districts are skeptical that DeWine would be as aggressive as their attorney.”

William Phillis, executive director of the Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding, notes, in his October 11, Daily E-Mail, that Attorney General Mike DeWine has filed a memorandum opposing the intervention of local school districts in this case on their own because their interest is “substantively remote from the claims” in the Attorney General’s lawsuit. Phillis notes that William Lager, ECOT’s founder and operator has made “essentially the same arguments” to oppose the intervention by specific school districts on their own behalf. Phillis comments: “It is curious that both the Plaintiff and Defendant in this case are on the same page. That accord might validate the importance of intervention by the districts. If they agree on this matter, maybe they will agree on more substantial issues.”

On October 8, the Cleveland Plain Dealer endorsed Cleveland attorney, Steve Dettelbach for attorney general in the fall election over his opponent Dave Yost, the current Republican state auditor. Yost was elected to that post in November, 2010. He has been accused of moving too slowly against ECOT, and the Plain Dealer‘s endorsement reflects this concern: “There is a tiebreaker in this decision however, and it comes in the form of the long-running ECOT… scandal that has hung like a millstone around the neck of a number of Republicans on the Ohio ballot this year who took large campaign contributions from those connected to the now-shuttered online school. That includes Yost, who announced he’s given more than $29,000 in ECOT-related contributions to charity but denies the campaign donations impacted his actions… But the fact remains that the whistleblower’s warning came in 2014 and Yost’s office did not start investigating with gusto until 2016.”

Read it all.

The politicians eagerly accepted ECOT’s invitation to be its commencement speaker. Even Jeb Bush flew to Ohio to testify to ECOT’s awesomeness.

Every politician in Ohio who facilitated and ignored this massive rip-off of taxpayer’s dollars and waste of kids’s lives should be voted out.

Mike DeWine was State Attorney General abd ignored the ECOT fraud; he is now running for Governor.

Dave Yost was State Auditor and ignored the fraud until it blew up in his face; he is running for Attorney General.

They are responsible for the state’s failure to monitor ECOT and for the favorable treatment ECOT received. Voters should hold them accountable for this massive fraud.

Categories Accountability, Bush, Jeb, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Virtual Charter Schools

New Mexico: Charter Founder Sentenced to Five Years in Prison for Stealing Millions

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2018 //
5

Scott Glasrud received a sentence of five years for theft of millions of dollars from his charter chain.

After more than five hours in court Friday morning, a judge has sentenced the founder of Southwest Learning Centers to five years in prison.

Members of the Southwest Learning Center were happy to hear the judge’s sentence Friday.

The president of one of the schools tells News 13 he still does not believe five years is enough for all the damage Scott Glasrud has done.

“After 14 years of doing this, I don’t know if he knows another way of life. Personally, I don’t feel that he’s learned a lesson at all,” says Larry Kennedy, President of SAMS Academy.

Glasrud pled guilty to stealing millions of dollars from the school and state to feed his lavish lifestyle.

He used the money to buy expensive cars like a Maserati, boats and a $10,000 square-foot home.

Last year, he took a plea deal on charges of theft, fraud and lying to investigators that would put him behind bars for four to five years.

During his sentencing Friday morning, no cameras were allowed inside the courtroom, but Glasrud gave a tearful testimony saying he was sorry for what he has done and has no excuse for his behavior, except that he was greedy.

Larry Kennedy, the president of SAMS Academy, says he did not buy Glasrud’s act.

“I felt he was putting on a show. He put on a show for the schools for 14 years. He’s very good at it. I really feel that’s what he did,” says Kennedy.

Categories Accountability, Albuquerque, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, New Mexico, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »