Archives for category: Fraud
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

John Oliver: The Ultimate Takedown of Alex Jones

By dianeravitch
August 27, 2017 //
7

Get a cup of coffee and sit down. John Oliver dissects Alex Jones, the rightwing provocateur who makes money saying insane things. Jones is the talk-show host who pushed the outrageous claim that the Sandy Hook massacre never happened, that it was staged by the federal government to promote gun control.

Oliver totally demolishes Jones’ credibility. Jones complained that his critics take his words out of context, so Oliver shows his remarks in full, in context. They don’t get any better.

This segment demonstrates the power of humor to inform and the power of evil to mislead.

Categories Fake News, Fraud, Humor

Leonie Haimson: Test Scores in New York State Are Meaningless, Again

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2017 //
28

Leonie Haimson assesses the latest test scores from New York. New York is still using the Common Core, but with a new name, so of course the majority of students in the state “failed,” which was the purpose of the Common Core standards, to make public schools look bad so that privatization would be easier to sell to the public.

Leonie has something that no one in the New York State Education Department has: a historical memory, clear knowledge of the frequent changes in cut scores, constant manipulation of the data.

Leonie writes:

“The NY state and city test scores were released this week. Proficiency rates statewide increased again though by a smaller amount than last year. In English Language Arts, the percentage of students in grades 3-8 who scored at proficient levels increased by an average of 1.9 percentage points; from 37.9% in 2016 to 39.8%. In math, the students who scored at proficiency rose to 40.2%, up 1.1 points from 29.1% last year.

“In NYC the increases were a little larger: a gain of more than two points in ELA proficiency to 40.6% and 1.4 points to 37.8% proficiency in math.

“Commissioner Elia, Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina claimed that the increase in proficiency since 2013 was strong evidence that our students and schools are making progress.

“Yet the reality is that the trends over the last 15 years have not matched any of the trends on the more reliable national test called the NAEPs, for either NYC or the state as a whole.

“In fact, the NY State Education Department has appeared unable since 2002 to produce a reliable test and score it consistently enough to allow one to assess if there’s been any sort of improvement in our schools. Instead, Commissioners and their staff have repeatedly changed cut scores and set proficiency rates to make political points.

“There are many ways to show increases in proficiency — a metric notoriously easy to manipulate — including making the tests easier, shorter, giving them untimed, and/or changing the scoring by lowering the raw scores to scale scores or the cut scores need for proficiency. The state has used all these tricks over time.”

Read it all. She nails the fraud perpetrated by the state and ignored by journalists.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Education Reform, Fraud, New York, Standardized Testing

Ohio: ECOT Finds Another Profitable Gig

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2017 //
7

Peter Greene reports that ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) has found a way to escape its current woes and keep on collecting state money.

Having attracted the ire of the state for inflating enrollment, having lost its court battle to hang on to its profits for producing low-quality education, having been labeled the school with the lowest graduation rate in the nation, what’s an entrepreneur to do?

Go into the business of dropout recovery!

What a clever idea: First you create the dropouts, then you remediate them. Or claim to.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Fraud, Ohio, Privatization, Virtual Charter Schools

Florida: Charter School Closes, Leaving Behind Academic Failure and Mountains of Debt

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2017 //
5

Another day, another charter scandal. This one is in Lauderhill, Florida, in Broward County.

“LAUDERHILL, Fla. – The Paramount Charter School was, by all accounts, a disaster for its young students, but now that the publicly financed, F-graded K-8 school is closed, there is a big question that remains: Where did the money go?

In all, taxpayers coughed up more than $3 million for the charter school in Lauderhill, which promised a first-rate education for its predominantly financially disadvantaged students.

“Now American Charter Development, the Utah-based charter school company that was Paramount’s landlord and primary investor, alleges it lost well over $1 million during the two years the school was in operation and suspects public funds were misappropriated.

“In our view, there’s been fraud,” Rob Giordano, senior vice president of business development at American Charter Development, told Local 10 News.

“Giordano said the company conducted its own examination of the school’s finances and found that, in addition to a nonprofit company that had been set up to run the school, called the Advancement of Education in Scholars Corp., there was a second for-profit company formed with an almost identical name.

“Giordano said his firm obtained Paramount bank documents showing large sums of money going to the for-profit company.

“It was tens of thousands of dollars in excess of $30,000 a month going to this shell organization,” Giordano said.”

Not to worry. This failed “public charter school” will be replaced by another. The taxpayers’ money? It’s gone, along with the time that children lost in this school.

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

Alan Singer: How Charter Schools Buy Political Support

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2017 //
12

Alan Singer pulls together the threads of charter school corruption across several states in this post. The corruption is pay-to-play. Give money to a politician and turn him or her into your advocate. Florida presents a different twist on the story: charter owners and employees and family members are elected legislators who shamelessly vote to enrich themselves. In Ohio, charter owners contribute to legislators who then turn on the money spigot and shower their benefactors with riches. In New York, Governor Cuomo accepts millions from billionaires who love entrepreneurial schools and hate public schools–and Voila!, Cuomo becomes a charter champion.

“In Arizona charter schools routinely receive exemptions from state oversight requirements, despite a history of misusing tax dollars. They also receive over 25% of state education funds, although they only enroll 15% of Arizona’s school age students. The right-wing Republican governor of Arizona was accused by the even further right-wing elected Superintendent of Arizona schools of establishing a “shadow faction of charter school operators” committed to “moving funds from traditional public schools to charter schools.”

“The reasons for the lack of accountability and the disproportionate state funding are examined in a report by Arizonians for Charter School Accountability. Among other things, they found that Benjamin Franklin, a for-profit charter school, is owned by Arizona State Representative Eddie Farnsworth (R). In 2016, the charter school spent $155,106 more on facilities than on classroom instruction. It leases its schools from LBE Investments, a for-profit real estate company also owned by Farnsworth.

“Arizona has a state board that grants charter status to “qualifying applicants” and is supposed to “oversee charter schools.” The President of the board is a political lobbyist who defines her role as promoting school “choice” and “sponsoring charter schools,” not regulating them. The Board Vice-President is founder of a charter high school. Other members include the operator of a charter school, a charter school teacher, a lawyer for charter schools, a building company CEO who also serves on the Board of Directors for the local Teach for America chapter, and the CEO of a charter school network.”

For the links, open the article.

In Atlanta, teachers were sentenced to prison under the RICO statute (racketeering) for cheating on tests and are out on appeal.

When, if ever, will public officials round up the criminals who are engaged in buying influence for the enrichment of charter schools? In too many states, the public officials who should enforce the law are charter operators or receive millions from charter operators. The charter industry starts to look like the Tweed Ring. Will it clean up its own act or is public corruption now woven into its fabric?

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

Peter Greene: The Dirty Secret of the Charter Industry

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2017 //
21

Peter Greene identifies the dirty secret of the charter industry. Two words. Real estate.

In Ohio, a charter lobbyist wrote the charter law for the state. When a charter operator insisted that he owned everything the charter bought with public money, the courts upheld him. It was in the law.

In Pennsylvania, charter schools own the property where the charter school is housed, and they charge rent. They charge rents above the market rate. The state doesn’t ask questions. The state doesn’t even notice that the charter operator owns the property and pays himself rent.

Greene offers a few examples from across the nation, and he didn’t even include Florida, where the charter scams are commonplace:

Carl Paladino, the notorious bad boy of the Buffalo school board, has made a mint in charter-related real estate deals. Not only does Paladino build the charters and lease them, but he builds the new apartment buildings near the shiny new school– a one-man gentrification operation. And he sits on the public school board, where he can vote to approve and support the growth of charters.

That’s not even the most astonishing sort of charter real estate scam. A 2015 report from the National Education Policy Center outlined what might be the worst. Take a public school building, built and paid for with public tax dollars. That building is purchased by a charter school, which is using public tax dollars. At the end of this, you’ve got a building that the public has paid for twice– but does not now own.

In February of this year, researchers Preston Green, Bruce Baker and Joseph Oluwole dropped the provocative notion that charter schools may be the new Enron. It’s a lot to take in, but Steven Rosenfeld pulled out five takeaways for Alternet, if you’d like a quicker look. But just some little factoids give you a taste. For instance, Imagine Schools take 40% of the money they collect from taxpayers and put that right back into lease agreements. In Los Angeles, owners of a private school leased room on their campus for a charter school that they were also involved in running– then jacked that rent up astronomically.

His article has links. Follow them. This is the most underreported story of the charter world: The big money is in the real estate, not necessarily the students.

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

Another Day, Another Charter Scandal: This One in Ohio

By dianeravitch
August 2, 2017 //
10

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, has been tweeting daily with the subject line: Another Day, Another Charter Scandal.

Here is today’s scandal.

Patrick O’Donnell writes in the Cleveland Plain Dealer:

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cambridge Education Group, the operator of 19 Ohio charter schools and of a new school about to open in Cleveland’s West Park neighborhood, is distancing itself from recent fraud and racketeering charges in Florida against founder Marcus May.

But details are trickling out about how much that alleged fraud may have spread from Florida to the 19 schools Cambridge operates here in Ohio.

And Cambridge and its counterpart in Florida, Newpoint Education Partners – a company that is itself under indictment in that state – have had a tight relationship for several years, beyond just being founded by May.

The school logos in both Ohio and Florida for Cambridge and Newpoint have the same theme, featuring a dark blue circle. Executives have talked openly about the connection. And the two companies have shared some of the same officers at times, including Cambridge owner and President John Stack.

Stack has not been charged in the case. His name does not appear in court filings against May. He was vice president of operations of Newpoint when prosecutors say some of the fraud occurred. And he was “executive director” of Cambridge while prosecutors say money was diverted from schools here in Ohio to businesses May had an interest in.

Keep reading….You can’t tell the players without a scorecard.

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

Ohio: Close Down This Phony “School”!

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2017 //
19

What would you say about a school that had the lowest graduation rate in the nation? What would you say about a school whose owner made millions of dollars from taxpayers while making regular contributions to state legislators and other elected officials? What should happen if that same school was audited by the state and found to have inflated the number of students? What should happen if the auditor determined that the school overcharged the state by $60 million and refuses to repay it? What if the school goes to court to fight the repayment and loses, using taxpayer dollars to advertise its cause?

The Columbus Dispatch reported here on the origins of this lucrative scam.

What should be the consequences for this massive ripoff of students and the public?

The state is allowing it to remain open, continue recruiting students, and pay off its debt a little at a time.

Why is this school still allowed to operate?

If it were a public school, it would have been closed long ago for its poor performance and its defrauding of the taxpayers.

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

SUNY and the Battle Over Teacher Certification

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2017 //
14

The SUNY charter institute oversees 167 charter schools, which it authorized. It doesn’t believe that charter teachers need a traditional certification, the one that other schools in New state must get.

As it happens, SUNY campuses offered teacher education preparing future teachers for their chosen profession and for certification.

The SUNY charter committee is sending a message to its teacher educators that their classes are a waste of time.

Is it wrong to create a shortcut for charter teachers? Shouldn’t all teachers be well prepared? Doesn’t every child deserve a well prepared teacher? If you agree, send an email.

Categories Charter Schools, Fraud, Teacher Education

Arthur Goldstein’s Twitter War Against Smears and Stupidity

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2017 //
31

Arthur Goldstein, veteran teacher of ESL at Francis Lewis High School in New York City, is one of the best teacher bloggers in the city, state, and nation.

He writes here about his disappointment with Neil deGrasse Tyson, after reading his tweet smearing the nation’s public schools. Arthur points out that Tyson is singing Betsy DeVos’s song and playing into the hands of the Flat zearthers he denounces.

Did Tyson notice?

Maybe he will google his name, see this, and respond to Arthur. Someone who is a scientist should be more careful about making blanket statements without checking the evidence.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Fraud
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »