Our reader Christine Langhoff discovered an excellent analysis of the “compact” that the Trump administration has offered to several universities. A “compact” usually refers to an equitable agreement between two parties. The Trump “compact” is a harsh threat: sign or die.
Christine writes:
Here’s UCLA Law professor Joseph Fishkin on the so-called compact the administration want universities to accept.
Any lawyer—really, any careful reader—who makes it through even the first paragraph of the document can see that this is incorrect. The “compact” is quite explicit: Universities that do not sign on to this thing thereby “elect[] to forego federal benefits.” What benefits? Well, that same first paragraph lists quite a few specific “benefits”: “(i) access to student loans, grant programs, and federal contracts; (ii) funding for research directly or indirectly; (iii) approval of student and other visas in connection with university matriculation and instruction; and (iv) preferential treatment under the tax code,” which means 501(c)(3) status. This compact is a “reward” in exactly the same sense that it is “rewarding” to purchase protection from the Mafia. The compact is an open, explicit threat.
It nonetheless does represent a tactical shift on the part of the Trump Administration. The Trump team’s goal has not changed. They want an unprecedented—and flagrantly unconstitutional—degree of government oversight and control over American universities. So far they are having some trouble obtaining it. Their initial strategy, to roll up the sector from the top, starting with Harvard, through bespoke negotiated dealmaking with individual schools, has turned out to be slower going—and I suspect, simply more labor-intensive—than I am guessing they expected. (I use the rollup metaphor to evoke how a monopolist takes over a sector by buying out one firm after another, gaining more leverage over holdouts as they go. So far it has not worked.) Meanwhile, federal district courts have dealt a series of significant blows to the government’s ability to, for example, arbitrarily withdraw federal scientific research grants. So the administration is pivoting to a new tactic, which seems to be to roll up the higher ed sector from what you might call the upper middle. Instead of starting at the very top with the high-stakes confrontation with Harvard and working their way down, the new tactical approach is to start with whichever prestigious schools seem likeliest—for various reasons—to be amenable to the government’s overtures. It is no accident that many of the schools May Mailman’s team first approached about this “compact” have interim presidents, who are inherently weak, sometimes because a prior president was successfully forced out through political agitation by the right.
The new conditions for federal funding the Trump administrationoffered to MIT put the school in a no-win situation, people on the Cambridge campus and throughout academia said Friday: Agree to the federal government’s terms and surrender some academic freedom, or refuse and risk further punishment.
The White House’s proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” — sent to MIT and eight other top-tier universitiesthis week — ties access to federal moneyto a string of conditions that, if agreed to,would effectuate the most substantial changes MIT has seen to dateand fundamentally transform an economic powerhouse of Greater Boston.
The 10-point document asks the list of schools — which also includes Brown and Dartmouth — to cap international student enrollment, freeze domestic tuition rates for five years, and commit to strict definitions of gender.Some of those requests, such as reducing tuition and the number of international students, are popular with many Americans. But others, including one to limit the speech of university employees, strike at the heart of freedom and independence that universities have long prized.
While MIT declined to comment, on campus and in academia, there doesn’t appear to be much inclination to make a deal with the White House.
The offer amounts to “a loyalty oath to the federal government,” said Catherine D’Ignazio, an MIT professor of urban studies and planning.
“They’re asking us to sacrifice science. They’re asking us to sacrifice international students. They’re asking us to sacrifice our trans students. They’re asking us to sacrifice our whole idea of shared governance,” D’Ignazio said. “No amount of money is worth that great long list.”
The mandate also says that universities should transform or abolish “institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” That’s troubling, said Tyler Coward lead counsel for government affairs at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, because it conflates allowing speech with condoning violence.
“This mandate basically forces these institutions to remain silent in order to secure some government benefit,” Coward said. “I think that is a problem, a First Amendment problem.”
MIT is the birthplace for countless startup companies, forms the backbone of Kendall Square, and serves as a first landing place for many students — roughly 30 percent of whom come from abroad — who stay and build careers in Massachusetts.
Federal money plays a key role in seeding all that. Last year, MIT collected $648 million in government funding for sponsored activities, including research, which federal agenciescould simply choose to award elsewhere.
The provisions in the compact, said Sandy Baum, a higher education finance expert with the think tank The Urban Institute, amount to “dramatic requests” of MIT from a dollars-and-cents perspective.
MIT is already bracing for a $300 million reduction in its central budget from the newfound 8 percent tax on its endowment and potential losses of federal science funding that powers much of its massive research arm, university administrators said in a September staff forum. (A recording of the meeting was reviewed by the Globe.)
In the spring, MIT saved roughly $100 million by freezing hiring and instituting a 5 percent cut to department budgets. It plans to close the remaining $200 million gap by terminating some real estate leases and seeking outside private funding for some academic priorities, including climate change, life sciences, and artificial intelligence, according to details shared at the staff forum. Administrators said that they may also withhold merit raises for employees next year.
“We do need to treat the $300 million amount as a permanent burden on the central budget that requires a permanent budgetary solution,” Glen Shor, MIT’s executive vice president and treasurer said at the September meeting. “Even if power at some point changes hands in Washington, we can’t count on these policies being reversed.”
Meanwhile, signing onto the compact could impact the number of international students at MIT, who make up around 10 percent of its undergraduate population — less than the limit set in the agreement. (Around 40 percent of MIT graduate students are from abroad.) Many international students pay full price to attend MIT, which can cost nearly $90,000 between tuition, housing, and other expenses. MIT would also pledge to cover the cost of attendance for all students studying hard sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and biology.
“If [MIT] had to freeze tuition and limit [the] number of international students, that would be a huge hit,” said Baum, the university finance expert.
Multiple MIT student organizations signed a letter Friday asking MIT to “firmly refuse” to sign the document, claiming that “accepting such a compact would effectively destroy the institutional culture of MIT as we know it.”
Nadia Zaragova, a material sciences PhD student and vice president of the graduate student union, said it would give the federal government “undue oversight over what we do here at the university, including our classrooms, what we study, what we research.”
And Governor Maura Healey, who has proposed $400 million in state funding to help make up for lost federal funds to Massachusetts universities, urged MIT to stand strong, describing the White House offer as “yet another attempt by President Trump to silence speech.”
MIT supporters note the university has already taken up some measures pushed by the Trump administration, including winding down its Institute Community and Equity Office and taking disciplinary actions against students — including a commencement speaker — who participate in pro-Palestinian protests.
Indeed, MIT was chosen among the schools who received the compact because they are seen as “good actors,” according to May Mailman, senior adviser for special projects at the White House.
“They have a president who is a reformer or a board that has really indicated they are committed to a higher-quality education,” she said to The Wall Street Journal.
But Ian Hutchinson, an MIT emeritus professor and co-president of its Council of Academic Freedom, said that even those in favor of those moves have sour feelings about the new offer from the administration.
“Many of us on the council think that the modern academy needs to reform and [is] beginning to do so and that the compact has the risk of alienating a large fraction of the faculty,” he said.
Others fear that some professors could leave entirely, should the school sign onto the compact.
A better approach, Hutchinson added, would be if “the government makes clear what it is interested in funding in the way of research and what it is not interested in funding.”
The compact also frames preserving “single-sex spaces” such as bathrooms and locker rooms as necessary for “women’s equality” and stipulates institutions must commit to defining gender “according to reproductive function and biological processes.”
Mila Halgren, an MIT postdoctoral associate, said including such language is an affront to what the values of American higher education should be.
“In a personal capacity, every moment MIT even considers this compact is a betrayal of every marginalized group on campus,” she said. “That MIT did not immediately reject a proposal which defines trans people out of existence is shameful.”
This is nuts. With federal funding, Harvard scientists have produced major breakthroughs in medicine, engineering, and science. To break Harvard, as the administration wants to do, would cripple American innovation.
The Boston Globe reported:
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights on Monday formally recommended barring Harvard University from receiving federal funding, three months after it accused the university of violating civil rights laws by failing to protect Jewish and Israeli students on campus.
In a news release, the office said it would refer Harvard to the office that is responsible for “suspension and debarment decisions” and that it notified Harvard of its right to an administrative hearing. The university has 20 days to notify the office of its decision.…
The 57-page notice relied heavily upon Harvard’s own report on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias that it released earlier this year, which followed high-profile protests at Harvard and other campuses against the war in Gaza in 2023 and 2024.
The Trump administration’s move this week to choke off Harvard University’s access to future federal funding came after a scathing letter from the college accusing the administration of distorting evidence to show that the school violated civil rights laws by allowing antisemitism to persist on campus.
The brewing feud represents an escalation of tensions between Harvard and the administration, which just weeks ago seemed on the verge of agreeing on a deal to keep federal funds flowing to the university.
In a strongly worded, 163-page letter with attachments on Sept. 19, which has not been previously reported, Harvard assailed the government’s findings. The university accused investigators at the Health and Human Services Department of relying on “inaccurate and incomplete facts,” failing to meet a single legal requirement to prove discrimination and drawing sweeping conclusions from a survey of one-half of 1 percent of the student body.
Harvard painted a picture of a chaotic Trump administration rushing to leverage federal power against the university. For instance, it noted that the health department had chided the college for failing to produce certain records. But Harvard’s documents showed that the records in question had been provided in response to a request from the Education Department. Harvard said the health department never asked for those records.
Harvard said the health department’s decision to refer its findings to the Justice Department was “based on a fabricated and distorted interpretation of the record.”
The stark language was a departure from months of mostly measured tones from Harvard as the university has resisted the administration’s pressure campaign to impose President Trump’s political agenda on the nation’s elite colleges.
Mr. Trump and his administration have sought to exert control over who universities can hire, which students they should admit and what subjects should be taught by leveraging huge sums of federal research money. Those moves, which Harvard has maintained violate the college’s First Amendment rights and infringe on the nation’s long-held ideals of academic freedom, are aimed at shifting the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which the administration sees as hostile to conservatives and intent on perpetuating liberalism.
The administration’s reply to Harvard’s letter came on Monday, when the health department initiated a process to cut off Harvard from future federal research funding, which has increasingly become the lifeblood for the nation’s largest private and public colleges. In 2022, the health department accounted for nearly 81 percentof $41.6 billion in federal funding for research into agricultural science, environmental science, public health and other life sciences, according to government records.
President Trump said Tuesday that his administration was close to reaching a multimillion-dollar agreement with Harvard University, which would end a monthslong standoff that had come to symbolize the resistance to the White House’s efforts to reshape higher education.
Harvard, which would become the latest university to strike a deal with the Trump administration, has been seeking an end to a thicket of investigations that the government opened as part of its wide-ranging efforts to bring the university in line with Mr. Trump’s agenda.
“We are in the process of getting very close,” President Trump said in an appearance from the Oval Office. He added that the details were being finalized and said, “They would be paying about $500 million.”
Mr. Trump said that the education secretary, Linda McMahon, was “finishing up the final details.” He added that the plan was for Harvard to operate trade schools.
“They are going be teaching people to do A.I. and a lot of other things — engines, lots of things,” he said. “We need people in trade schools.”
There is no end to the Trump administration’s assault on academic freedom. Particularly poisonous is its withdrawal of billions of dollars for scientific research to punish universities that defy his policies. Trump is determined to obliterate any sign of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” or any tolerance of anti-Semitism.
Speaking for myself, I wholeheartedly support diversity, equity, and inclusion. Speaking as a Jew, I resent Trump’s hypocritical, duplicitous use of anti-Semitism, an issue he has never cared about and that he cynically exploits.
Until now, research grants were awarded based on scientific merit and peer review. In the proposed changes, the universities that adhere to Trump policies and values would have a competitive advantage.
The Trump cabal is prepared to withhold funding from the nation’s top researchers if they are suspected of including nonwhite, non-male researchers in order to increase D or E or I. They assume that “merit” is found only in white males.
They are willing to deny research grants to Harvard and UCLA and give them to No-Name State Agricultural University, just to make a point.
They are willing to sacrifice research into pediatric cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s and other afflictions just because they include researchers who are not white men.
The White House is developing a plan that could change how universities are awarded research grants, giving a competitive advantage to schools that pledge to adhere to the values and policies of the Trump administration on admissions, hiring and other matters.
The new system, described by two White House officials, would represent a shift away from the unprecedented wave of investigations and punishments being delivered to individual schools and toward an effort to bring large swaths of colleges into compliance with Trump priorities all at once.
Universities could be asked to affirm that admissions and hiring decisions are based on merit rather than racial or ethnic background or other factors, that specific factors are taken into account when considering foreign student applications, and that college costs are not out of line with the value students receive.
“Now it’s time to effect change nationwide, not on a one-off basis,” said a senior White House official, who like the other official described the plan on the condition of anonymity because it is still being developed.
Under the current system, the federal government’s vast research funding operation awards billions of dollars’ worth of grants based on peer reviews and scientific merit.
The administration says it is working to enforce civil rights laws, which it contends many universities have violated by embracing diversity, equity and inclusion programs or failing to adequately protect Jewish students or staff from antisemitism. But the effort is almost certain to add to criticism from outside experts who say the administration is already overstepping its authority to try to impose its values on higher education.
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, said the outlines of the proposal amounted to an “assault … on institutional autonomy, on ideological diversity, on freedom of expression and academic freedom.”
“Suddenly, to get a grant, you need to not demonstrate merit, but ideological fealty to a particular set of political viewpoints. That’s not merit,” he said. “I can’t imagine a university in America that would be supportive of this…”
Since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, his administration has launched investigations of and pulled research funding from universities including Columbia, Harvard and UCLA, and then worked to extract concessions in exchange for restoring the money. Officials say the punishments are an effort to enforce federal laws that bar funding for schools that discriminate on the basis of sex, race or national origin.
The White House has faced setbacks in court — including a big loss this month in its high-profile fight with Harvard and another setback this week in California — and has not reached as many settlement agreements as Trump officials had hoped for. The senior White House official described the new system as an opportunity for schools to show they are in compliance, as interpreted by the administration. Those that do so, the official said, would be rewarded with a “competitive advantage” in applying for federal grants…
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Berkeley’s law school, said “no one will object” if the White House simply requires universities to pledge compliance with existing law. But Chemerinsky, one of the attorneys representing UC researchers in a lawsuit challenging terminated federal research funding, also said the administration’s view of what the law requires could be at odds with other interpretations: “It all depends on what the conditions are, and whether those conditions are constitutional.” Chemerinsky said it would be a First Amendment violation to put schools at a disadvantage in competing for funding if they profess a belief in diversity, for example, because government is not allowed to discriminate based on viewpoint. He said it “would be very troubling” if the White House proposal deviates from the standards that have been used in awarding grants based on the quality and importance of the science, peer review and merit, and uses ideology as the judgment standard instead.
You may have read about Josh Cowen . He’s a professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University. For twenty years, he worked on voucher research, hoping to find definitive evidence that vouchers helped the neediest kids–or didn’t.
About two years ago, he concluded that the answer was clear: vouchers do not help the neediest kids. Most are claimed by kids who never attended public schools. In other words, they are subsidies for families who already pay for private schools. When low-income kids use vouchers, the academic results are abysmal. He concluded that the best way to improve the schooling of American students is to invest in public schools.
Josh did his best to stop the billionaire-funded voucher drive. He published a book about the evidence, called The Privateers. He wrote articles in newspapers across the nation. He testified before legislative committees.
He concluded that the most important thing he could do is to run for Congress. He’s doing that and needs our help. I’ve contributed twice. Please give whatever you can.
Public schools need a champion in Congress.
Josh writes:
Hey everyone. You may have heard that I’m running for Congress in my home district in Michigan. It’s one of the most important seats to flip next year for Democrats to retake the US House. I’m hoping you’d consider chipping in today to help us meet a big deadline by 9/30.
I’m probably the most prominent congressional candidate in the country running in part on the idea that we need to stand up for and renew our public schools.
I took on Betsy DeVos and the Koch operation all over the country, trying to stop school voucher schemes. I’m a union member and work closely with labor—check out my book excerpt about vouchers in AFT’s New Educator right now!—and I was just given NEA’s highest honor, the Friend of Education award. Diane herself won a few years back—I’m truly honored.
But the DeVoses and a MAGA Texas billionaire are going to spend big here to hold Congress and defund schools. Former MI GOP Governor Rick Snyder is planning to raise $30 million to make 2026 the “education election” for Republicans in Michigan. This is the same guy at the helm when kids were poisoned in Flint. And the same guy responsible for the disastrous EAA charter school fiasco.
My GOP opponent is the Koch’s bagman in Michigan. This is a guy who eked out a win in our district just last year when Elissa Slotkin had to give up her seat to run for Senate. So it’s a very winnable race. But we need help.
Last month just for starters: 14 statewide and local school and community leaders in Michigan endorsed us. Last week, UNITE HERE!, the big hospitality workers union, endorsed our campaign. And just this week, Dr. Jill Underly, the statewide elected chief of Wisconsin public schools, announced her support. You may remember that Dr. Underly beat back Elon Musk’s plan to buy the off-year elections just this spring in her state. She showed how a strong, positive message of standing up for public schools and standing up to billionaires can win a swing state election.
We can do that too. So I’m asking for your help to close this month strong.
Leonie Haimson is a public school activist in New York City who fights for smaller class size, student privacy and against privatization of public funds.
She wrote on her blog:
Please email Comptroller Lander and ask him to audit DOE charter rent spending and lack of matching funds for public schools – more on this below.
ask the comptroller to audit DOE’s charter rental payments now!
Last Thursday, September 18, 2025, several large charter school networks held a protest rally in Cadman Plaza and a march across the Brooklyn Bridge to push for the continued expansion of the charter school sector. This was apparently provoked by the fact that the leading candidate for Mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has said he opposes allowing more charter schools to open, especially since they have reached their legal cap in NYC under state law.
Liz Kim, reporter at Gothamist, got hold of a tape of a speech that Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the largest charter school chain, Success Academy, gave to her Charter Management Staff and 158 new teachers, exhorting them to attend this march and rally, and to make at least five “phone-to-action” calls to their elected officials.
In the speech, Moskowitz harshly reprimanded those who had not yet done so: “You did not do the phone-to-action because you thought, ‘This is not very serious,’” she said. “So I want to just reset for all of you. It is an existential threat.” And:
“We have faced threats throughout the last 20 years, we have a core competency in political threats, unfortunately. But this is one of these moments where there is heightened risk, policy risk, political risk, and so we are going to do what we’ve always done, which is to stand up for children and families in a massive way in Cadman Plaza to speak our minds and to make sure that government works for children and families. … government doesn’t naturally work for the people. It has to be forced and made to work for the people. So we’re doing two things. One is this parent mobilization, and the second is our phone to action campaign.
And our goal is to send elected officials, two million messages. Now, teachers, you’ll do a network one now and then when you get to your schools, you’ll do a local one. But I have to say that I was a little disappointed in the network, because only 25% of the network was doing the phone to action. …And you know, would be natural for you not to understand we have these nice offices, Aren’t they nice? Very nice.
You guys [work] for a not for profit, you are highly compensated. You could say, What? What? Me worry? What’s there to worry about? But there’s a lot to worry about, and this is not a theoretical worry. We lived through eight years of Bill de Blasio. The first thing he did when he became mayor is he threw out three of our schools.”
This is untrue. De Blasio did not kick out three of her schools; he rejected three Success charter co-locations that had been proposed by Bloomberg before he left office but not yet implemented. De Blasio also accepted co-locations for five other Success charter schools.
In any event, after a barrage of negative television ads, DOE officials were browbeaten into finding and renting private space for these three Success charter schools at city expense for $5.4K – $11K per student. By last year, the number of Success charter schools rented directly by DOE had risen to nine, with buildings added under both Mayor de Blasio and Mayor Adams, at a cost of $14.3 million annually. By renting these buildings directly and failing to ask Success to rent the buildings themselves, they are sacrificing 60 percent reimbursement from the state for those expenses.
At the meeting, Moskowitz was clear that she was requiring all network staff and teachers to both make phone calls and participate in the rally:
“When we ask you to do phone to action, you kind of do it. You can’t make people chase you down. … we’ve kind of gotten loosey goosey here and just know your managers are going to hold you accountable to an extraordinary standard of performance. … When your network are giving a directive, I think we’re getting a little democratic here. We are quite hierarchical.
There is a chain of command, and when your boss asks you to do something, assuming it’s not unethical or a question of conscience, you do the task. Are we clear? I do not want to have to chase people down for phone to action. Is there some argument or particular reason? Anyone live in New Jersey? Okay, that’s not an excuse. I hate to tell you, list your 120 Wall Street address and get it done. ….”
She then told her staff and teachers to take out their phones and make all five phone calls to elected officials right then and there.
According to a report in Labor Notes, Success Academy employees were also required to send emails to elected officials, and were ordered to “submit screenshots of these emails to their managers to confirm they had sent them.”
Success Academy was not the only charter chain to make participation in the rally mandatory for staff, parents and students. It was also required by the Zeta charter chain, founded by Emily Kim, former attorney for Success Academy. A document sent to staff at Zeta Charter Schools made this clear:
“100% attendance expected from all Zeta families, students, and staff. Each student must attend with a parent/guardian to ensure the safety of every child. Students cannot attend the rally without an adult family member or authorized chaperone.”
Students, their parents and staff had to arrive at Zeta at 6:30 AM to get on the bus to Cadman Plaza, according to the schedule. If parents wanted to bring their younger children, they had “to bring their own seats for the bus ride to the rally,” presumably meaning they had to pay for their own transportation to get to Cadman Plaza.
Teachers at Zeta were told it was their responsibility to get parents to attend:
“All teachers must ensure 100% completion through family follow-up calls Mon., Sept. 8th- Wed., Sept. 10th. Your Principal and Operations Director will share a school-wide tracker to follow up and log all family calls accordingly.”
There is a real question about whether mandatory attendance at a political event or forcing teachers to make political phone calls is legal. The day after the rally, on Friday, John Liu, Chair of the Senate NYC Education Committee and Shelley B. Mayer, Chair of the Senate Committee on Education sent a letter to NY State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa and John King, Chancellor of State University of New York, whose agencies authorize and oversee charter schools.
Senators Liu and Mayer expressed “great concern that many charter schools in New York City cancelled classes and pressured students, families, and staff to participate in a political “March for Excellence” on September 18, 2025. We urge the state to conduct a thorough investigation into potential violations of state law.”
They also pointed out how“canceling classes during a school day and forcing families and students to engage in a political rally is an egregious misuse of instructional time and state funds. We urge SUNY and the State Education Department to exercise their oversight authority and fully investigate this matter to determine any possible violations of state law, and if such violations are found, to claw back a portion of state per capita funding from each school administration that engaged in this event, and to take steps to ensure future misuse of student’s precious school time does not continue.”
Though they didn’t specify any laws that might have been broken, in 2023 Governor Hochul signed into law Senate Bill 4982, which prohibits employers from coercing employees into attending or participating in meetings where the primary purpose is to communicate the employer’s opinions on religious or political matters. The law also holds that the courts may impose monetary penalties on employers who do this, and that employees can seek “equitable relief and damages” in court if they do.
In any case, this is not the first time that Eva Moskowitz and Success Academy have been found guilty of breaking laws. Repeatedly, her charter schools have been shown to deny students their legal rights, violating their privacy, and pushing out those who do not make the grade either in terms of behavior or test scores. A sample of these documented violations are listed at the end of this blog post.
Evidence of inflated charter rental payments and missing matching funds
Another issue of great concern is how charter schools now drain more than $3 billion dollars annually from the DOE budget, plus charge more than a hundred million dollars per year to DOE in rental subsidies. NYC is the only district in the nation that is obligated to either co-locate charters in public schools or help pay for their rent in private buildings. This applies to all new and expanding charter schools since 2014, after they go through a perfunctory appeal process, according to a law pushed through by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo and the charter lobby. The amount spent on their rental expenses by DOE has risen sharply over time –though 60% of these expenditures are supposed to be reimbursed by the state.
In 2019 and 2021, Class Size Matters issued two reports that provided evidence that DOE had overspent on rental assistance to charter schools by $21 million. We also revealed suspicious charges for rental subsidies paid by DOE to several charter schools, including those run by Success, that owned or subleased their own buildings.
In one case, the rent for two Success Academy charter schools housed at Hudson Yards increased from approximately $793,000 to over $3.4 million in one year – more than quadrupling , causing DOE to pay $3 million in rental subsidies for those two schools alone in 2020.
We also found that public schools co-located with charter schools were owed millions of dollars in matching funds for facility enhancements, compared to the amounts required by state law. From 2014 to 2019, 127 co-located public schools were owed a total of $15.5 million.
Please email Comptroller Lander and ask him to audit these programs
Shortly after the release of our second report, in March 2022, Senator John Liu, Senator Robert Jackson, and Rita Joseph, chair of the Council Education Committee, sent a letter to Comptroller Brad Lander, urging him to audit this spending, based upon our troubling findings. I recently learned that no such audit has been conducted. An analysisalso shows that Lander has audited fewer DOE programs than any other NYC Comptroller since 2003 at this point in office.
We are now engaged in examining DOE own reports of their spending on charter school rent, which continues to rise sharply higher each year, as well as their continuing failure to provide sufficient matching funds to public schools for facility upgrades and repairs.
Please email the Comptroller now and urge him to launch an audit on these programs before he leaves office in January, by filling out the form here.
Where it says, “Your Suggestion,”please write:
“I urge you to audit DOE spending on charter rent, especially charter schools that own or sublease their own buildings, as well as charters whose buildings DOE rents directly and thus is unable to receive 60% reimbursement from the state. Also please audit the lack of public school matching funds, as there is evidence that they continue to be owed millions for facility upgrades.”
Feel free to rephrase this in any way you like.
On my blog, at the end of this post, is a list revealing the documented pattern of Success Academy violations, including failing to provide students with their mandated services, repeatedly suspending them for minor infractions, violating their privacy, and pushing them out when they do not conform to rigid behavioral expectations or do not score high enough on standardized exams.
2. If you haven’t already, please also fill out this brief survey on class sizes at your school this year. So far, from the unscientific sample of teachers and parents who have responded, class sizes have increased in as many schools as have decreased, despite the fact that more than 700 schools received funds to lower class size. If DOE is simply pushing up class sizes in the schools that did not receive this funding, that would be a matter of great concern.
Florida, under Ron DeSantis, is determined to defund its public schools.
The first charter law in Florida was passed in 1996, when Democrat Lawton Chiles was governor. The 1996 law said there could be no more than two charter schools in each district, and only local school boards could authorize them. When Chiles left office, the state had 17 charter schools.
From 1999-2007, Republican Governor Jeb Bush removed the caps on charters and encouraged their growth. By the end of his tenure, there were more than 300 charter schools.
Republican Charlie Crist vetoed aggressive charter legislation, but charters increased to more than 300 during his tenure in office (2007-2011).
Republican Rick Scott (2011-2019) strongly promoted school choice, reduced regulation, and the number of charters increased to about 650.
Far-right DeSantis is a cheerleader for charters and vouchers. Elected in 2019, DeSantis has aggressively expanded charters as well as vouchers, while reducing accountability.
Half of Florida’s charter schools operate for-profit. Over the years, nearly 500 charter schools have closed, due to maladministration, low enrollment, finances, or scandal.
Today, Florida has about 730 charter schools, which enroll 13.8% of the state’s students, about 400,000. The cost of charters is about $2.5-4 billion annually that should have gone to public schools.
The state’s Republican-controlled governor and legislature are dedicated to expanding private alternatives to public schools. In 2023, it removed income limits from vouchers, so that all private school students are now eligible to get a state subsidy. The number of students receiving vouchers doubled, from 250,000 to 524,000.
Before and since the voucher expansion of 2023, 70% of the voucher recipients were already enrolled in voucher schools. so Florida offers a subsidy to all students enrolled in private and religious schools regardless of family income.
Florida spends about $4 billion on vouchers each year, subsidizing mostly families who can pay for schooling without state aid.
Thus, between charters and vouchers, Florida is spending at least $6 billion annually on school choice.
Now, Florida has given charter operators another boon, allowing them to co-locate inside public schools. This alleviates their need for facilities funding.
Many Republican legislators have financial ties to the charter industry.
It’s the latest push by Florida officials to expand school choice in a state that has long been a national model for conservative education policy.
The move comes as some public schools are closing their doors as they grapple with declining enrollments, aging facilities and post-pandemic student struggles.The new regulations approved by the state board build on a bill signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis this year to allow operators to open more “schools of hope,” charter schools that are meant to serve students from persistently low-performing schools.
Lawmakers created the schools of hope program in 2017 to encourage more publicly funded, privately run schools to open in areas where traditional public schools had been failing for years, giving students and families in those neighborhoods a way to bail out of a struggling school.
This year’s law loosens restrictions on where schools of hope can operate, allowing them to set up operations within the walls of a public school — even a high-performing one — if the campus has underused or vacant facilities.
The board’s new regulations require public school districts to provide the same facilities-related services to the charter schools as they do their own campuses, including custodial work, maintenance, school safety, food service, nursing and student transportation — “without limitation.
”School districts must allow schools of hope to use “all or part of an educational facility at no cost”, including classrooms and administrative offices, the rules read.
“All common indoor and outdoor space at a facility such as cafeterias, gymnasiums, recreation areas, parking lots, storage spaces and auditoriums, without limitation, must be shared proportionately based on total full-time equivalent student enrollment,” the rules continue.
Public school advocates urged the board to vote down the proposal at Wednesday’s meeting. One such advocate, India Miller, argued that schools of hope are designed to be “parasitic” to public schools.
“To me, it would be like asking Home Depot to give Lowe’s space in their store and pay all of their infrastructure costs. It just does not make sense to me,” Miller said.
Board members, who are appointed by DeSantis, defended the new rules and dismissed concerns that the charter expansion could pull critical funding away from traditional public schools.
“Schools of hope wouldn’t be necessary if our public school system had done its job along the way,” said board Vice Chair Esther Byrd.
Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi contributed reporting from Providence, Rhode Island. Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Mike DeGuire is a veteran educator in Denver. He says it’s time to take stock and assess the damage that “reform” has inflicted on students and public schools in Denver.
Is public education a public or a private good? This issue is at the heart of the school choice debate sweeping the country.
Advocates for school choice are advancing policies that move us toward the privatization of our schools, treating our children’s futures as commodities rather than community investments. This well-funded bi-partisan coalition promotes privatization through charter school expansion, vouchers, tax credits, and education savings accounts. Republicans use the words “parental rights, freedom and competition,” while neoliberal Democrats brand it as “innovation and expanding opportunity.”
Public education is one of the last shared institutions that binds us together across race, class, and geography; when we weaken it, we weaken democracy itself.
The result is the same for communities when privatization becomes a reality in red states with vouchers or in blue cities where most charter schools are located. Vouchers segregate schools by class and race, diminish the importance of community, and severely limit funding for public schools.
Charter schools operate like private schools, create competition for students, often have unelected boards. Additionally, the charter schools, not the community, get to determine who enrolls, who stays, and what kind of learning takes place. As marketplace ideology takes over, public dollars and democratic control move from local neighborhood schools to private boards and political operatives.
Denver Public Schools (DPS) shows how this movement works in a blue city, and why it matters now in Trump’s vision of America’s education system.
Different slogans, same destination
On the right, and in most Republican-led states, legislatures enacted policies to privatize education with vouchers and education savings accounts (ESAs) designed to route public funds to private and/or religious schools. Often, these tactics originate with model bills written and promoted by the American Legislative Council (ALEC) and their allies. The goal is to let public dollars “follow the child,” which means diverting them away from democratically governed school districts.
On the neoliberal Democratic side, the mechanism is the charter-centric “portfolio model.” Local school boards often elected with large amounts of pro-reform money approve policies to close or “restart” neighborhood schools. Then they open new charters, bring in “operators” deemed to be “effective,” and the district “manages” the schools and their networks like an investment portfolio.
This storyline was supercharged under the Obama administration’s Race to the Top, which rewarded states for removing barriers to charter growth and for aggressively initiating school “turnarounds.”
The overlap with Republicans and Democrats is structural. Both sides define schooling as a marketplace and shift authority from elected school boards to private actors, like charter boards, appointed authorities, and national nonprofits. In their book, “Wolf At the Schoolhouse Door,” Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire describe “how Republicans and Democrats joined to support failed policies whose ultimate goal was to eliminate public education and replace it with a free-market approach to schooling.”
Charles Siler, who worked as a lobbyist for the libertarian Goldwater Institute, told the Washington Post that “Charter schools are part of the incremental march towards full privatization. In many ways, charter schools are the gateway to total public-school dismantling.” Since vouchers are unpopular with the public and some lawmakers, Siler continued, “privatizers have to engage in incrementalism, and they use different names to create a sort of moving target.”
Both camps sell the public on privatization by claiming that “failing test scores” prove neighborhood schools, especially those serving Black and Brown students, are broken beyond repair. They argue the racial achievement gap is proof that these schools must be shut down and replaced with charters through “school choice.”
This narrative is deeply misleading. First, decades of research show that standardized test scores mostly measure socioeconomic status and neighborhood inequality, not the quality of individual schools. Poverty, housing insecurity, and systemic racism drive disparities, not the mere fact of attending a district school.
Second, the research demonstrates that replacing schools with charters has not closed achievement gaps. Denver Public Schools illustrates the point: after years of churn, closures, and huge charter expansion, racial disparities in achievement persist. Black and Latino students continue to score lower on state tests than white peers — not because they are “trapped in failing schools,” but because privatization has siphoned resources from their neighborhoods, destabilized communities, and ignored root causes.
Bipartisan funding for similar goals
The funding networks and foundations knitting these free-market agendas together are deep-pocketed and bipartisan. For instance, the conservative Walton Family Foundation underwrites charter startups and charter facilities nationwide, spending well over $1 billion on this effort. The majority of their political spending goes to Republican causes, with over 2/3 of their PAC money going to Americans for Prosperity, founded by the Koch brothers.
In his book, “Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America,” journalist Christopher Leonard describes how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Koch-funded right-wing group, creates model legislation which can be introduced in state legislatures. Many of these bills aim towards privatizing schools by implementing voucher programs.
City Fund raised millions, largely from Netflix founder Reed Hastings and hedge fund manager John Arnold, to spread charter schools in over 40 cities through portfolio management systems and by bankrolling local political action groups. While Hastings supports Democratic causes, he is opposed to teacher unions and believes that local school boards should be abolished. Arnold, also a Democrat, gifted the KIPPcharter network millions, and like many billionaires today, is seen as cozying up to the Trumpadministration for influence.
The Bradley Foundation and ALEC financed the policy and political infrastructure for vouchers and ESAs for decades. The Bradley Foundation, the Colorado-based Coors family, and the Koch foundation were three of the six billionaire families that funded Project 2025, which has been the playbook for Trump since he took office in January.
Many of these same philanthropic and political dollars fund both a Republican voucher push and a Democratic-branded charter expansion — two lanes of the same privatizing highway.
Denver: a “portfolio” laboratory
Denver is often cited by education reformers as a national model as it implemented unified enrollment, systematic school closures, and rapid charter school growth. But the backstory behind who paid for these policies is less sanguine. A Network for Public Education report details how Denver Public Schools became a neoliberal “experiment,” using a web of nonprofits and political groups to expand charters and restructure the school district.
Both Republicans and Democrats contributed large amounts of money in Denver school board elections to promote corporate reforms, such as teacher pay for performance, school choice systems, and enrollment zones. In the 2017 DPS school board election, billionaires gave huge sums to the Denver candidates favoring charter school expansion. According to a report from the Network for Public Education Action, these included “Colorado billionaires Phillip Anschutzand Kenneth Tuchman, and out-of-state billionaires John Arnold of Texas and the Alice, Jim and Stuart Waltons of Arkansas.”
Both sides define schooling as a marketplace and shift authority from elected school boards to private actors, like charter boards, appointed authorities, and national nonprofits.
Meanwhile, years of churn and school closures left communities reeling. Even reform-friendly analyses concede that the “portfolio model” era meant opening lots of charters and closing or “replacing” dozens of neighborhood schools. Researchers studying this model have cited significant concerns with the efficacy of the model, including equity issues, narrow reliance on test scores, instability and churn, tensions among schools, and loss of democratic control and community voice.
In a 2016 article, progressive education advocate David Osborne documented that “Since 2005 [Denver] has closed or replaced 48 schools and opened more than 70, the majority of them charters.”
The billionaires’ money helped maintain a pro-charter majority school board until 2019 when teacher union-backed candidates were elected because of organized community backlash to the reforms and unrest after a teacher-led strike that year. That shift caused alarm bells among the billionaire backers of the pro-charter movement. They moved quickly to expand their funding to two political action groups in Denver.
RootED and Denver Families for Public Schoolsreceived over $38 million from Reed Hastings’ City Fund organization, which they used to promote their pro-charter agenda through grants to charter schools, local think tanks, and other community groups. Their efforts paid off in the 2023 school board election, when three of their endorsed candidates won their elections after Denver Families Action spent nearly $1 million to promote their campaign.
Outside spending has transformed Denver board elections into major dark money funding events, with the 2023 election hitting $2.2 million, just shy of the 2019 record of $2.3 million.
In an op-ed for Charter Folks, Clarence Burton and Pat Donovan, leaders for Denver Families for Public Schools, described their plans to repeat the 2023 wins in the upcoming November 2025 school board election. They may spend some of their vast resourcesfrom City Fund to sway voters.
In the next four years, DPS faces continued enrollment declines, and district leaders seem inclined to approve more closures to rebalance finances. That is the portfolio playbook’s endgame: when money is scarce, close neighborhood schools and expand privately run options. If successful in electing their endorsed candidates, Denver Families Action is poised to help that happen.
Do charters drain district resources? What the evidence says
District leaders and parents feel the fiscal squeeze when enrollment flows to charters. Fixed costs don’t disappear just because 5% or 10% of students leave. Research consistently warns that losses to enrollment can trigger costs that are not fully “variable” — you can’t cut 1/20th of a teacher or 1/10th of a bus route. Studies from New York and other locales estimate significant per-pupil losses in host districts as charter school share rises.
A policy brief from the National Education Policy Center summarizes the structural mechanisms that occur with fixed costs, diseconomies of scale, and shifting student composition. The brief describes how “a network of philanthropists and wealthy donors have reshaped the political economy of school finance, advocating for school voucher policies, charters, and privatization in the face of declining public-school enrollments.”
Pro-charter think tanks argue the picture is “mixed,” especially longer-term if districts close schools and cut staffing, the very things communities have fought against. But even those reviews concede there are short-term inefficiencies and significant harms. In practice, these policies mean closures, layoffs, and program cuts in neighborhood schools.
This bipartisan push undermines neighborhood schools, deepens inequality, and places corporate interests above the common good.
Trump-world raises the stakes
Under President Trump’s second term, privatization is not just encouraged; it’s federal policy. A January 29, 2025, White House directive ordered the Education Department to steer states toward using federal formula funds to support K-12 “choice” initiatives, which was a direct push for vouchers and related schemes.
Trump’s “Agenda47” likewise spotlights universal school choice as a signature plank, tied to dismantlingprior civil-rights guidance and reshaping federal oversight. Plans to weaken or abolish the Education Department are framed as clearing the path for parental choice.
Trump’s Education Secretary Linda McMahon increased the federal department budget for charter schools by $60 million to a historic record of $500 million. At the closing session of the National Democratic Governors Association meeting, McMahonstressed to the governors they should open charterand micro-schools to promote more competition. This is the Republican Lane, wide open.
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 promoted federal tax credits for vouchers, which are now approved federal legislation. The CEO of Democrats for Education Reform is pushing Democratic governors to use these new federal vouchers to expand learning opportunities for economically disadvantaged students or lose “free federal money.”
The policy highway already built by the neoliberal Democrats (charter growth, closures, portfolio management) has made it easier for a voucher-first administration to push public taxpayer dollars out of democratically governed systems. That’s the interlock: Democrats normalized the market; Trump-world aims to privatize the whole store.
The bottom line
Denver is not an outlier — it’s a warning. A bipartisan coalition normalized the idea that public education should be run like an investment portfolio, where schools are opened, closed, and “reconstituted” based on technocratic dashboards and political spending. The Trump administration’s voucher agenda, promoted for decades by the Koch brothers and other conservatives accelerates the same logic, now directs federal policy to help states route public dollars out of public governance altogether.
If we believe education is a public good — funded equitably, governed democratically, and accountable locally — the public must see charter expansion and vouchers as two halves of the same privatization project. When education is treated as a public good, it is essential for democracy, civic participation, economic stability, and social cohesion.
Every child deserves an equal chance in life. Therefore, education must remain a public good — not a marketplace where opportunity is limited to the school’s choice of selecting students. The question isn’t whether our schools should be run like private businesses. It’s whether we are willing to fight for education as a right, not a privilege.
And, if the public cares about our children’s future,they need to vote, organize, and promote legislation accordingly.
Mike DeGuire, Ph.D., is the vice chair of Advocates for Public Education Policy. He has been a teacher, district level reading coordinator, executive coach, and a principal in the Denver metro area for most of his education career. He also worked as a leadership consultant for several national education organizations, and as an educator effectiveness specialist with the Colorado Department of Education. His writing is also featured on a4pep.org.
The Idaho state legislature passed a $50 million plan to subsidize vouchers. The usual arguments for vouchers–choice and competition–don’t apply in a largely rural state. The primary beneficiaries will be wealthy families whose children are already enrolled in private schools. The biggest losers will be rural schools, which desperately need upgrades.
“(I)t shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.” — Article IX, Section 1, Idaho Constitution
A coalition of public school advocates announced Wednesday that it is asking the Idaho Supreme Court to rule that a refundable tax credit for families who send their kids to private schools is a violation of the Idaho constitution’s education clause.
We say it’s about time.
And just in time, since House Bill 93, which was passed last legislative session, allows families to start applying for the credits in January.
The law set aside up to $50 million for the tax credits.
We would much rather see that $50 million go toward the public education system, hiring more teachers, more counselors, repairing derelict school buildings and properly funding special education, which has an $80 million shortfall, according to the Office of Performance Evaluations.null
Most voucher schemes in other states started out like Idaho’s — small, limited and targeted. But state after state, the vouchers grew and are blowing holes in state budgets everywhere.
Many of these vouchers go to wealthy families who already have the means to pay for private school, and the vouchers merely subsidize part of the cost of a private school tuition.
The vouchers are open to fraud, waste and abuse.
There’s no accountability built into Idaho’s voucher system.
The Idaho Supreme Court won’t be interested in such policy discussions, but justices will be interested in hearing what we think is a valid constitutional argument.
One word, in particular, provides their best legal challenge: “uniform.”
We are compelled by the testimony Wednesday of one mother who said her children were denied entry to a public school based on their religion. A public school can’t do that.
The argument is not without precedent.
A district court judge in Salt Lake City halted Utah’s education savings account programearlier this year, according to Idaho Education News. The state’s teachers’ union argued that the Utah Constitution bars state dollars from funding an education system that’s not free or open to all students.
In June, an Ohio state judge struck down that state’s voucher program, ruling that the program created a separate, unfunded, nonpublic system and funneled public money to private religious institutions. That, the judge ruled, violated constitutional mandates to fund a single public school system.
In 2024, the South Carolina Supreme Court struck down a 2023 law that created a private school voucher system. The court said the law illegally funneled state public funds to private schools, which is prohibited by the state constitution. The decision said vouchers undermine the state’s mandate to support public schools for all students.
We find it particularly appropriate that Idaho’s organizers announced this legal challenge on Constitution Day. Yes, it’s referring to the U.S. Constitution, but Idaho legislators should hold Idaho’s Constitution in equally high regard.
Where are all of Idaho’s “original meaning,” “not a living document” conservatives in this state when it comes to the state constitution’s education clause?
Because, if you read the Idaho Constitution plainly, vouchers just don’t pass muster.
Let’s hope the Idaho Supreme Court sees it the same way.
Statesman editorials are the opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto
Scott Maxwell is my favorite opinion writer at The Orlando Sentinel. He always makes sense, in a state led by a Governor and Leguslature that make no sense at all.
In this column, he asks a straightforward question: Why is there no accountability for school vouchers? Why are taxpayers shelling out money for substandard schools? Why is money diverted from public schools to pay for schools where the curriculum is based on the Bible, not facts?
Maxwell writes:
Florida recently joined about a dozen states in passing new rules that say participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, can’t use their vouchers on junk food.
I think that makes sense to most people. This program, after all, is supposed to provide “nutrition” to people in need, most of whom are children, elderly or people with disabilities. Basically, if taxpayers are providing $330 a month for basic food needs, that money shouldn’t be used on Red Bull and Oreos.
So now let’s take that a step further.
Taxpayer money also shouldn’t be used to send students to the junk-food equivalent of school — places that hire “teachers” without degrees, use factually flawed curriculum or that hand out A’s to every kid, regardless of what they actually learn, just to make their parents feel better.
Just like with food stamps, taxpayers have a right to know that the money they’re providing for schools is actually funding a quality education.
Yet in Florida that is not the case. Here, the voucher-school system is the Wild West with a lack of accountability and scary things funded with your tax dollars.
The Orlando Sentinel has documented this mess for years through its “Schools without Rules” investigation that found taxpayer-funded voucher schools where:
• “Teachers” lacked degrees or any kind of basic teaching certification • Finances were so disastrous that schools actually shut down in the middle of the school year, stranding families and students • Science classes taught students that dinosaurs roamed the earth alongside man, and history lessons claimed slavery and segregation weren’t really all that bad
• Administrators refused to admit students with disabilities or who had gay parents • Parents filed complaints that included “Cleaning lady substituting for teacher,” “They don’t provide lunch and they don’t even have a place to eat” and “I don’t see any evidence of academics”
I don’t care how pro-school choice you are, tax dollars shouldn’t fund that kind of nonsense.
Some of these fly-by-night schools set up in strip malls seem to thrive because they tell parents what they want to hear — that their kids who were struggling in public schools magically became straight-A students at voucher schools with little to no standards or legitimate measures of success.
Well, that’s the educational equivalent of junk food. And taxpayers wouldn’t fund that kind of nonsense if the state enacted basic accountability measures.
Namely, all voucher-eligible schools should be required to:
• Publish graduation rates and nationally accepted test scores • Hire teachers who are certified or at least have a college degree • Disclose all the curriculum being taught • Ban discrimination
Most good schools already do this. Think about it: what kind of reputable school wouldn’t agree to hire qualified teachers? Or wouldn’t want the public to see what kind of test scores their students produce?
If you want to send your kid to a school that’s unwilling to clear those ground-level hurdles, you shouldn’t expect taxpayers to fund it. Similarly, if you want to run a school that refuses to serve kids in wheelchairs or who are gay, you shouldn’t fund your discrimination with money that belongs to the people against whom you’re discriminating.
In Florida, some of the worst voucher schools are faith-based. But so are some of the best. Parents and taxpayers deserve to see the difference — the test scores that show whether students are actually learning.
Many faith-based schools embrace science and history. But some try to replace proven facts with their own beliefs or opinions, using “biology” books that claim evolution data is false and “history” books that try to put sunny spins on slavery and segregation.
The people who defend — and profit off — Florida’s unregulated voucher system usually cite “freedom” and “parental rights” as a justification for unfettered choice. But you know good and well that virtually every other taxpayer-funded system has sensible guardrails.
You can’t take Medicaid money to a witch doctor or a psychic “healer.” And just like we don’t give parents the “choice” to use SNAP vouchers to buy their kids Snicker bars, they don’t deserve the “freedom” to take money meant to provide a quality education to a school that can prove it’s providing one.
Basic transparency and accountability measures are needed for any program to be effective. So whenever you hear anyone protesting them, you have to wonder what it is they don’t want you to see.
Diane Ravitch's blog 