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Ohio: The Billion-Dollar Charter School Boondoggle

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2022 //
7

For years, reformers celebrated the grand success of Ohio’s Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. Politicians lauded it and poured money in. ECOT’s owner reciprocated by giving generously to politicians. Governor John Kasich gave the commencement address one year; Jeb Bush did another year.

But the state auditor (who was also a commencement speaker in 2015) checked the books and the whole ECOT edifice came crashing down. Ghost students, payments to companies owned by the founder, numerous ways to profit from the state’s generosity.

ECOT still owes Ohio more than $100 million.

Theodore Decker wrote in the Columbus Dispatch:

If there is such a thing as justice in this imperfect world, investigators in a federal building somewhere in Columbus are nudging ever close to it while digging into the billion-dollar boondoggle once known as the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow.

ECOT, at one time the state’s largest online charter school, collapsed four years ago amid claims that it had taken millions in undeserved state aid.

Allegations of wrongdoing were traded by the school and state education department. Lawsuits were filed. And about 12,000 students were left in the lurch when the school imploded.

Then ECOT fell out of the public view, overtaken by a thick layer of general dirtiness at a time when political scandal was the norm from the White House to the Statehouse.

An audit just released this week, though, found that ECOT still owes the state more than $117 million.

Ohio Auditor Keith Faber on Tuesday said the shuttered school owes $106.6 million to the state Department of Education and another $10.6 million to the state Attorney General’s office.

As others have before them, Faber’s auditors found that ECOT wasn’t entitled to all the state money it received, including some in 2016 and 2017 and none in 2018.

ECOT as an entity may be gone, but for the sake of all taxpaying Ohioans, it had better not be forgotten.

Looking at the broad sweep of the ECOT swindle, it seems unfathomable that not a single indictment has been lodged against anyone in connection with its shady operations.

The main man behind ECOT was William Lager, a man with a host of Statehouse connections who founded the school in 2000. He also operated Altair Learning Management Inc and IQ Innovations LLC, which had lucrative contracts with ECOT to provide support services. After ECOT fell apart, Attorney General Dave Yost called Lager “the principal wrongdoer“ in the case.

The series of lethal blows to Lager’s empire began in 2016, when the Department of Education demanded repayment of $80 million.

But ECOT’s attendance numbers had been disputed by the state long before that, as far back as 2006. Going back even further, to 2001 and 2002, an audit determined that the state had been overpaying the school by millions.

That ECOT’s attendance numbers were disputed so early on in its existence – and how that problem regardless went unaddressed for so long by a string of governors, legislators and state officials – are looming questions that must be the stuff of any civic-minded federal prosecutor’s dreams.

And maybe, we can hope, they still are.

Yost, while still the state auditor, excoriated ECOT in 2018 and referred his findings to both county and federal prosecutors.

The feds are a secretive lot who have a habit of neither confirming nor denying the existence of any pending investigation, but there have been a few dropped clues through the years that a probe of ECOT is afoot.

One of the biggest came in 2019, when the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice subpoenaed nearly 20 years of ECOT’s campaign contribution records.

More than three years have passed since that development, but the feds also don’t have a habit of rushing their investigations.

Maybe they will wrap things up without uncovering a single instance of criminal behavior.

If you possess a lick of common sense, given what we know already, that outcome would boggle the mind.

But even if that is how an investigation concludes, prosecutors at the very least should know many more details about how ECOT and its principals were permitted to run amok for so long.

Considering Ohio’s taxpayers footed the bill, we have the right to know each and every one of them.

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

Denis Smith: ECOT Owes Ohio $117 Million. What Are We Going to Do About It?

By dianeravitch
July 12, 2022 //
9

Denis Smith is a retired educator. After teaching for many years, he worked in the charter school office of the Ohio Department of Education. There, he learned about charter frauds and charter political influence. He wrote the following article in the Ohio Capital Journal.

He begins:

Like the famed Casablanca police captain Louis Renault, Ohio taxpayers were shocked, shocked to learn recently from the state auditor’s office that the notorious online charter school ECOT, which closed in 2018, owes the state $117 million. A “Finding for Recovery” posted last week on the auditor’s website provided the details.

The announcement by Auditor of State Keith Faber that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, known familiarly as ECOT, owes the state such a huge amount for submitting inflated student enrollment data was met by a prolonged yawn among most of the state’s residents as well as media outlets.

Ohio residents were shocked, shocked at the news.

Not.

It seems that Ohioans have formed a natural immunity regarding any additional bad news about ECOT, known by some as “The School for Scandal,” with apologies to playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Back in 2017, one of my articles about “The School for Scandal” likened its longevity to the Energizer Bunny and described the different meanings people derived from seeing the online charter school’s acronym. Readers also chimed in with their own descriptors:

ECOT Effectively Cleaning Ohio’s Treasury

ECOTEndlessly Cheating Ohio’s Taxpayers

ECOTEnough Corruption for Ohio Taxpayers

ECOTEasy Cash on Tap

What does not make the ECOT saga unique is that it merely mirrors much of charterdom and affirms the industry’s image as a slow-motion train wreck. Sadly, a plethora of stories about issues surrounding The School for Scandal’s improprieties published years before its demise were not catalysts for action.

But if misery loves company, ECOT, which operated at full blast draining the state’s treasury for 18 years, is but one of more than 300 failed charter schools now closed that performed with near impunity as the result of a charter-friendly design built into the Ohio Revised Code. That section of the code favors private operators for the schools and limits the amount of transparency and accountability for these constructs that are provided about 150 exemptions in law that public schools themselves are required to meet.

That charter DNA design allowed ECOT’s founder, William Lager, to form privately owned management companies to operate the school and thus limit the amount of sunshine that could be cast by auditors and those charged to provide oversight for the school. That same design for charters, which are privately operated with public funds, allowed Lager to donate generously to some of his favorite Republican politicians, including state Sen. Andrew Brenner, who currently serves as chair of the Senate Education Committee.

Over the years of its operation, as seen by his donations to the Republican leadership, it was clear that Lager was buying friends in the legislature.

“Lager is, by far, Brenner’s largest individual contributor,” the Columbus Dispatch reported in May 2018, four months after the school’s closure. Brenner pocketed $27,564 in three payments from Lager from 2015-2017, but lamely said that the money didn’t come from the school. Moreover, Brenner, a champion of the private sector and privately operated but state funded charter schools, had no qualms about accepting money from Lager, whose fortune was built upon a cash cow fed by the public treasury.

Then there is the situation with Attorney General Dave Yost. From 2013-2015, Yost spoke at ECOT graduation ceremonies and heaped praise on its supposed place in the state’s educational sector. At one of those commencements, the then-Auditor of State presented ECOT with the Ohio Auditor of State Award with Distinction, meaning the school met the standard for a “clean audit.”

Clean audit? Refer to the previous box – ECOT = Effectively Cleaning Ohio’s Treasury. In retrospect, that acronym might be appropriate.

According to the state auditor’s website, the Ohio Department of Education “determined ECOT was not entitled to a portion of the funding it had received in fiscal years 2016 and 2017, as well as none of the funding received in fiscal 2018.”

ECOT critics might pose another question: what about from 2000 to 2015?

The current situation with ECOT reminds us of the classic Thomas Nast cartoon which first appeared 150 years ago:

What Are You Going to Do About It?

More than four years after the school’s closure, that question can’t be avoided.

When it comes to this charter’s audits, some things just don’t add up, particularly when the state auditor went out of his way to praise ECOT. Yet for years some individuals in state government, particularly in the department of education, had serious concerns about the reported enrollment figures for the school, well before the praise heaped on it by then-auditor Yost.

The Auditor of State’s website shows the honor conveyed in January 2016, less than two years before the school was shuttered.

“The school’s excellent record keeping has qualified for the Auditor of State Award with Distinction,” Yost’s AOS website boasted about the nefarious online charter school.

Those familiar with the jaded history of the failed charter, with its founder’s habit of distributing widespread campaign contributions to powerful Republican officeholders, are skeptical about seeing any accountability in this election year for the school’s submission of padded student enrollment figures.

Indeed, when allegations grew in 2016 about the school’s true enrollment, Lager’s contributions to the state Republican Party and officeholders continued unabated. Moreover, a mysterious website called 3rd Rail Politics emerged that year to defend the school as well as attack those who opposed charters in general and ECOT in particular.

If all things related to ECOT have moved at a snail’s pace – or not at all – 4 ½ years after the school’s closure, skepticism about action against Lager and his acolytes in state government, who provided favorable treatment for this generous Republican mega donor, is palpable among the populace.

In 2018, Louise Valentine, Brenner’s Democratic opponent for the Senate seat he currently holds, framed the issue with Brenner and his ties to Lager and the rest of the charter industry.

“It all started with the legislators who crafted the education policies that allowed for a complete lack of oversight for these so-called schools,” she said in a Tweet. “People like @andrewbrenner took $$$$ from ECOT and then defended their lack of accountability.”

There’s that word again – accountability. But there are some astute citizens who are speaking their minds about the influence of donors in the charter industry and with the ECOT situation.

The reader comments following one of the latest Columbus Dispatch articles detailing the auditor’s Findings for Recovery against ECOT contain several comments which are illustrative of the skepticism about eventual action against Lager:

Corrupt GOP general assembly aided and abetted this scam from the beginning.

Or this:

ECOT spent millions getting the GOP elected. No worries, Bill Lager.

As Ohio citizens begin to focus on issues for the fall elections, including gun violence and the wholesale proliferation of weapons, the growing threat from right-wing domestic terrorism, reproductive rights, environmental protection and regulation, along with voting rights, we need to add one more to this list of issues: ECOT – and the charter industry itself.

What are we going to do about it? What kind of controls are in place by law and regulation to ensure the lawful expenditure of public funds consumed by a rogue online charter school? For that matter, with more than 300 “dead” Ohio charter schools that are part of the detritus created by school privatization and educational deregulation, why in heaven is the legislature considering any kind of voucher legislation that will only add more stress to our fracturing society?

If we are supposed to remember in November, we should be alert as to what actions, if any, have been put in motion to do whatever it takes to recover the lion’s share of the $117 million owed to Ohioans. And if you’re skeptical, join the club.

ECOT was supposed to provide daily a minimum of five hours of “learning opportunities” for its students. If a number of our fellow citizens start contacting their elected representatives to ask them what they’re going to do about the ECOT debacle and more regulation of charters, perhaps that might serve as a preemptive measure to stop any further action about educational vouchers. Your call will no doubt provide a learning opportunity for Republicans in the legislature to realize that with ECOT and other charter scandals, enough is too much.

One more thing. Now that we know all of this, what are we going to do about it?

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

Oklahoma: Read More About Why Epic Charter Founders Were Arrested

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2022 //
6

Friends in Oklahoma sent the charging document that lays out the evidence against the founders of the Epic Charter School. They are accused of skimming off millions of dollars. The charging document explains how they did it.

Is this happening in your state? The biggest charter frauds seem to occur in virtual charters like the A4 scam in California, which siphoned off hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars before it was discovered.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Fraud, Oklahoma, Virtual Charter Schools

Oklahoma: EPIC Charter Founders Arrested and Charged with Financial Crimes

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2022 //
7

The online charter sector not only has abysmal academic records, but it’s ripe pickings for scammers. The founders of Epic charter schools in Oklahoma are charged with multiple counts of embezzlement, racketeering and other crimes.

Oklahoma Watch reports:

Epic Charter Schools’ founders, who were arrested Thursday, shifted millions of school dollars to company credit cards, which were used to make political campaign donations, fund a lobbyist and pay personal expenses like vacations, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation alleges in court documents.

Following a yearslong investigation into alleged embezzlement of taxpayer funds, the co-founders of the state’s largest online school were arrested Thursday, along with the longtime chief financial officer, court records show.

David Chaney, 43, Ben Harris, 46, and Josh Brock, 40, were booked into the Oklahoma County Detention Center Thursday morning. Each is charged with racketeering, embezzlement, obtaining money by false pretense, conspiracy to commit a felony, violating the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act, submitting false documents to the state and unlawful proceeds.

Investigators said the men ran a complicated criminal enterprise using the online charter school and a for-profit company, Epic Youth Services.

The scheme has cost the state more than $22 million, according to the OSBI.

The charges involve co-mingling of funds, excessive and unnecessary management fees, use of Oklahoma tax dollars in California, political influence, concealment of profits, submission of false invoices and the illegal use of employees.

One of the school’s largest recruitment tools, the learning fund, was used to conceal illegal purchases, agents alleged. For the learning fund, Epic makes at least $1,000 available to each student annually in a virtual account. Parents can allocate those dollars for curriculum, laptops and extracurricular activities.

Parents don’t receive the money directly. Instead, they request a purchase from Epic and the school transfers the money to Epic Youth Services, which pays the vendor.

Chaney and Harris used a separate bank account to make learning fund purchases, and investigators found Chaney and Harris didn’t return unused learning fund dollars.

The account received nearly $145 million between 2015 and 2021. More than 50 times, Chaney, Harris and Brock transferred public funds from the learning fund account to the private bank account for Epic Youth Services, which was then used to pay a lobbying firm. Capital Gains, a lobbying firm run by Robert Stem, a longtime friend of Harris’, was paid more than $500,000.

Please open the link to read the rest of the story. Campaign contributions go a long way towards avoiding accountability.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Education Industry, For-Profit, Oklahoma, Virtual Charter Schools

Oklahoma: “Backpack“ Aims to Defund Public Schools

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2022 //
19

Inspired perhaps by the anti-public school rhetoric of Betsy DeVos or funded perhaps by billionaire Charles Koch or encouraged by Trump’s white evangelical base, Oklahoma Republicans are proposing a bill that would crush public schools.

Not content to open more privately managed charters or to offer more vouchers to disgruntled parents, Republicans want to use public money to pay for whatever parents want to do. Jeanne Allen of the pro-privatization Center for Education Reform has for many years referred to this approach as a “backpack full of cash.” Give parents the money that previously went to public schools and let them decide whether to spend it on home-school, charters, vouchers, computers, tutors or whatever.

Jennifer Palmer of Oklahoma Watch writes that the ultimate goal of this approach is to abandon the state constitution’s pledge to support a public school system, replacing it with a ragtag array of choices. She doesn’t say it, but I will. This plan, if enacted, will undermine the quality of education in the state and set back the education of Oklahoma’s children. Instead of improving schools, it will turn the money for public schools into a grab bag.

She writes:

Of the 2,300 bills filed by state lawmakers for the upcoming session, which starts Monday, the one I will be watching most closely is Senate Bill 1647 by Senate leader Greg Treat. He’s calling it the Oklahoma Empowerment Act.

The legislation would create universal vouchers by giving any parent a state-funded account for their child’s education.

The funds could be used on private school tuition, homeschool expenses, tutoring, books, computers, supplies, transportation to school and many other qualifying expenses. The effect would be moving public funds to private entities lacking in accountability and transparency.

The bill envisions each student in the state with a backpack full of money and carrying it to the educational options their parents choose. It’s similar to Epic Charter School’s learning fund but on a much larger scale (and Epic’s learning fund is under audit for possible misuse of public funds for private gain by the school’s co-founders.)

Groups advocating for school choice, like ChoiceMatters and Every Kid Counts Oklahoma (whose executive director is Ryan Walters, secretary of education and a candidate for state superintendent), champion the idea with slogans like “fund students, not systems.” The mantra is also repeated by Yes. every kid., a social welfare organization started by Charles Koch, the billionaire owner of Koch Industries…

The Oklahoma State Constitution says: THE LEGISLATURE SHALL ESTABLISH A SYSTEM OF FREE PUBLIC SCHOOLS WHEREIN ALL THE CHILDREN OF THE STATE MAY BE EDUCATED.

The Legislature is specifically charged with maintaining a system of public schools. The bill, if passed, could be challenged on these grounds.

That’s not the only concern I’m hearing. As written, there is no testing requirement for students in the bill, which is required by most other states with voucher programs, according to a2021 comparison by the Education Commission of the States.

That means there would be little way for the public to ascertain the quality of the education these students are receiving. Oklahoma already has the most lax homeschool law in the country, and private schools report almost no data, even when they receive funds through the current school choice programs: the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Fund and the Oklahoma Equal Opportunity Education Scholarship program.

Treat’s bill does not prohibit private schools from discriminating against students if they are LGBTQ or pregnant or for a number of other reasons (private schools can’t, though, discriminate on the basis of race if they are tax-exempt.) The proposal states an education provider “shall not be required to alter its creed, practices, admissions policy, or curriculum” to accept payments from the program.

Treat, recognizing the sure-fire opposition to this proposal, in a video with ChoiceMatters last week said: “There’s going to be plenty of criticisms to hear. Just put on the armor. Get ready for the fight. It’s going to be a fight. But our kids are worth it.”

So says the legislator whose plan violates the state constitution, destroys the state’s public schools, and guarantees that the quality of education will sharply decline as the grifters and religious zealots make their pitch for taxpayer dollars.

Categories Education Industry, Home Schooling, Oklahoma, School Choice, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Pennsylvania Cybercharters Get $pecial Treatment

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2022 //
9

Cyber charters in Pennsylvania are a money pit because they are not subject to the same rules as public schools. Charter lobbyists must have written the charter laws as they have in other states. And they protect their freedom from scrutiny despite the fact that the founder of the first and biggest cyber charter operator in the state was sentenced to prison in 2018 for his failure to pay taxes on $8 million that he skimmed from the school’s funds. (Note that he was not jailed for embezzling funds but for not paying taxes on the money.)

Peter Greene discovered another way that the state’s cyber charters get favored treatment. Public schools are not allowed to sit on millions of dollars of rainy day funds. Cyber charters are.

I remember what charter advocates promised back in the late 1980s when the idea of charters was first being sold. Charters would be more “accountable” than regular public schools.

But now we know:

Accountability is for public schools, not for charter schools.

Categories Education Industry, Ethics, Fraud, Funding, Pennsylvania, Virtual Charter Schools

Steve Hinnefeld: Will Virtual Charter Schools Repay Indiana for Miseducation?

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2022 //
4

Perhaps you recall when Betsy DeVos testified at her Senate hearing about her worthiness to be Secretary of Education. Among her most memorable lines was her fulsome praise of virtual charter schools. This was both sad and hilarious, coming as it did more than a year after the Walton-funded CREDO at Stanford released a report finding that a year at a virtual charter school was akin to not going to school at all (students in these schools lost the equivalent of 72 days in reading and a full year in math).

Over the past few years, there have been several major virtual charter school scandals involving the loss of many millions of dollars (the EPIC scandal in Oklahoma, the Pennsylvania CyberCharter School scandal, the A3 scandal in California, the ECOT scandal in Ohio).

Now Steve Hinnefeld writes about a virtual charter school scandal in Ohio.

He writes:

A Hamilton County court hearing this week may determine whether Indiana taxpayers have a chance to recover $154 million from two virtual charter schools and their leaders and business partners.

The hearing, set for 1:30 p.m. Wednesday before Hamilton Superior Court Judge Michael Casati, concerns motions to dismiss a lawsuit to recover charter school funds that were allegedly obtained by fraud or improperly spent.

Attorney General Todd Rokita filed the suit in July 2021 on behalf of the state. Defendants include the schools — Indiana Virtual School and Indiana Virtual Pathways Academy — and several of their officers and employees. Also named are businesses that were affiliated with the schools.

The lawsuit relies on an investigation by the State Board of Accounts, the findings of which were released in early 2020. Auditors found that the online schools inflated their enrollment or failed to ensure students were being taught, resulting in overpayment of more than $68 million by the state. Auditors also identified more than $85 million in improper payments to vendors and businesses.

The schools closed in 2019 after their authorizer, Daleville School Corp. revoked their charter. The previous year, their claimed enrollment peaked at more than 7,000 students.

Problems with the schools came to light in 2017, when Chalkbeat Indiana revealed poor test scores, abysmal graduation rates and hefty payments to businesses connected to the school’s founder. Indiana Virtual School employed only one teacher per 200 students and spent just 10% of its funds on instruction, Chalkbeat found.

But the schools enjoyed political connections. They employed a state legislator as a consultant and had a retired state appeals court judge on the school board. Businesses affiliated with the schools gave $140,000 to Indiana Republican election campaigns. The schools paid a lobbying firm $300,000.

When will state legislators stop pumping money into these money pits?

Categories Education Industry, For-Profit, Fraud, Indiana, Virtual Charter Schools

Reader: Which Kind of School Is the “Factory Model”?

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2021 //
16

A reader called “Retired Teacher” read Peter Greene’s reflections on Amazon as a model of schooling and posted this comment:

Devious DeVos had the nerve to call public schools a factory model of education. It seems to me that rows of zombie students staring at screens and fed content from an algorithm on a screen much more easily qualifies as a “factory model.” Public education is a model whose goal is mostly about being “through and efficient.” It aspires to bring young people access, opportunity and civics preparation in order to become responsible citizens. It is a pubic institution with noble goals, not an Amazon Warehouse.

The so-called “free market” is a scammer’s delight where the strong feed on the weak and the predators hunt for prey. Believing that the free market will solve education’s problems is as naive as it is reckless. Our young people should be valued, protected and taught well to prepare them for the future as they are the future of this country. They must be ready to address our future needs, and they deserve so much more than being considered a monetized line item in some rich person’s portfolio.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Florida: The First Virtual Reality Charter School Will Open in 2022

By dianeravitch
December 21, 2021 //
56

A new virtual reality charter school will open in Florida in the fall of 2022. It is called Optima Domi, and it presents itself as the most innovative step forward in homeschooling/virtual learning.

Unlike old-fashioned virtual charter schools, Optima Domi will immerse students in “virtual reality.” Each student and their teacher will dons headgear that immerses them in the sounds and sights of an actual classroom, even though their classmates are avatars, not humans. The curriculum, says the promotional material, will be classical, based on the Great Books.

The Governing Board of Optima Domi is heavy with financial executives and two medical doctors. The Optima Foundation is deep into school choice. Many of the leaders have experience in the charter school sector. Several are graduates of Hillsdale College, a small, ultra-conservative college in Michigan that refuses any form of federal aid for students or for any other purpose. The CEO of the Optima Foundation is a CPA and wife of a very conservative Florida Republican member of Congress, who was endorsed by Trump.

One may safely assume there will be no teaching about “divisive concepts” here. It seems to be the perfect site for programming students, although I can’t imagine many teenagers who would enjoy getting their “schooling” in complete isolation, with a headset turned on for most of the day. Most schools have teachers who come from different backgrounds and bring different perspectives to their work; students too come from different worlds and enrich class discussions by offering their views. In the virtual reality world, the lessons will be carefully designed to enforce the school’s perspective, without the intervention of teachers or students.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Florida, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Ravitch & Burris: Mike Bloomberg Is Wasting $750 Million on Charters

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2021 //
16

The following article by Diane Ravitch and Carol Burris of the Netwotk for Public Education appeared this morning at Valerie Strauss’s “The Answer Sheet” blog at the Washington Post:

Mike Bloomberg recently announced his plan to revive American public education, which he says is “broken.” His fix for a system that enrolls more than 50 million students? He will spend $750 million to expand charter schools to 150,000 students in 20 cities over the next five years.

The former New York mayor is a smart businessman. He must know that moving 150,000 students into charter schools won’t transform the public schools that enroll the overwhelming majority of students. The likeliest effect of his gift will be to drain resources and students from the public schools still struggling to recover from covid-19. This would make matters worse for the 50 million students who don’t receive his beneficence, and it’s unlikely to help most of the 150,000 who do.

Bloomberg tells us that he will not fund just any charter school. He announced that his donation would fund only high-quality charters — the same promise made by the federal Charter Schools Program that has wasted about $1 billion on charters that never opened or failed.

New York’s Success Academy is his example of a charter chain that “works.” Citing the chain’s high test scores, he ignores the dozens of news reports that have exposed Success Academy’s practices that include violations of students’ civil rights and privacy; complaints of racist and abusive practices by present and former staff; push-out practices that include dropping misbehaving students off at police stations; “got to go” lists that discriminate against students with disabilities; and repeated suspensions of students for minor infractions.

Success’s “success” rests on harsh discipline codes that push noncompliant children out the door. But remember that Bloomberg once bragged about his police policy of throwing minority youth against the wall and frisking them.

Bloomberg’s own school reforms included sort-and-select policies, such as screened middle schools and test-in gifted programs that dramatically reduced access for students of color. When the NAACP — the oldest civil rights group in the country — filed a discrimination complaint against the city and its eight specialized high schools, Bloomberg’s response was “life isn’t always fair.”

Bloomberg has claimed that students of color made great equity gains under his mayoral leadership. He boasted to Congress that the achievement gaps between White and Asian students on one hand, and Black and Hispanic students on the other had been cut in half.Story continues below advertisementnull

But data from the respected National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) disproved those claims. And what about state test scores? According to the New York City Independent Budget Office (IBO), the gaps widened.

Bloomberg’s legacy was one of chaos by design, as he imposed one reform after another in an attempt to disrupt his way to success. The New York City school system was reorganized four times during the mayor’s 12 years in office, depending on which adviser from the corporate world had the ear of the mayor or the chancellor.

Bloomberg applied the same philosophy of “weed them out” (championed by GE CEO Jack Welch, who was a frequent adviser to the city’s Department of Education) to the system as a whole. He shut down scores of struggling schools and large high schools that enrolled the students with the greatest needs. He replaced the closed schools with hundreds of new small schools and charter schools. As large high schools were shuttered, programs for advanced students, bilingual students, and students in need of special education were often cast aside.

The mayor and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, applied corporate thinking, surrounding themselves with management consultants and business school graduates who knew as little about education as they did. Their efforts demoralized educators in the system, who felt disrespected by Klein and Bloomberg.

Now, eight years after his last term as mayor ended, Bloomberg again has inserted himself into the education reform debate to fund one of his favorite ideas — charter schools.

The unaudited “wait lists” he uses as justification for his charter ardor have been debunked repeatedly. Some of those lists have duplicate or triplicate names; others have students who have moved away or enrolled already in another school. In 2020-21, Texas charter schools had over 100,000 more empty charter seats than filled seats. Eighty-five percent of the charter schools in Los Angeles have open spots. According to charter advocate Robert Pondiscio, only about half of the families accepted by Success Academy enroll their child.

And the recent uptick in enrollment Bloomberg cites? Much of the pandemic increases were in the for-profit online sector he says he will not support — increases that are already disappearing.

Nor has Bloomberg been swayed by the preponderance of research studies (not a few cherry-picked) that shows charter schools do no better than public schools, Even though, as scholarly studies demonstrate, charter policies attract and retain more motivated and better-supported students. NAEP tests show there is no difference in the academic performance of students in public schools and charter schools. In fact, as NAEP shows, when students reach grade 12, public schools significantly outperform charter schools.Story continues below advertisementnull

Even as Bloomberg promises to pour money in charters, the federal government continues to spend nearly a half-billion dollars a year to start and expand charters. More than one in four charter schools fails by year five, and halfare gone by year 15, according to research by our Network for Public Education. The hundreds of charter scandals that occur each year have not modified his rhetoric of school accountability.

If charter schools do no better on the whole than public schools; if many of them fail for financial or academic reasons only a few years after opening; if their lack of oversight and accountability makes them targets for grifters; perhaps it is the charter idea that is “broken,” not America’s public schools, which have been central instruments in advancing our nation’s unfulfilled dreams of equal opportunity and a well-informed citizenry.

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By Valerie StraussValerie Strauss is an education writer who authors The Answer Sheet blog. She came to The Washington Post as an assistant foreign editor for Asia in 1987 and weekend foreign desk editor after working for Reuters as national security editor and a military/foreign affairs reporter on Capitol Hill. She also previously worked at UPI and the LA Times.  Twitter

Categories Accountability, Bloomberg, Michael, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Failure, Virtual Charter Schools
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