The Charter School Biz Takes A Hit From the Times

In the article I highly recommend in the February issue of School Administrator, Larry Cuban writes:

Deceit and fraud are harder to cover up when elected school boards are obliged by law to consider, debate and make decisions in public. Of equal importance, school board decisions are subject to media and public scrutiny. Not so in the private sector where corporate leaders are often appointed by self-perpetuating boards of directors who make decisions behind closed doors without public hearings or journalists in attendance.

Taken in the context of the growing incidence of corruption in the charter school biz, this statement would appear nothing less than prophetic had such corruption been anything new. Cuban, of course, knows that it is not, but, rather, that corruption has provided the underpinning of the bad education actors for much of the previous century.

What a week for corruption in the charter biz it has been! Take your pick of these stories on what was billed the next great excuse not to fix the public schools:

From Gary, Indiana:

GARY – Parents are asking state officials to audit a charter school and many kept their children home from classes because of a series of disagreements with administrators.

Nearly one-third of the 220 students who attend 21st Century charter school in Gary were kept home Tuesday after parents complained about the school’s curriculum, a lack of promised technology and problems with faculty.

The first-year school, operated by the GEO Foundation, changed principals and recently suspended teachers for disciplining a student with drumsticks.

. . . . Alyce Butler, president of the school’s board, said the charter school is experiencing first-year growing pains.

Whose pain was that, Ms. Butler?

From Brighton, Colorado:

BRIGHTON, Colo. -- An Adams County charter school official was charged with six felony counts and one misdemeanor Thursday in connection with the theft of more than $72,000.

The Adams County District Attorney's Office announced the charges that came at the conclusion of a three-month investigation involving Katie Squair, 51.She is the founder and former business manager of the Community Leadership Academy and was accused of using checks, wire transfers and debits to embezzle money from the school, which opened in August of 2005. . . .

From Midland, Pennsylvania:

MIDLAND - Allegations of misuse of public money made by a fired consultant for the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School will be looked at by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, a department spokeswoman said Wednesday.

La-Verna Fountain said the education department has been made aware of allegations against the online school and is going to "review what's taking place or what has been alleged. We're very clear that these are allegations at this point."

In a pending lawsuit in Beaver County Court, Michael Barney claims the contract between the cyberschool and his management company, Rodis LLC, was improperly terminated.

The former consultant to the Midland-based Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School claims that taxpayer money meant to fund the school is being used to pay for building the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Center and to start the National Network of Digital Schools, a nonprofit corporation started by Nick Trombetta, who also is chief administrative officer of the cyber charter school and Midland School District's superintendent.

In a letter to Trombetta in March 2005, Barney claims his company was fired because he brought "several financial, legal and ethical irregularities" to Trombetta's attention, including expense reports that were "in shambles," funneling money into the performing arts center and other entities, and billing discrepancies. . . .

From Annapolis, Maryland:

Citing "substantial" evidence of discrimination against disabled students - and even more against American-born teachers - Anne Arundel school officials Monday threatened to close one of the county's two charter schools next year if it doesn't shape up soon.

The Board of Education gave the Chesapeake Science Point Public Charter School 30 days to prove that the unfair treatment has stopped, records are being properly kept and its finances are in order.

"There is evidence that the school leadership attempted to persuade the parents of a student to withdraw from the school based on his status as a student with disabilities," wrote school board President Konrad M. Wayson and interim Superintendent Nancy M. Mann in a letter dated Friday.

The letter - sent to the math-and-science-focused academy in Hanover on Monday - is the second time this year school officials have threatened to shut the doors to its 102 students for good, but some billed it as a final chance for the school's founders to keep it in business.

It follows a series of inquiries into the school, including an investigation into allegations that its former director, Jon Omural, treated teachers unfairly, and an in-depth financial audit. Mr. Omural has since left the school. . . .

From L.A.:

The LAUSD board will consider today setting up a better oversight system to monitor charter schools, which could lead to the closing of a number of charters with low test scores and financial problems.

"When the inspector general looks at the finances of a couple of these schools, it may result in some charters being pulled," said board member Jon Lauritzen, who has pushed for increased scrutiny of the alternative schools that operate independently from the district.

And then comes an editorial from the New York Times on Wednesday focusing on the shortcomings of the new miracle drug intended to eradicate public education. Is Brent Staples on vacation, or what:

. . . . Even states with disastrously low-performing charter systems can point to a handful of outstanding schools. But several studies have shown that on the whole, charter schools perform no better than other public schools. Beyond that, some states have opened so many charter programs so quickly that they can barely count them, let alone monitor student performance. Where charters have clearly failed, the states often lack the political will — or even a process — for closing them down.

The oversight issue has become crucial since the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires students in charter schools to meet the same standards as students in traditional schools. But getting a handle on the problem is going to be difficult for states like Michigan, which has become a textbook example of how sloppily administered charter programs can harm students and undermine faith in both the chartering process and public education in general.

Michigan quickly opened more than 200 schools under one of most liberal charter laws, and the program has been riddled with problems from the start. A multistate study by the Evaluation Center, a well-known research group at Western Michigan University, describes charter schools in Michigan, Ohio and some other states as actually having a negative impact on student achievement.

The study also finds that states with charter programs dominated by for-profit education companies have poorer results for those schools in terms of performance and accountability.

This spells bad news for Michigan, where three-quarters of the charter schools are run by commercial companies, which have been criticized for turning away disadvantaged and disabled students and for failing to release test data that would allow education officials to check performance. The Legislature, which appears to be losing faith in the whole idea, refused to raise the cap on the number of charters. But it also declined to provide the money that would have allowed the State Education Department to do better monitoring of the charter schools that already exist.

The Michigan and Ohio cases will probably show that it is much more difficult to improve failing charter schools than to put them together properly in the first place. That fact has clearly registered on states like Connecticut and Delaware, which have wisely taken a cautious approach to chartering schools outside the usual public system.

Promising charter systems are few. But those that exist have some things in common: The states issue charters only after a rigorous screening process. They provide technical assistance to the schools, especially on procurement matters. And they provide sophisticated oversight — with regular and systematic data collection — to make sure that the schools are actually working.

So far, the national experience with charter schools shows that they are not a magical solution to the achievement problem. The only way to improve public schooling is to provide well-trained teachers and orderly schools, and to monitor them to make sure that the students are actually learning. To salvage the charter movement, the states will need to abandon the strategy, now discredited, that consists largely of giving public money to what are basically private schools and then looking the other way.

Thank you. As the scales fall away from the eyes of the editorial writers at the Times, perhaps they might go a single step further to suggest it is time to get back to the business of rebuilding the public education system that has sustained an unrelenting bombing campaign since the fundamentalist thugs came to Washington 1980. That is when both God and the Invisible Hand of the Free Market got high-jacked by a bunch of greedy hyprocrites and hucksters who drove the democracy to the precipice we now face. Save the Republic.