Why charter schools need better oversight
Charter schools were designed to allow founders the freedom to design and run schools as they wish outside the traditional school system bureaucracy. Here’s a case for why some of that freedom needs to be reined in. This was written by Jeff Bryant, an associate fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future and the owner of a marketing and communications consultancy that serves numerous organizations including Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, PBS, and International Planned Parenthood Foundation. He writes extensively about public education policy at The Education Opportunity Network, where this appeared. Follow Jeff on Twitter: jeffbcdmBy Jeff Bryant
There are undoubtedly wonderful charter schools in existence, and Americans generally have a favorable opinion of charters, but hardly a week goes by without news of a scandal or a study tarnishing their image.
With schools reopening everywhere across the country, the past week or so was no exception in exposing new problems with an idea that was once thought of as acollaborative endeavor between teacher unions and school administrators aimed at serving struggling students, but has now become a heavily funded, well-marketedmovement designed to siphon money away from traditional public schools.
Leading off the charter scandal parade was Pennsylvania where an auditor general found that the state’s largest charter school pocketed $1.2 million “in improper lease-reimbursement payments.” The scheme the school was running has become all too familiar to anyone following the nefariousness of some charter school operators.
First, you take a building, “previously owned by one of the charter school’s founders,”
