Report Decries Unregulated Charters: Arne Duncan Should Crack Down
Earlier this week Charter School Vulnerabilities to Waste, Fraud, and Abuse was released jointly by the Center for Popular Democracy and Integrity in Education. In an age when charter schools are regulated in state law, we are likely to read stories in our local papers about fraud or academic malpractice at a charter school nearby. This is the first report I’ve read that details widespread abuse of the public interest by charter schools in 15 states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Washington, D.C., Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin.
The report’s authors explain, “Charter enrollment has doubled three times since 2000; it doubled from 2000 to 2004, and again from 2004 to 2008, and again from 2008 to 2014.” The report highlights a memorandum from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General that warned the Department itself, “of our concern about vulnerabilities in the oversight of charter schools.” The Department’s Office of Inspector General “specifically highlights the problem of ‘fraud perpetrated by charter school officials, and internal control weaknesses in the Department’s oversight processes.’”
This week’s report identifies six categories of fraud and mismanagement the authors documented through news reports and criminal complaints: charter operators using public funds illegally for personal gain; charter operators using school revenue illegally to support other businesses owned by the charter operators; schools putting children in actual or potential danger (by failing to screen staff or providing dangerous building conditions); charter schools billing states for services they claim to be providing but are not in fact providing; charters inflating enrollment and billing states for children who are not attending the school; and charter operators mismanaging public funds. (This blog recently reported two examples of charter school operators or board members profiting when charter school dollars were spent at their privately held, for-profit companies that provide services for the charter schools they operate in Milwaukee and in Ohio.)
The report concludes with two pages of excellent recommendations for fiscal and academic safeguards that states should implement: establish a charter regulatory agency; ensure Report Decries Unregulated Charters: Arne Duncan Should Crack Down | janresseger: