Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks to stop waste, mismanagement of charter schools
WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown blasted Ohio's charter school system for having rampant waste and fraud Thursday as he spelled out the main goals of a national charter school accountability bill he proposed this week.
"We want to make sure these charter schools effectively educate children," Brown said. "Right now they're not."
Among his major proposals: Making charter school management and finances more open to the public, tracking how charter schools fit into each area's education plans and making sure that making profits isn't more important than educating kids.
Brown, an Ohio Democrat, pointed at his home state's for-profit charter school operators - private companies that often receive 90 percent or more of a school's tax dollars - as damaging kids' educations. And he blamed the Ohio - and other - legislatures for bowing to the for-profit "political operators" and their campaign donations instead of making sure they perform better.
"There's no sector that misspends tax dollars more than these for-profit charter schools," Brown said.
He added, aiming directly at Republican legislators:"I'm curious that the people that complain about waste, fraud and abuse in government are now standing up to defend these for-profit charters."
Brown's bill is a 72-page amendment to the Every Child Achieves Act, a Senate bill to re-cast and extend the controversial No Child Left Behind law passed under George W. Bush. The House passed its own rewrite of No Child Left Behind on Wednesday.
It also comes, Brown noted, as Ohio fights its way through its own version of charter school reform this year - a push that stalled in the Ohio House for the summer. Though the Ohio House had passed a charter reform bill in the spring, it declined to vote on it again late last month after the Ohio Senate added more controls to it.
Brown said Thursday that his bill is aimed at solving problems in Ohio, where $1 billion of state tax dollars is spent each year on charter schools - public schools that are funded by the state, but which often have academic results far below that of traditional schools. But he said the bill is aimed at all states as well.
To highlight Ohio's charter school troubles, Brown pointed to a Stanford University study released late last year showing that charter school students learn less across Ohio than students in traditional schools.
Brown's bill is a mix of mandates of very specific things states must do to oversee, regulate and report on charter schools if they are to receive federal funding under the Sen. Sherrod Brown seeks to stop waste, mismanagement of charter schools | cleveland.com:
