Christine Campbell, Randi Weingarten: Don’t be fooled by charter school bill (Gazette)
When it comes to our neighborhood schools, we need to ensure they are places where parents want to send their children, educators want to teach and students thrive. This takes resources, hard work and collaboration — as we are doing in McDowell County. Unfortunately, the West Virginia Legislature is considering a bill that would go in the opposite direction, creating new charter schools that would — as experience in other states suggests — drain resources, thwart partnerships and strip local decision-making and taxpayer and parent accountability.
Charter schools succeed only when they are held accountable academically and financially, and when teachers and service personnel are respected and empowered to advocate for their students. Yet it is that lack of accountability and adequate protections for students and educators that are at the core of so many charter school failures.
One of the selling points by promoters of charter schools is that the schools get public dollars without the usual oversight regulations of traditional public schools.
But states with weak charter school laws, like the proposed legislation in West Virginia, have seen financial embezzlement, self-dealing and poor student performance.
For example, Michigan has one of the weakest charter accountability laws in the nation and offers a textbook case for what not to do. Even though taxpayers poured about $1 billion a year into charters, a Detroit Free Press investigation last year found a wide range of abuses, including wasteful spending, double-dipping and dismal school performance.
In Ohio, the state auditor found that between 2000 and 2014, 110 charter schools had misspent a total of $22.6 million, and many of those schools were closed.
In Pennsylvania, charter school officials have defrauded $30 million intended for students since 1997; ironically, virtually all of the state’s charter schools are found to be fiscally sound each year. And West
