The Charter School Movement Is a Vehicle for Fraud and Corruption As it is presently constituted.
I may have mentioned, we have a red-hot ballot initiative up here in the Commonwealth (God Save It!) in which we are asked whether or not we want to lift the cap on the number of charter schools in the state. The usual suspects and the usual out-of-state money are weighing in heavily on the YES side of things; their ads continually portray charters as merely an extension of the existing public school system even though experience everywhere tells us that the people who are making big bank of education "reform" generally, and on charters in specific, insist that they be allowed to run their businesse…er…schools independently of the school boards that manage the rest of the public system. In other words, all they want from the public school system is money and suckers.
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The latest example of this comes to us from California where, as The Washington Post informs us, the charter system is a complete and utter dog's breakfast.
There is a never-ending stream of charter scandals coming from California. For example, a report released recently (by the ACLU SoCal and Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm and advocacy group) found that more than 20 percent of all California charter schools have enrollment policies that violate state and federal law. A Mercury News investigation published in April revealed how the state's online charter schools run by Virginia-based K12 Inc., the largest for-profit charter operator in the country, have "a dismal record of academic achievement" but has won more than $310 million in state funding over the past dozen years.
Roll that number around in your head, especially if your kids go to a public school where they have to pass the hat for art supplies. That's $310 million in public money for lousy results. If the corporations and oligarchs financing education "reform" want to spend $310 million to run schools, they should spend their own damn money to do so.
California has been the Wild West on this frontier for quite some time now, California Charter School Scandals Shows the Movement Is a Vehicle for Fraud & Corruption:
