Charter Schools Undermine the Public Good—in Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania
This week’s news has brought additional evidence for growing public condemnation of the charter school sector—the abysmal record in Louisiana of the federal Charter Schools Program, along with the operation of charters in two states where the sector has rapidly grown: Michigan and Pennsylvania. These investigations by the press explore financial waste along with disappointment for families whose charter schools promised more than they could deliver.
In Louisiana
This week Jeff Bryant explores the role of the federal Charter Schools Program (CSP) in Louisiana, and most particularly, post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, where federal money helped underwrite the Shock Doctrine eradication of a public school district as it was turned over to a mass of privately operated charter schools. The Network for Public Education (NPE) has been tracking alarming lack of oversight over two decades in the federal CSP, which since its inception has awarded $4 billion to underwrite the startup and expansion of charter schools across the states. NPE’s report earlier this spring explored the CSP’s overall record: a third of the schools it has funded never opened or eventually shut down. Since the report was published, NPE has been releasing the state-by-state record of the CSP grants. Here’s what happened in Louisiana.
Bryant examines some of the now-closed charter schools opened in 2006 with a $24 million Charter Schools Program grant from Margaret Spelling’s U.S. Department of Education, followed in 2009 with a grant by Arne Duncan’s U.S. Department of Education for $25,576,222. In Louisiana, 110 charter schools opened with federal CSP funding between 2006 and 2014. Fifty-one of those schools (46 percent) are now closed. In Louisiana alone, $23,819,839 of in federal CSP money has been spent on schools that either never opened or have shut down.
In biennial investigations dating back to at least 2012, the U.S. Department of Education’s own Office of Inspector General (OIG) has condemned oversight of the the federal Charter Schools Program. Bryant describes the OIG’s 2018 investigation of CSP grants to Louisiana: “This time Louisiana was included in the audit because it was the state with the highest ratio of closed charter schools to total charter schools. The audit found charter schools in Louisiana that received federal money and then closed likely had widespread violations of federal laws and CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Undermine the Public Good—in Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania | janresseger
