Report: Federal government wasted millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened
The report, titled “Still Asleep at the Wheel,” said that 537 “ghost schools” never opened but received a total of more than $45.5 million in federal start-up funding. That was more than 11 percent of all the schools that received funding from CSP, which began giving grants in 1995.
In Michigan, where the billionaire DeVos has been instrumental over several decades in creating a charter school sector, 72 charters that received CSP money never opened, at a total cost of some $7.7 million from 2006 to 2014. California was second, with 61 schools that failed to open but collectively received $8.36 million.
The Education Department did not respond to a query about the findings. DeVos has made expanding alternatives to school districts — including charters and programs that use public money for private and religious schools — her top priority as education secretary, and has said her metric for a state’s education success is how much they expand school “choice.”
Casandra Ulbrich, president of the Michigan State Board of Education, said in an interview that she found the new report “extremely troubling.”
“It raises some very legitimate questions about a federal grant program that seems to have been operating for years and years with little oversight and very little accountability,” she said.
The report — published by the Network for Public Education, an advocacy group that supports public education and was co-founded by education historian and advocate Diane Ravitch — says the Education Department has failed for years to properly monitor how its charter grant funding is spent. The new CONTINUE READING: Report: Federal government wasted millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened - The Washington Post
Big Education Ape: Carol Burris Responds to Charter Industry Critique of NPE’s “Asleep At the Wheel” | Diane Ravitch's blog - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/07/carol-burris-responds-to-charter.html