Charter schools are a form of private contracting, but across the 45 states which have authorized charter schools, the state laws that created these schools are different. Some states let school districts themselves authorize charter schools; other states override local authorization through state authority or permit other outside authorizers. And the amount of and quality of oversight varies. The original goal was to stimulate innovation by reducing what charter proponents alleged was the bureaucratic regulatory straitjacket that, they claimed, constrains traditional public schools.
This blog will take Memorial Day off. Look for a new post on Wednesday, June 2.
Charter schools originated in the early 1990s, and now, nearly three decades later as the charter school sector has matured, we discover what might have been predicted in an education sector paid for with public tax dollars but at the same time operated privately with little oversight. The Network for Public Education has set up a web page to track the hundreds of scandals reported year after year across the United States in local newspapers.
But there are also the stories of larger and more shocking scandals, often involving mismanagement by the chains of charter schools, some of them operated by charter management organizations (CMOs). Here are four examples reported just this spring. Three of the scandals are financial; one involves the violation of students’ rights in a CMO that made its reputation with zero-tolerance discipline.
- In early March, the Columbus Dispatch reported that the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT), a giant, online charter school put out of business in the winter of CONTINUE READING: Eliminating Federal Charter Schools Program Would Curb Academic and Financial Abuses by Charter Operators | janresseger