Things Didn’t Go Well When Betsy DeVos Was Confronted With Her Department’s Charter School Fraud
uring a series of recent congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos had to respond to a recent report finding the U.S. Department of Education has been scammed for hundreds of millions of dollars by fraudulent or mismanaged charter schools. Her responses reveal not only her inability to counter legitimate concerns over the spread of charter schools but also the charter school industry’s resistance to honestly address a chronic problem with its schools.
The report, which I co-authored with Network for Public Education Executive Director Carol Burris, found that up to $1 billion awarded by the federal government’s Charter Schools Program (CSP) went to charter schools that never opened or opened for only brief periods before being shut down for mismanagement, poor performance, lack of enrollment, and fraud. Our calculation was that a least a third of the $4.1 billion spent by the CSP was wasted.
Members of Congress repeatedly referred to these findings when questioning the secretary’s management of charter school grants and her proposal to increase funding for the program to $500 million annually. In response, DeVos first attempted to deny the problem, saying, “You are always going to have schools that don’t make it.”
When Democratic representatives continued their questions, DeVos then tried to distract attentionfrom the problem, arguing there was a need for “more” charters, “not less.”
In the most recent exchange, DeVos pivoted to attacking the report authors personally rather than disproving their findings, saying, “The study was really funded by and promoted by those who have a political agenda against charter schools.”
That final exchange in particular raised the hackles of my coauthor Burris, who quickly delved deeper into the data to find that incidents of financial fraud, waste, and mismanagement in the charter school grant program are likely worse than our first estimate.
Federal Money Wasted on Defunct Charters Is Actually Worse
DeVos’ lame defense of the federal government’s charter school grant program before Congress should draw more scrutiny of the program rather than alleviate concerns.
DeVos’ lame defense of the federal government’s charter school grant program before Congress should draw more scrutiny of the program rather than alleviate concerns.
DeVos’ lame defense of the federal government’s charter school grant program before Congress should draw more scrutiny of the program rather than alleviate concerns.
By denying, distracting, and personally attacking the report authors, she encouraged us to delve further into the evidence that much of the money awarded by the program went to charter schools that are, at best, bungling attempts to start up education businesses that should never have been financed to begin with or, at worst, scam operations that willfully intended to make off with taxpayer money and not suffer any negative consequences.
In an “open letter” to the secretary on Valerie Strauss’ Answer Sheet CONTINUE READING: Things Didn’t Go Well When Betsy DeVos Was Confronted With Her Department’s Charter School Fraud - LA Progressive
