Evidence Keeps On Growing: Charter Schools Cannot Be Successfully Regulated
Can charter schools be regulated to protect the public interest, or is it time for a moratorium on new charter schools and ultimately the phase out of the ones we have? Here are two articles—one digging deeper into abuses in the federal Charter Schools Program and the other about the failure of one state government to oversee charter schools. Both were published over the weekend by the Washington Post‘s Valerie Strauss. Together they will convince you it is time to terminate an unregulated education sector gone mad.
In the first piece, Strauss publishes Carol Burris’s new analysis: Florida’s Charter-School Sector is a Real Mess. Burris is the executive director of the Network for Public Education (NPE). Her new exploration of scandalous misuse of Charter Schools Program money in Florida is an extension of the Network for Public Education’s new report, Asleep at the Wheel, which examines federal dollars wasted between 2006 and 2014 on charter schools that never opened or eventually shut down. Since NPE released the nationwide report, Burris has been drilling down into wasted CSP dollars in specific states.
Between 2006 and 2014, the Charter Schools Program awarded $92 million to to Florida’s education department to start up or expand 502 charter schools. Burris reports that $34,781,736 of that total was spent on 184 charter schools which have closed or were never opened at all.
Nearly half of Florida’s charter schools, explains Burris, are operated by huge for-profit Charter Management Organizations (CMOs): “The nonprofit charter school becomes a ‘pass thru’ for the for-profit corporation to staff the school, provide fiscal, procurement and legal operations, and even be the landlord… According to the U.S. Department of Education, Charter Schools Program guidance document, for-profit CMOs… may not directly receive a CSP grant. However, the charter schools that are governed by a for-profit CMO may, as long as CONTINUE READING: Evidence Keeps On Growing: Charter Schools Cannot Be Successfully Regulated | janresseger
