Peter Greene: How a Non-Profit Charter School Can be Run for Profit | Diane Ravitch's blog

Peter Greene: How a Non-Profit Charter School Can be Run for Profit | Diane Ravitch's blog

Peter Greene: How a Non-Profit Charter School Can be Run for Profit

Peter Greene reviewed the Network for Public Education’s report on for-profit charter schools in Forbes, where he is a regular columnist.

He writes:

It has become cliche for politicians and policy makers to oppose “for profit” charter schools. It’s also a safe stance, because most people agree they’re a bad idea; for-profit charter schools are not legal in almost all states. 

But charter school profiteers have found many loopholes, so that while they may not be able to set up for-profit charters, they can absolutely run charter schools for a profit. That may seem like a distinction without a difference, but the difference is that one is illegal in almost all states, and the other, as outlined in a new report, can be found from coast to coast. The new report, “Chartered for Profit,” from the Network for Public Education examines the size and reach of “the hidden world of charter schools operated for financial gain.” (Full disclosure: I am a member of NPE.)

The most common workaround for operating a charter school for profit is a management corporation. In this CONTINUE READING: Peter Greene: How a Non-Profit Charter School Can be Run for Profit | Diane Ravitch's blog

Big Education Ape: THE CALIFORNIA CHARTER SCHOOL ASSOCIATION FOR PROFIT PARASITES - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-california-charter-school_7.html

Big Education Ape: Major New Report Shows that Charters Are Too Often Parasites Weakening Host School Districts | janresseger - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2016/12/major-new-report-shows-that-charters.html

JEFF BRYANT: The for-profit charter school industry is completely out of control - Alternet org

The for-profit charter school industry is completely out of control - Alternet.org

The for-profit charter school industry is completely out of control

A new report by the Network for Public Education (NPE) explains why charter schools are often nonprofit in name only when they are associated with a for-profit management group.

NPE's report, titled "Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain," reveals that many charter schools have contracts with for-profit management groups, commonly called education management organizations (EMOs), which use the nonprofit status of charter schools to hide their business dealings. (Charter schools are defined as nonprofit entities in all states except Arizona.)

The Network for Public Education—an organization co-founded by education historian Diane Ravitch that advocates for public schools—states in the report that between September 2020 and February 2021, NPE identified more than 1,000 charter schools contracted with for-profit EMOs, including "directing schools to their related real estate and service corporations" more often than not.

Charters Run for Profit

The NPE report covers an astonishing range of enterprises that make up the for-profit charter school industry, and their array of profit-yielding business methods.

When Florida couple Dwight and Connie Cenac were losing too many students from the Christian private school they ran, they converted the school to a charter, made their for-profit management company the school's operator, and made their real estate firm the CONTINUE READING: The for-profit charter school industry is completely out of control - Alternet.org

New Report Exposes Rip-Off of Tax Dollars by For-Profit Charter Management Companies | janresseger

New Report Exposes Rip-Off of Tax Dollars by For-Profit Charter Management Companies | janresseger

New Report Exposes Rip-Off of Tax Dollars by For-Profit Charter Management Companies

On Wednesday, the Network for Public Education released Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain, a ground-breaking new report on what has become an old, old problem.

Charter schools have now been around since the early 1990s, and here in Ohio, at least, soon after David Brennan, Ohio’s school choice guy, helped Governor George Voinovich get the Cleveland Voucher Program going, Brennan switched his own business over to launching charter schools. He immediately realized that running for-profit charter schools would be far more lucrative. In 1998, Brennan launched White Hat Management, his for-profit charter management company.  He and his company helped launch charter schools and even choose board members to oversee them—to ensure that his company profited at public expense.  His network included the Hope Academy elementary schools and Life Skills Academy high schools, all of which White Hat managed under sweeps contracts, by which the schools turned over to White Hat more than 95 percent of their state funding, without any transparent reporting about spending for staff and equipment or the profits Brennan was raking off the top.

David Brennan died in 2018, but his for-profit empire did not die. The Network for Public Education’s new report shows how another entrepreneur acquired Brennan’s charter empire and expanded it. The new report also examines the operation of for-profit education management organizations across many states and explains why they are a serious threat: “We are in a time when our public schools are struggling to provide all children with the services they deserve during a national pandemic… Now more than ever, it is imperative that every tax dollar be directed to delivering those services. It is time to end chartering for profit CONTINUE READING: New Report Exposes Rip-Off of Tax Dollars by For-Profit Charter Management Companies | janresseger

Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain - Network For Public Education

Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain - Network For Public Education

Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain

In this report, we focus on the world of charter schools run for profit, a world both hidden and misunderstood. We pull back the veil on tactics and practices designed to reap as many public dollars as possible from charter schools while hiding behind laws designed to keep profit-making hidden from the public’s eyes.  This report exposes how both large and small for-profit companies evade state laws that make for-profit charter schools illegal by the use of related entities and a nonprofit front. We explain and provide examples of how for-profit owners maximize their profits through self-dealing, excessive fees, real estate transactions, and under-serving students who need the most expensive services.

You can view and read the report by clicking the image below.

Download a PDF of the Report

Download the Executive Summary

READ THE COMPLETE  REPORT:  Chartered for Profit: The Hidden World of Charter Schools Operated for Financial Gain - Network For Public Education

Whatever Happened To the Edison Schools? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Whatever Happened To the Edison Schools? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

Whatever Happened To the Edison Schools?

Beginning in the 1980s, researchers, policymakers, and business leaders identified what they called “good” or “effective” schools where mostly minority and poor children attended.. These “good” schools scored high on standardized tests, graduated high percentages of their students, with most getting admitted to college. These policymakers and school leaders wanted to replicate the “good” schools they identified so that more low-income minority children could attend across the country. The charter school movement that began in the mid-1990s continued to focus on poor and minority children and youth.Many ardent entrepreneurial reformers founded clusters of schools such as KIPP, Aspire, and dozens of other non-profit organizations.

One such leader was businessman Chris Whittle who started a bevy of for-profit schools across the country a quarter-century ago called the Edison schools (named after the inventor, Thomas Alva Edison).

UNITED STATES – CIRCA 2000: Christopher Whittle, president of Edison Schools, the company that wants to take over the running of five struggling city schools, talks about his organization’s program. (Photo by Robert Rosamilio/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

When and How Did Edison Schools Begin and Grow?

Serial entrepreneur Chris Whittle, founder of Channel 1–a for-profit venture in CONTINUE READING: Whatever Happened To the Edison Schools? | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice