Quote

“When you wage war on the public schools, you're attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You're not a conservative, you're a vandal.”
― Garrison Keillor

Some things I learned while living with a charter school administrator, Part 3

Some more things I learned while living with a charter school administrator.

That students come and go. That parents will enroll children, at least temporarily, get the local truant officer off your back.  That the military does not consider the E-schools graduates, and the education they receive,  as qualified to join the service.

That the E-schools are special, cutting edge, and high tech.  But results are hard and expectations should be lowered.  It is not fair to expect results based on the students they enroll.  If they are unsuccessful, they should change the testing.  If they are unsuccessful, they should open blended learning schools.  Or, insert the excuse of the month here…..  The theory goes, sooner or later, if Ohio throws enough money at the schools, they are bound to figure it out.

That charter schools come and go.   Administrators and teachers are recycled and show up somewhere else.  Keep the building, change the name.  Jump from White Hat to Connections or K-12.  Only the best and brightest in this system.  Its a living,  Honor and ethics are preferred but not required.

My personal favorite;  that you can have an affair with you underlings and then promote them.  That you can be promoted by having an affair with the superintendent.    You can have the same person you sleep with complete your evaluation. Then you can be superintendent.  That the board remains clueless.  In a corporate world, leadership like this will get you fired, not promoted.

That the State of Ohio is paying over a billion dollars for this model.  Six billion dollars to date.  Pretty soon you are talking about real money. 

That this model will not succeed.

Some things I learned while living with a charter school administrator, Part 2

Some more things I learned while living with a charter school administrator.

Procuring Federal title money and grants is profitable.

That the management company wants and expects every dime from the grants and title money.  It is the administrator’s job to get all the money.  If you do not get it, the company will be less profitable.  That may not be a wise career move.

Justifying title money is hard, it takes creative writing and accounting.

You can allocate and reallocate teacher hours and roles to maximize the amount.  You assign teacher hours to maximize the title money.  You can do this after the fact, even  while sitting in your home watching TV.  An observer might think this is fraudulent. 

That you can pay teachers less than at a public school.  That the teaching market is very weak.
That you can go somewhere warm in the winter for meetings and be dined and wined.  That these expenses , normally not allowed to the school, are paid by the management company.  You can go on a similar excursion in the summer.

That the management company picks the board.

That you can handpick a board and include some parents which can be “easily led around by the nose.”
That you can put your neighbor on the board.

That you can put some parents on the board who do not need to understand anything about finances or board operations.  It is a learning position and the school leaders will feed you what you the information they deem that you need to hear.  It is an ego boost for some.

That lobbying is an important part of the business plan.  That politicians love the idea and the political contributions.

That they have hired their own lobbyist.  A lobbyist can throw a good party.

That marketing is a key element in securing enrollment.  You can spend tens of thousands of dollars on slick TV ads, slick radio ads and the internet.  Your competitors will do the same.   That you can quote a result from 2010, but ignore subsequent results.  That you will never see the state report card mentioned in any marketing materials.

Freedom of choice, even if it is a foolish decision, is a strong marketing point.

Lobbying and marketing expenses ultimately come from the taxpayers of Ohio via the management company.

Some things I learned while living with a charter school administrator, Part 1

My grandfather had a favorite saying.  You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.

My Ex-wife was an administrator for an E-school.  The marriage ended on bad terms. 

Some things I learned while living with a charter school administrator.

That charter schools are called community schools in Ohio.  Many are not located in the community and actually suck significant amount of money from a local community or district with no charter schools.  Community schools has a folksy sounding name, better for marketing.

That ethics are optional.

That there are many ways to game the system to benefit your own interests. 

There is little oversight.

Self-preservation is a powerful force.  Being an administrator is a pretty good gig.

There is an inherent conflict between producing results and producing revenue by increasing  the headcount.  This conflict causes some stress at first but you get over it.  More students mean more dollars.

That E-schools are not for everyone, and probably not for the majority of the students enrolled.

That E-schools are a profitable business.  The schools themselves are “non-profit”.  How it works is that you send most of the money to the management company who set up the school.  That school money gets siphoned to the management company, usually to a local entrepreneur who established the management company or to a large or giant corporation like K-12 Inc. and Pearson Education.  They need to take enough so that the school never will show a profit.  Non-profit status does not apply to the management company.

That you can pay students and parent to take tests by offering them gift cards.  That the schools really would prefer that some students not take the tests.

That despite millions of dollars coming in the door, that you can have a part-time treasurer.  That treasurer can serve many charter schools.  The treasurer does not audit the management company.

If your treasurer gets indicted for malfeasance at another school, you should hire a new one.

The majority of the Ohio E-schools have the same sponsor.

The sponsor takes their fee based on total revenue.  It is very profitable to be a sponsor.   I don’t see much in the way of staff or overhead for these sponsors.

That the management company can make millions for it’s founders.

That the salary information listed on web sites is out of date and inaccurate, too low for administrators.

That you can invest the money earned from one state to expand in another and internationally.  More students mean more dollars.

A For-Profit College Tries The Charter School Market

Not in Ohio, yet.....

Sounds like another company wants to get into the drop out recovery business.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/ed/2014/12/14/369925385/a-for-profit-college-tries-the-charter-school-market

In each city, a charter school called Early Career Academy planned to offer students the chance to earn associate degrees, either in network systems administration or software development, alongside their high school diplomas. Students were offered laptops to work on and ebooks to use. All for free.

"It fits the pattern of big, for-profit companies looking to diversify beyond that Title IV-based revenue model," says Kevin Kinser. Title IV refers to federal student aid such as loans and Pell Grants, which are the primary source of income for most large for-profit colleges.

"As their traditional higher education provider business has declined, they need to find other avenues to make up the revenue lost," he explained. "They also want to avoid the regulatory burden that running a college entails. So you see ITT look to the charter schools. You see Apollo [University of Phoenix] look to invest capital in start-ups. Kaplan has international plans. All of these strike me as strategies to offset the declining prospects of growing enrollment ... and the regulatory and financial problems that they have been facing."

Most recently, in February of this year, ITT became the first for-profit college to be sued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency. The complaint says ITT used "aggressive" tactics to market a high-interest private loan to students between July and December 2011 and that as a practice, ITT overcharges students and misrepresents their job prospects.

10th Period: Ohio CREDO study: Charters' Generally Negative Imp...

10th Period: Ohio CREDO study: Charters' Generally Negative Imp...: The quadrennial CREDO study from Stanford has become a sort of gold standard for charter-public school comparisons. They use sophisticated ...

Profitship! Cashing In On Public Schools

CURMUDGUCATION: Charters Make Money. So What? $100 hookers

$100 hookers.... Great analogy.



Too bad most of the Ohio Schools are lacking the results



CURMUDGUCATION: Charters Make Money. So What?: It's a response that comes frequently to the charge that modern charter schools have become all about grabbing large piles of money for ...

A personal fiefdom that ended badly.

Five years probation, repayment of $75,000 and four months in lockdown.  Fair? Probably.  The loss of her license will keep her out this business.  The treasurer has also apparently pled guilty.

Another hand picked school board,not doing their job.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

Hamm founded the school in 1999 and worked to get $7 million in state and federal money per year for the charter school. Charter schools are independently operated public schools that can receive state and federal public money to operate.

Much of that money was used to educate the students, but hundreds of thousands of it was spent by Hamm taking 22 taxpayer-funded trips and attending concerts, often with her friends and co-workers, also paid for with tax dollars. Hamm "treated the CCPA treasury as a personal slush fund in order to enhance her personal lifestyle," Assistant Prosecutor Bill Anderson said.

While her intentions initially may have been benevolent, Anderson said, Hamm created the school and made sure everyone knew she was going to run it as she wanted. "Miss Hamm came down with a case of 'founder-itis,' " Anderson said. 

"Miss Hamm ruled CCPA with an iron fist," he said. "She founded the school. She ran the school, and she was going to do whatever the hell she wanted with this money."

Another hand picked board,not doing their job.  A comment from the board.  Too little, too late.

"Gore admitted the CCPA board wasn't as diligent as it should have been in monitoring Hamm's spending. "The school has lost in excess of half a million dollars," he said."

In exchange for Hamm's plea, prosecutors dropped 23 other charges against her. She will report Jan. 7 to West to begin serving her 120-day time behind bars.

Stephanie Millard also has agreed to plead guilty in the case, court documents note.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2014/11/24/lisa-hamm-convicted-charter-school-crimes/19483309/

CURMUDGUCATION: PA Cyber Charters Failing

CURMUDGUCATION: PA Cyber Charters Failing: Let me be clear up front-- I reject the use of standardized tests to measure the education of students, the effectiveness of teachers, and t...

The worm is turning

The charter school industry has had a big advantage in marketing  and presenting a positive reform minded message to the consumers and voters of Ohio.

Although the schools themselves may be non-profits, the  for profit parent companies are very profitable.  The K-12s and White Hats, Pearsons,  can lobby politicians, buy TV and radio ads, and push the freedom of choice message.  The message is loud, attractive and professional.  Combined, they can spend millions and massage their message.

What the message fails to convey are  the actual results of the schools and the cost of this transfer from public to private.

My sense is that the worm is turning.  I now see letters to the editors concerning the transfer of dollars to charters from concerned parents and taxpayers.  I see grass root organizations of parents pushing back.  I see websites like knowyourcharter.com providing information.  I see Facebook pages like cashing in on kids.  I see blogs covering education issues.  I see the press asking why politicians are taking trips to Turkey.  I see investigations and indictments.  I see questions on where the money is going and what we are getting for that money.  I see proposals for reform and accountability. 

I did not see this push back for several years.   I saw only positive spin on the charter school saviors coming to help.  They left out some important details, like results.  The devil is in the details.

Bloomberg takes on K-12

Not a good investment.  Good article

Plagued by subpar test scores, the largest operator of online public schools in the U.S. has lost management contracts or been threatened with school shutdowns in five states this year. The National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled in April that students can no longer count credits from 24 K12 high schools toward athletic scholarships

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-14/k12-backed-by-milken-suffers-low-scores-as-states-resist.html#disqus_thread

The results for Ohio:
The 2012-2013 Ohio Department of Education report card shows 1 C, 1 D and 6 F's With a performance index of 73.0% and Indicators met of 45.8%^[2

The 2013-2014 Ohio Department of Education report card shows 1 C, 1 D and 6 F's With a performance index of 73.6% and Indicators met of 41.7% ^[3]

http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Archives%20TS/Community%20Schools/142950/142950_2012-2013_BUILD.pdf

http://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/Pages/School-Report.aspx?SchoolIRN=142950

Ethics and Charter Schools

Ohio is number 4, and that is not good

Follow the money!

I sense that the pendulum is swinging back towards sanity after a failed billion dollar experiment.  More articles in the papers.  More letters to the editor.  More pressure on the politicians. 

http://www.ohio.com/news/local/ohio-s-for-profit-charter-schools-drag-state-into-group-of-nation-s-worst-performers-1.539387?localLinksEnabled=false

"Ohio’s charter schools have a national reputation for hiring for-profit companies that produce poor academic results.

Only three of 26 states had lower performing charter schools, according to a Stanford University study of states with schools in operation long enough to compare results.

A factor in the difference appears to be the motivation to make money.

Tennessee, New York and Rhode Island, which the study reckons have the highest-performing charter school sectors, are among the six states that ban for-profit companies.

At the other end of the spectrum, Ohio trails only Michigan and Texas in the percentage of taxpayer-funded charter schools run by for-profit companies, according to the Colorado-based National Education Policy Center.

• Of the 16 lowest performing networks, 14 were managed by for-profit companies.

• The online charter schools Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow and Ohio Virtual Academy, which account for a quarter of all charter enrollment, averaged the lowest student growth in the state.

• Of the 12 highest-performing charter school networks, eight hired nonprofit management organizations.

• $503 million of $920 million in public funding went to charter schools managed by for-profit companies. A little over half of the $920 million went to out-of-state companies.

• Out-of-state and for-profit companies enrolled 74,458 of the 119,271 Ohio charter school students."

Another pissed off superintendent

An opinion letter on charter school and the waste of tax dollars from Tom Dunn, Superintendent of Troy Schools

http://tdn-net.com/news/opinion_columns/150385462/You-really-want-to-know-about-this

In a previous article, I criticized state superintendent Dr. Richard Ross for his claim that the state’s quest for transparency is the driving force behind the Ohio Department of Education’s (ODE) School District Report Card. I suggested that his, the ODE’s, and the legislature’s quest for transparency seems to end where their pet project, the charter school movement, begins. I challenged readers to visit the independently created web site known as http://knowyourcharter.com/ to become better informed about the charter school debacle and how it impacts you.


Realizing that the percentage of readers who accepted my challenge would likely be small, I wanted to follow up by sharing some of the information contained on the site. My hope is that your interest will be piqued enough that you will visit it to learn what is really being done with your tax dollars. As a taxpayer, you should be very interested in both the financial and academic information contained there, and you should be outraged by it.
Before we even begin to discuss the complete academic failure of charter schools in Ohio, which you can see by clicking on each charter’s name on the web site, let’s start with the fact that $2.1 million were deducted from Miami County school districts last year and sent to charter schools, nearly two million of which went to for-profit entities operated by private corporations. You read that right — $2 million!


In other words, public funds that were approved for local districts, otherwise known as yours and my
tax dollars, are being sent to for-profit companies under the pretense that these schools are better than yours. Even worse, the money is often used to lobby our legislators to create the laws that further benefit charter schools.
Keep in mind that public dollars can’t be used to lobby for votes, but for-profit charter school operators, along with some of their lawmaker buddies, argue that it is perfectly acceptable for them to do so, because their company is private. So, to underscore the ridiculousness of this argument, charter schools, which the state champions as public schools, can be run by private companies that use public funds in ways that public funds can’t be used. That shouldn’t be acceptable to any of us.


The fact is that once these dollars enter the for-profit black hole, there is no oversight as to how they are being spent, and the folks at ODE, in the legislature, and in the governor’s office simply turn a blind eye to the practice as if it doesn’t occur. In fact, when State Auditor Dave Yost tried to increase the oversight on these kinds of activities, Governor Kasich and members of the legislature were less than pleased. After all, this money helps get them elected.


It should tell you something that the people who should care about this scam don’t care at all,
especially considering they tell us they are so enamored with keeping us informed. In fact, if not for independent researchers like those who created this web site and media outlets uncovering the shenanigans of these companies, we wouldn’t be any wiser about how our tax dollars are being inappropriately used.
To see one example, take a few minutes and read the article at http://dailycaller.com/2014/10/13/crony-capitalism-for-ohio-charter-schools-draws-criticism. If that doesn’t raise your ire, nothing will. A simple Google search can uncover many similar articles, all of which should interest you, since they are talking about your money.


It has become painfully obvious that the folks who should be providing the oversight have no intention of changing what they do, so apparently we must be the change agents for them. Learning what is happening is the first step. Putting a stop to it should follow.


Tom Dunn of Troy is superintendent of the Miami County Education Service Center. He may be reached at tom.dunn@mcapps.org

A .375 GPA

Some insights from a recent auditor’s report.  I think  I am reading this correctly. 

Imagine Schools Inc. has been justifiably  criticized for paying a subsidiary more money in rent than it does for its teaching staff and producing poor results.  The national benchmark for rent is 15% according to an article in the Columbus Dispatch. 

A recent audit of Ohio Connections Academy shows that teaching and administration total $5,268,575.  Overhead totals $6,003,793.   113% more than the money for teaching salary and benefits.  Overhead is undefined.  This money flows out of the state to a Maryland management company, Connections Learning,  who does with it as they wish.  There is little in bricks and mortar expense.  Compare that to 15% rent benchmark.

The management company can recycle the same software year after year.  They can sell essentially the same software to multiple states.  The transfer and accounting of the overhead expense insures that the non-profit altruistic E-school never will show a profit.  Useful to show why they cannot pay teachers more or to elicit sympathy from parents or politicians.  They are the underdog. 

Yet it is a very profitable business for the management company. Connections Learning, K-12 and others are aggressively expanding in every state possible.  Underdog status also justifies the need for more money and more students.  See page 20 on the attached link. 

What are the latest state report card results for this E-school?  1 C, 2 D’s and 5 F’s.  A .375 GPA.  It would be nice if they could move the decimal point.

To help manage the multimillion dollar budget they hired a part-time treasurer  who is under indictment for her role as treasurer with Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy.  I guess there is no need for an on-site full time treasurer. 

The audit also shows unresolved title money issues totaling $668,642 (see page 46).  When will this be resolved?  To paraphrase a politician, pretty soon we are talking real money.  At best it shows that they are sloppy with their record keeping.  At worst is suggests that they are playing with the allocations to put more of scarce title money in their pockets at the expense of taxpayers. 

https://ohioauditor.gov/auditsearch/Reports/2013/Ohio_Connections_Academy_11-Hamilton.pdf

There is an obvious problem.  Look at the proliferation of E-schools in Ohio.  Who benefits?

What is needed?  Transparency, strong boards (which are not lead around by the nose by the management company), and oversight.  These characteristics exist in the vast majority of our public school districts.  Oh by the way, results  would be good too.

A great grasp of the obvious

StudentsFirst Ohio's Executive Director Greg Harris has made some pretty important statements. Last year, he said in the Akron Beacon Journal that "a lot of times it has to do not with how well your school is performing, but how well your lobbyist is paid."

To hear a pro-charter organization say we need to get politics out of the argument and implore the legislature to stop pouring more money into bad charters was unheard of before last year.

Harris was at it again this morning in the Columbus Dispatch. Here's what he said:

But the group will also warn parents against the slick advertising campaigns of bad charter operators.

“We think a lot of them (charters) need to be closed, because they’re not doing a good job,” Harris said. “We think charters have a role in the education base, but we also think most of the charters in Ohio stink.”

Now, StudentsFirst has been on the quality bandwagon for a while. But to hear that Ohio's charters have serious quality issues is unheard of from Ohio's charter school advocacy community, until now.

Imagine

From the Diane Ravitch Blog.....  http://dianeravitch.net/2014/10/21/some-dam-poet-on-charters/

The blog habits own poet, who signs as “Some DAM Poet—Devalue Added Model.”

Here is his or her poem for Imagine charters in Ohio:

“”Imagine” (sincere apologies to John Lennon)

Imagine no regulation
It’s easy if you try
No tax below us
Above us only $ky
Imagine all the charters
Living for today
Imagine there’s no oversight
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to sweat or lie for
And no inspections, too
Imagine all the charters
Living life in peace
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the charters will cheat as one
Imagine no prosecutions
I wonder if you can
No need for lawyers and trials
A brotherhood of scams
Imagine all the charters
Ruling all the world
You, you may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the charters will rule as one

Compare and Contrast in Ohio

Results matter!

Some great information here.  Does not get into the whys or malfeasance.  Just the stats and the money being transferred.  An educated consumer is a smart consumer.  This probably is not mentioned in any of the marketing for the charter schools but could be if the charter can produce the results. 81% of Ohio’s rated charter schools fell in the bottom quarter.  Otherwise, pay no attention to the results.  Nothing to see here, please move along.

http://knowyourcharter.com

Another Charter Administrator Convicted. A personal Fiefdom

A personal fiefdom.  It is good to be queen until it isn't.

Where was the oversight, a weak handpicked board and part time treasurer to rubber stamp.

I suspect that getting involved in these charter schools was a very bad career move.  Leaves  Stephanie Millard in a pretty bad position.  Not sure how many other charters she was acting treasurer for but I suspect any and know for sure that one of them was Ohio Connections Academy.

http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/17/former-charter-school-leader-gets-plea-deal/17438269/

A former superintendent accused of using her charter school as her "personal feifdom" is now a convicted felon, marking the latest blemish for charter schools in this region and statewide.

Lisa Hamm, who ran the Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy, the region's largest charter school, cut a deal with prosecutors last week. She pleaded guilty Oct. 8 to three of 26 felony counts against her. The remaining charges, including multiple counts of theft in office and tampering with evidence, were dismissed.

Hamm, who court documents claim ran the school as her "personal fiefdom," could get up to 18 months in prison on the charges of unauthorized use of property. Probation is also an option. She agreed to repay $75,000 to the school. She's scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 24 by Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge John West.

Hamm of Fairfield, and former treasurer Stephanie Millard, of Walnut Hills, were accused of stealing or misusing $148,000 in taxpayer money that should have gone to educating the 950 students at Cincinnati College Preparatory Academy. The court documents allege Hamm instead used the money to pay for extravagant trips, plays, concerts, luggage, spa visits, jewelry veterinary care and other personal uses.

The charges in the Oct. 8 plea agreement involved a trip to San Diego that ended up costing more than $20,000, and trips to Orlando and to see Oprah Winfrey. Hamm had said the trips were school-related.

Charter schools are public schools that are independently run. There are about three dozen in Southwest Ohio. Some are high-performing and well-run. But as a group they're often criticized for lax accountability and mediocre academics. Several local charter schools have closed over the years due to financial problems and academic issues. Some cases resulted in criminal charges.

The state has been cracking down on charter schools via stringent audits and increased scrutiny of their sponsoring organizations. Charter school accountability has become a political issue, as Democrats accuse Republican leadership of not doing enough to improve it.

In the most recent example the Concept chain of charter schools, which includes the Horizon Science Academy in Bond Hill, came under investigation by the FBI and the Ohio Department of Education after a string of allegations including improper use of technology money and testing irregularities.

Analysis on outsourcing, Ohio included

Another article about outsourcing.  Follow the money.  Is this the best we can do for Ohio?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/images/c/c9/Outsourcing_Report_Oct_2014.pdf


Some analysis on school boards. 

From a prior post:  Traditional school districts, in most cases, employ qualified professionals to manage finances, develop curriculum and ensure that applicable laws are followed. Charter schools are, by philosophy, less traditionally structured.

Ohio could do a lot to head off charter-school problems by reforming the process by which they are created.

A key weakness has been the lack of any way to hold accountable those charter-school sponsors who don’t act as watchdogs over the schools they sponsor. Weak Ohio law allows blatant conflicts of interest — for example, nothing bars sponsors, the supposed watchdogs, from selling services to the schools they are supposed to be holding accountable"

“All control and direction for the school comes on high from corporate, and such constructs as school governing boards and local governance amount to distractions. Clearly, local control is an oxymoron to the Dennis Bakkes of the charter school industry.

The memo also makes it clear that no autonomy is expected of the boards which are chosen mostly by the company’s regional managers. While the best of our nation’s schools usually feature a collaborative model where teams of teachers work with school administrators, privatization of public schools that are operated by national chains seems to come only with a top-down approach, and any semblance of a governing board to provide guidance and oversight for the school’s operations is not to be tolerated in Bakke’s world.

In Ohio, the Revised Code treats a charter school as a school district, with its own treasurer, chief administrative officer, and governing board. But state law also allows great latitude regarding the operation and governance of the school, and current law requires that each school have a minimum of five board members, with no other qualifications stated in the law.”

Raymond Lambert School Leader of the Year by the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools (OAPCS) once had this to say about boards.

“I wonder why people sit on Boards? Is it a cheap self esteem boost?”

“ I often think the many Boards I have seen are lead around by the nose anyway.”

"Ohio’s charter schools, which are publicly funded, are

supposed to be subject to periodic state audits and held to

performance standards by the sponsoring organizations

that contract with operators.

 

But governing boards may not be as independent as they

ought to be, as a 2014 investigation by the Akron Beacon

Journal found. White Hat shares legal representation with

 

the boards of many of the charter schools it has contracts

with.

149 And a number of board members have admitted

that they were recruited by White Hat, a clear conflict of

interest.

In a revealing statement, Maggie Ford, chief academic

officer at White Hat, told the

Beacon Journal, “Sometimes

we have one or two people that would like to start a school,

and they don’t have enough for an entire board. So they

want to, they talk to, other board members or ask us to

help recruit board, um, recommend board members.”

 

In effect, the boards at many “nonprofit” charter schools

were hand-picked by White Hat, which contracted with

those same boards to operate the schools."

Combine a couple of hand-picked board members and combine that with a couple of well-meaning but unqualified parent board members and you have a serious but profitable governance situation. Again, where is the independence?

Keep in mind that a billion dollars has been transferred out of the public schools to charter schools in Ohio.
I  note that the folks who set up Connections Academy board are former White Hat employees.  I suspect that many of the same management people take what they learn to set up a new charter that primarily benefits their interests.  I would submit that the boards are handpicked rubber stamps with little actual power.

 

95% Fees, how to cash in on kids

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2014/09/the_95_fees_that_charter_schools_pay_white_hat_go_before_the_ohio_supreme_court_today.html

Interesting article on how to convert public funds to private property and profit.  It also makes it very difficult for a school board to act independently from the entity that created it. 

This case is currently in the Ohio Supreme Court.

OHDELA paid 75 percent of its $14 million budget to White Hat as a management fee.

Outside of White Hat, audits for online charter school Ohio Virtual Academy showed a similar pattern. About two-thirds of the $68 million the school spent in 2010-11-- $43 million -- went toward purchasing services from K12 Inc., the company that runs it.

The profit margins are a closely guarded secret.  My understanding, is that the profit margin for Ohio Connections Academy (owned by Pearson) is 30%.  Yet that school hired a part time treasurer.  No need for detailed disclosure.  No need for an elected board.

The money make millionaires out of some.  The money provides many separate districts which then create  high paying principals, superintendants, treasurers and managers. The sponsors take their piece of the action.  Unfortunately the students and teachers are not beneficiaries of this system. 

Better education results are a worthy goal.  Unfortunately, this is a failed billion dollar experiment.  The results speak for themselves.  Check the report cards.  A few individuals profit greatly, obtain fancy titles, money and perks and promise that someday they will produce results.  What a scam.

Charter School Analysis

Lots of marketing going on.  Radio ads, TV ads, internet ads.  Yet the results are never mentioned.  I wonder why?


Failing than Public Schools

By dianeravitch

September 16, 2014 //

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Stephen Dyer, education policy fellow at Innovation Ohio, has analyzed the latest state report cards. The state’s Governor, John Kasich, is pro-charter, pro-voucher, and pro-market forces. He is no friend to public education. The legislature is the same. They want more schools that are privately managed. As we saw in a post yesterday, Ohio has a parent trigger law, and (as I posted yesterday) the State Education Department has hired StudentsFirst (founded by Michelle Rhee) to inform parents in Columbus about their right to convert their low-performing public school to a charter or hand it over to a charter management organization. Given the statistics in this post, the odds are that the parents will turn their low-performing public school into an even lower-performing charter school, with no hope of escape.

Yet when the state report cards came out, public schools overwhelmingly received higher grades than charter schools. Dyer explains in this post that “The Ohio Report Cards are now all out, and the news is worse for Ohio’s embattled Charter Schools than it was last year. Charter Schools received more Fs than As, Bs and Cs combined. Their percentage of Fs went up from about 41% last year to nearly 44% this year.” Think of it, nearly half the charters in the state earned an F grade, yet the state wants MORE of them.

Dyer also found that the public schools in the Big 8–Ohio’s urban districts–face more challenges than charters, yet still outperform the urban charters. He writes:

In further analyzing the Ohio Report Card data released today, schools in Ohio’s Big 8 urban centers (Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and Youngstown) scored higher on their performance index score (the closest thing Ohio has to an overall performance assessment at this point) than Charter Schools, despite having substantially higher percentages of children who were economically disadvantaged. A staggering 51% of Big 8 urban buildings have more than 95% of their students designated as economically disadvantaged (the Ohio Department of Education only says buildings have “>95.0″ if their economic disadvantaged number is higher than 95%).

So, despite having more than half their buildings with, for all intents and purposes, all their kids economically disadvantaged, Ohio’s Big 8 urban buildings actually perform better, on average, than Ohio’s Charter Schools, which were originally intended to “save” children from “failing” urban buildings.

Dyer also notes that “Of the top 200 PI [Performance Index] scores, 10 are Charters, 190 are districts. Of the bottom 200 PI scores, 21 are districts and 179 are Charters.”

When Dyer looked at Value-Added Measures for districts, the public school districts still outperformed charters, showing more test score growth than charters.

The puzzle in these results is why Ohio policymakers–the Governor and the Legislature–want more charters. The answer, as we have observed again and again, is that sponsors and advocates for charters make large political contributions to elected officials. They have become a potent special interest group. This is a case where results don’t matter.

The question is, who will save poor children from failing charter schools? Or will Ohio recklessly continue to authorize more charter schools without regard to the performance of the charter sector?

I should point out here, as I have in the past, that I think school report cards with a single letter grade, is one of the stupidest public policy ideas in the “reform” bag of tricks. There is no way that a letter grade can accurately reflect the work of a complex institution or the many people in it. Think of a single child coming home from school with a report card that contained only one letter, and it gives some notion of what a simplistic idea it is to grade an entire school in this way. Nonetheless, this is the system now in use in many states (pioneered by the master of ersatz reform, Jeb Bush), so I report what the state reports.

A tangled web we weave. The British are coming maybe the Libyans too.

According to the “Financial Times” a publication owned by Pearson,The Sovereign fund of Libya initially took a 3.27 per cent stake in Pearson. 3.27% is a significant stake in what is the largest educational publishing company in the world. Pearson is a $9 Billion giant that dominates textbooks, testing, teacher evaluation, IT platforms for schools, and may have the largest investment in lobbying of any publishing company operating in the United States. Pearson is also a major supplier to states who have adopted the Common Core Standard. So why does it matter that Libya may have had or still has a stake in Pearson?

According to a February 2012 study by Citizens for National Security about Muslim Biased textbooks in Florida, four are published by Pearson. Act for America conducted a 2011 study of Muslim-biased textbooks in America and concluded that Pearson published 13 titles where significant Muslim Bias was uncovered. At the time of the stake, Qaddafi was leader in Libya, and promoted his radical brand of Islam. The Arab world, and the Muslim Brotherhood have shown great interest in using education in the United States to indoctrinate American students about Islam. This publication reviewed Pearson’s 2013 World History, a high school level textbook, as an example of strident Islamic Bias. According to Stanley Kurtz in the National Review the Saudis have made strong gains in penetrating American schools:

Pearson is a leading proponent of the common core standards.  They own Connections Education which run the Connections Academies and Nexus Academies.

Another example of profits over students, what a profitable scam

Note the incestuous management team.  My prediction, another failed school but profits for the Charter company.  Not if, but when the failure will occur.  Do they really expect more students based on their track record?  Do they care? Self preservation is a powerful motivator.

 

New school board seeking lower lease payments, more money for kids

COLUMBUS — A scrappy new school board overseeing the Imagine Columbus Primary Academy wants to re-negotiate the school’s lease.
And what a lease it is: The Imagine academy pays an Imagine subsidiary $700,000 per year to rent a school with just 155 students. The rent consumes more than half of the struggling school’s annual budget, leaving little for classroom instruction.
And when a plumbing problem sent sewage flowing though classrooms on the first day of school, the tenant—not the landlord—was responsible for the repair.
Board Chair Melonia Bennett said she knows the five-year lease is valid. “But I’m kind of hoping that if we point out some of the issues – like the school might not be viable in five years because of how high our costs are – that at least the parties would be willing to discuss the issue.’’
Bennett made her comments at last week’s school board meeting where she convinced her fellow board members to form a subcommittee charged with trying to lower the rental payments and free up more money for teachers and kids.

• Hidden Video Available Online Here
• Copy of the Imagination Budget Online Here

As expected, Imagine representatives who attended the meeting appeared hostile to the idea, repeatedly advising the school to bring in more money by enrolling more students.
ProgressOhio Executive Director Brian Rothenberg, whose organization secretly videotaped the meeting, showed part of the tape at a Columbus news conference Tuesday and said he hopes it inspires other charter school boards to fight back, too.
“It’s clear that Gov. Kasich and the lawmakers won’t fix the system so I am calling on charter school board members to fight from within,” he said. “Shine a spot light on these abusive financial arrangements. Work to get money in the classrooms where it matters the most.”
Board members made the same point, arguing that the school’s low test scores could be raised with more interventions and more experienced teachers but low salaries lead to high teacher turnover. The school received an F on the latest state report card.
The Imagine academy is a charter school paid for with public money and operated by Imagine Schools Inc., a Virginia-based company.
In a 2010 report on Imagine Schools, the think tank, Policy Matters Ohio, found it has a poor record of performance in Ohio and a business model that includes elaborate real estate transactions, high management fees, overlapping business relationships, low spending on classroom instruction, and tight control of school finances and board relationships.
Four years later, the same troubling pattern is evident at the Columbus academy, Rothenberg said.
Until last year, the school’s building off of Morse Road housed another Imagine school but it was forced to close after a nine-year run of poor academic results. So Imagine opened a new elementary school with a new principal in the same building under a new name.
The school can hold 500 students but competition from other schools and low test scores has today’s enrollment about 155.
In addition to paying $700,000 to lease the building, the school pays Imagine about $10,000 per month in “indirect costs” it pays to Imagine for sponsor services, according to its balance statement. The money is to pay for lawyers and salaries for corporate and regional staff such as Jennifer Keller, director of Imagine’s Ohio regional team.
Keller is the sister of Amy Butte, Imagine Executive Vice President for Ohio and Indiana. Amy’s husband, Chris, is business manager of the Ohio Regional Team.
Keller attended the board meeting and defended the $700,000 per year lease.
“Until we start to get our enrollment up the lease is going to be a substantial cost. So we have to figure out, 1: How do we increase enrollment.” The more students the school has the more state money it collects – and the more it must pay in those “indirect’’ fees to Imagine.
Despite high turnover from teachers and staff and a principal who joined the school last February, there has been some consistency: Keller and Amy Butte served as the regional leaders for several leaders, including years when Imagine operated the school that eventually was forced to close.
Also attending the board meeting, and defending the lease, was Imagine attorney Amy Borman.

Ohio Department of Education released the results for Charter Schools.

Ohio’s public school districts significantly outperformed charter schools

Of the 3,274 school buildings that received a Performance Index Score (a composite of standardized test performance), 228 of the 281 charter schools ranked in the bottom 25%. To explain that another way, 81% of Ohio’s rated charter schools that fell in the bottom quarter. And finally, one more way: 4 out of 5 charter schools had a rating based on student performance that was in the bottom 1/4 of all of Ohio’s schools. [Point of clarity - these rankings do not include "dropout recovery schools"]

262 charter schools (93%) ranked in the bottom 50%. 9 out of 10 charter schools fell in the bottom half.

Regarding the much-ballyhooed Third Grade Reading Guarantee, the “Holy Grail” of education reform for Ohio’s boys and girls, 81% of Ohio’s 3rd graders scored proficient or above on the 3rd grade OAA. This number is down by 0.4% from last year, meaning that approximately 500 fewer 3rd graders scored proficient than last year. [Perhaps if teachers had been able to spend more time teaching and less time testing...]

Complete article here:

http://www.plunderbund.com/2014/09/13/ohios-public-schools-outperform-charters-again/

League of Women Voters (NM) takes a look at E schools

http://www.lwvglc.org/documents/lwvglc_paper_for_profit_virtual_charter_schools.pdf

Not recommended in New Mexico.  Good analysis.

Charter School Oversight in Florida

Look what is happening in Florida.

Follow the money!

http://interactive.sun-sentinel.com/charter-schools-unsupervised/investigation.html

"Management companies, hired by two-thirds of South Florida’s charter schools, further complicate the school districts’ ability to monitor spending and discern who controls the purse strings, the newspaper found. These companies provide services ranging from targeted assignments to wholesale management of schools, and have received anywhere from 10 to 97 percent of a school’s budget, records show.
“They’re public schools in the front door; they’re for-profit closed entities in the back door,” said Kathleen Oropeza, who co-founded FundEducationNow.org, an education advocacy group based in Orlando. “There’s no transparency; the public has no ability to see where the profits are, how the money is spent.”

Great investigation

What could Ohio learn?

New successful charter school ;-)

Progressive Charter School Doesn’t Have Students

News in Brief• education• News• ISSUE 49•26• Jul 1, 2013

 

ATLANTA—One year into its founding as the purported “bold next step in education reform,” administrators on Monday sang the praises of Forest Gates Academy, a progressive new charter school that practices an innovative philosophy of not admitting any students. “We’ve done something here at Forest Gates that is truly special, combining modern, cutting-edge pedagogical methods with a refreshingly non-pupil-centric approach,” said academy president Diane Blanchard, who claimed that the experimental school boasts state-of-the-art facilities, a diverse and challenging syllabus, absolutely zero students, a world-class library, and the highest faculty-student ratio in the nation. “Thanks to our groundbreaking methods, we’ve established a structured yet free-thinking environment where the student is taken out of the equation entirely, and in fact is not allowed on school property. And the results, we think, speak for themselves.” According to its budgetary records, Forest Gates has so far received approximately $80 million in public funding from the state of Georgia.

Good stuff from The Onion

More news

Part of a letter to the editor published in the Dayton Daily News

87% is shameful.  $1 billion should be criminal

In fact, multiple charter school scandals across the state are causing Ohio citizens to wake up and ask why one billion taxpayer dollars per year are pouring into a ‘failed choice’ for almost 100,000 of Ohio’s children. Currently, 87% of Ohio’s charter school students are attending a charter school with a D or F rating. Recently, Ohio has been branded as the “Wild, Wild West of Charters” and called a charter school “free for all” by the National Association of Charter School Authorizers due to an astounding lack of accountability and transparency by the Ohio Legislature.

Turning a profit’ has turned into an empty promise for our kids.

Maureen Reedy
Columbus, Ohio

I predict Ohio politicians will be creating as much distance as they can from these low performing schools.  

10th Period: More Horizon/Charter Test Questions

10th Period: More Horizon/Charter Test Questions: After the allegations at Horizon Science Academy's Dayton campus were raised a couple weeks ago, I decided to look at Horizon's oth...



Interesting.....

ECOT Exposed

Very well done!

A little more publicity

I was pleasantly surprised to see a letter to the editor in a recent Cincinnati Enquirer about the need for the Ohio legislature to get their hands around the lack of accountability of charter schools in Ohio.

The Columbus Dispatch also published a similar letter to the editor.

This is not to say that this publicity can compete with the marketing power of radio and television blitz of the charter schools (which never mention their resport card) but it is a start.

Some charter schools are well run and successful.  Others are just a conduit of incompetence to profit the sponsors, owners and administrators.

Oversight Needed

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/editorials/2014/07/18/oversight-is-needed.html

Some highlights:

Conflicts of interests
Weak Boards
Unqualified professionals
Accountability

"The allegations shed light on just how many things can go wrong in Ohio’s poorly structured and largely unmonitored charter-school system. If they prove true, that will be one more argument for overhauling the way charter schools are created and allowed to operate.

But traditional district schools typically operate under the scrutiny of taxpaying residents and publicly elected school-board members. The widespread data-tampering scheme that developed at the highest levels of Columbus City Schools is atypical; generally, if serious misconduct occurs in a district school, somebody is watching and will blow the whistle. Charter schools don’t have the same oversight.

Traditional school districts, in most cases, employ qualified professionals to manage finances, develop curriculum and ensure that applicable laws are followed. Charter schools are, by philosophy, less traditionally structured.

Ohio could do a lot to head off charter-school problems by reforming the process by which they are created.

A key weakness has been the lack of any way to hold accountable those charter-school sponsors who don’t act as watchdogs over the schools they sponsor. Weak Ohio law allows blatant conflicts of interest — for example, nothing bars sponsors, the supposed watchdogs, from selling services to the schools they are supposed to be holding accountable"

Always a potential conflict when you have poor structure and oversight with the potential for profits at the expense of results.

The sub priming of American education

Where there is profit to be made....

Good analogy!

Pretty soon you are talking about real money

As one senator used to say, pretty soon you are talking about real money.  With a little foresight and the right business plan you can become a millionaire.  That was pretty hard in the public schools with taxpayer elected school boards.

 

From William Phillis:

 

Ohio charter industry: $7.4 billion and counting

The second system of education, which feeds off the public common school system, started as a "harmless" $11 million experiment. This new system has parasitically extracted a total of $7.4 from the Ohio public common school system in 15 years as follows:

 

Deduction	Fiscal Year
$     10,985,021.93	1999
$     51,658,903.14	2000
$     91,199,488.07	2001
$   127,943,077.03	2002
$   203,733,491.59	2003
$   301,139,479.91	2004
$   421,736,138.00	2005
$   481,559,416.48	2006
$   530,582,458.73	2007
$   584,929,196.33	2008
$   646,504,550.76	2009
$   679,872,827.10	2010
$   721,951,119.83	2011
$   774,404,507.49	2012
$   824,032,968.42	2013
$   900,500,252.70	2014
$ 7,352,732,897.51	Total

 

 

Between 40 and 50 percent of the $7.4 billion is local tax money passed by local communities for the support of their local school districts. State officials attempt to argue that no local funds are involved in charter school operations. The fact is that charter school funds are taken from school district budgets via state deductions. On the average, nearly twice as much per pupil funding is deducted from school districts for charter schools as the districts receive in per pupil state funds. The difference does not magically appear.

 

William Phillis
Ohio E & A   

Why not use Ohio Ethics laws in cases of corruption of charter schools?  It is my understanding that this applies to school officials. Surely a job and or a green card has some value. 

(D) No public official or employee shall use or authorize the use of the authority or influence of office or employment to secure anything of value or the promise or offer of anything of value that is of such a character as to manifest a substantial and improper influence upon the public official or employee with respect to that person's duties.
(E) No public official or employee shall solicit or accept anything of value that is of such a character as to manifest a substantial and improper influence upon the public official or employee with respect to that person's duties.
(F) No person shall promise or give to a public official or employee anything of value that is of such a character as to manifest a substantial and improper influence upon the public official or employee with respect to that person's duties.

II. Conflict of Interest

Violations of R.C. sections 102.03, 102.04 and 102.07 are first-degree misdemeanor criminal offenses, punishable by a fine of up to $1000 and/or a maximum of 6 months in jail. See R.C. sections 102.99(B); 2929.21.

 

The profit motive in virtual schools

After digging deeper, the independent folks in Maine came to the right decision.

http://www.pressherald.com/2012/09/01/virtual-schools-in-maine_2012-09-02/

Secret to a good school? School boards?

Cui Bono (who profits)

A recent article indicates that a good school board make the difference in performance.

http://national.deseretnews.com/article/1350/The-secret-to-good-schools-might-surprise-you.html#kmFZI51zT3Df3rPj.03

"The report also found that when board members were professionalized, underwent professional training and in some cases even earned a salary, students performed better. "

It suggests that the timing of elections matter.  "It matters, for example, when elections are held. Holding elections at the same time as state and national-level elections, the authors found, correlates to standardized student proficiency test scores 2.4 points higher than a comparable district that has off-cycle elections."

Compare this to the system now employed by Ohio charter schools.  Who appoints the boards?  The sponsor or the charter school.  There are no elections!  Simplifies your board selection and business model.

What is the main focus of the board?  I would suggest that it is selected for self-preservation of the school management and the jobs and profits it generates for its management.  It is an unpaid job.  The charter schools can and do act like a personal, but funded by taxpayers, business.

SO how does this work in practice?  A recent prime example of this in action.  The Horizon and Noble academies were recently raided by the FBI.  Who selected the board?

"A chain of 19 publicly funded Ohio charter schools, founded by Turkish immigrants, is taking the position that the United States lacks a qualified pool of math and science teachers and is importing perhaps hundreds of Turks to fill the void.

The schools are run almost exclusively by persons of Turkish heritage, some of whom are not U.S. citizens — a new twist in Ohio’s controversial charter-school movement.

In addition, the Horizon and Noble academies, run by Chicago-based Concept Schools, are related through membership, fundraisers and political giving to the nonprofit Niagara Foundation, which provides trips to Turkey for state, local and federal lawmakers.

Among those touring Turkey has been State Rep. Cliff Rosenberger, a Clarksville Republican on the powerful finance and appropriations committee and considered to be a leading candidate for House speaker next year. He was joined on the trip by at least four other state legislators and local government leaders from his area in southwest Ohio.

There have been other trips from Ohio, and in Illinois, there are allegations that state officials who took trips showed favoritism in disbursing public dollars to Concept schools.

Public records show that since late 2009, the U.S. Department of Labor has allowed 19 of these schools in Ohio to hire 325 educators almost exclusively from Turkey.

However, as early as 2002, state audits found thousands of public dollars “illegally expended” to finance the U.S. citizenship process for Turkish employees — some fresh out of college with no classroom experience and broken English. Help with legal and immigration fees also extended to their children and families, including the spouses of directors.

The auditor also cited suspect wire transfers, totaling $36,000, and checks made out to “cash” to repay personal loans issued by individuals in Istanbul, Turkey."

Complete article here:

http://www.ohio.com/news/break-news/ohio-taxpayers-provide-jobs-to-turkish-immigrants-through-charter-schools-1.501940?localLinksEnabled=false#.U7ngdZ1rYfM.facebook

Quote from Denis Smith from an earlier blog post.
http://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/25/denis-smith-of-ohio-who-governs-charter-schools/


“All control and direction for the school comes on high from corporate, and such constructs as school governing boards and local governance amount to distractions. Clearly, local control is an oxymoron to the Dennis Bakkes of the charter school industry.

The memo also makes it clear that no autonomy is expected of the boards which are chosen mostly by the company’s regional managers. While the best of our nation’s schools usually feature a collaborative model where teams of teachers work with school administrators, privatization of public schools that are operated by national chains seems to come only with a top-down approach, and any semblance of a governing board to provide guidance and oversight for the school’s operations is not to be tolerated in Bakke’s world.

In Ohio, the Revised Code treats a charter school as a school district, with its own treasurer, chief administrative officer, and governing board. But state law also allows great latitude regarding the operation and governance of the school, and current law requires that each school have a minimum of five board members, with no other qualifications stated in the law.”

Raymond Lambert School Leader of the Year by the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools (OAPCS)  and now with Ohio Connections Academy, formerly with WhiteHat once had this to say about boards. 

“I wonder why people sit on Boards? Is it a cheap self esteem boost?”

“ I often think the many Boards I have seen are lead around by the nose anyway.”

This is an expensive experiment.