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“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