Andy
Smarick, a partner at Bellweather Associates, a senior fellow at the Thomas B.
Fordham Institute, a former deputy commissioner of education in New Jersey for
Governor Christie, and a man with a long list of other affiliations with
conservative groups and politicians, loves charter schools. He sees them as the
wave of the future, replacing “failing” public schools in urban and suburban
areas and bringing everyone the excellence that thus far has been elusive.
Smarick
sees two conversations going on
today about charter schools. To one side are those like
himself who are trying to figure out the new paradigm of schooling, in which
privately-managed charter schools are a permanent part of the landscape. This
conversation deals with finance, governance, how to get it right. It assumes
that charter schools are a permanent part of the landscape and the question to
be solved is one of tinkering.
On
the other side are people who worry about whether charter schools are a blight
that damages public education and should be closely scrutinized for their
finances, their boasts, and their policies governing admissions and suspensions.
This side refers to hedge fund managers, privateers, and exorbitant executive
salaries, and makes big headlines out of what Smarick considers the
extraordinary miscreant.
One
of the most corrupt states in the nation, in relation to charter schools, is
Ohio, where the Thomas B. Fordham Institute is legally headquartered and
authorizes charter schools (none of its charter schools have been implicated in
the major scandals.) the governor and the legislature receive handsome
contributions from the charter industry.
A recent article in the
Columbus Dispatch written by Denis Smith, former
overseer of charter schools for the Ohio State Department of Education, makes a
valuable counterpoint to Smarick’s complaint about charter critics. Denis Smith
writes about 19 Gulen-associated schools now under investigation.
Smith
writes:
“At a State Board of Education meeting this week, four former charter-school teachers testified on alleged unlawful conduct at Horizon Science Academy Dayton High School, including what The Dispatch described as “test cheating, attendance tampering, sexual misconduct and other misdeeds…….”
What
the State Board heard from the teachers helped to shed light on a chain of 19
schools in Ohio managed by an out-of-state operation that staffs these
buildings in part by employing Turkish citizens holding H-1B visas.
But
what the board didn’t hear is that these same schools are governed by a group
of individuals, nearly all men, who may not be “qualified voters” — in other
words, American citizens.
Or that some of the schools were raided by the FBI
last month.
Or that the inspiration for these schools is a mysterious exiled
Turkish cleric named Fethullah Gulen, who lives in the Pocono Mountains of
Pennsylvania and leads a religious and political movement that seeks to
destabilize the government of his native land.
As
bizarre as this situation is, the very idea that the Gulen chain are public
schools is illustrative of what ails the charter-school industry in Ohio.
Consider
these glaring legal loopholes:
- Charter-school administrators are not required to hold any professional licenses or meet even minimal educational requirements.
- Charter-school board members aren’t elected by or responsible to the voters. Some are hand-picked by for-profit management companies runing schools.
- Charter-school board members do not have to be “qualified voters” (citizens) who are registered with the secretary of state’s office in recognition of their status as members of a public board.
- With hand-picked, unelected boards, charter-school administrators can pay themselves exorbitant salaries that can match those of local superintendents responsible for the education of thousands of students in multiple locations.
- Many charter schools employ highly paid administrators but compensate their teachers well below those in other public schools, leading to constant staff turnover.
- The for-profit management companies that operate many charter schools think that their mission and vision (read: profit) supersede the legitimate interests and aspirations of the public.
- Charter schools are exempt from more than 150 provisions of state law that otherwise are applicable to school districts, including a requirement to annually report the names, salaries and credentials of licensed employees to the State Board.
- There are no restrictions on the payment of public funds for recruitment of students, advertising or payment for celebrity endorsements; there is no ban on using public funds earmarked for charter schools for political campaign donations.
The
issue confronting this state is not about any individual charter-school chain.
It’s that the legislature has created an unregulated, incoherent nightmare that
allows for-profit management companies, entrepreneurs, national charter-school
chains and ill-prepared developers to operate in a murky industry that
ill-serves young people.
If
we are to have charter schools in Ohio, their legal basis must be that they
exist in similar fashion with public schools, be subject to the same
requirements and not be favored by so many questionable exemptions. Chapter
3314 of the Ohio Revised Code that governs the creation and operation of these
schools must be scrapped in its entirety.
For
these “schools of choice,” we have no other choice.”
In
addition to Mr. Smith’s concerns, Ohio and other states should investigate the
extraordinary salaries paid to charter CEOs, some of whom are not educators,
yet are paid $400,000 or more. And inquire about the lobbyists hired by charter
chains to obtain special privileges, or to obtain exemption from
accountability.
They might ask why charter boards in states like Ohio must sue
the charter operator to get financial information. They might be vigilant about
the for-profit entrepreneurs who have become multi-millionaires with money
intended by taxpayers for schools, not investors. They might ask sharper
questions about community public schools that lose resources to shady
entrepreneurs and ultimately close.
So
long as the charter industry buys favoritism from state legislatures, as long
as amateurs win public dollars to run inferior schools, as long as virtual
charter schools get rich while supplying poor results, there will continue to
be critics–and should be.
