Some of America’s greatest “school reformers” today (and by
that I mean arrogant *&%$# like Bill Gates) insist that if we turn over the
schools to corporations everything will turn out just great.
Color me skeptical, I guess.
As I see it, “corporate” is to “education” as “cigarette manufacturer”
is to “public health and well-being.”
Think that sounds harsh? Do a bit of digging and see what evidence
you find. The latest comes from the June 15 edition of the Columbus Dispatch. Administrators at General
Chappie James Leadership Academy, a pile-up-the-bucks charter school in
Dayton, Ohio, are under investigation for inflating student attendance numbers to
suck up taxpayers’ dollars.
State Auditor Dave Yost decided last spring that it might
be wiseto check attendance numbers for charter schools and see what he could find.
Chappie James was reporting an enrollment of 459
students. So investigators started checking the details. One mother said her child couldn’t have been in attendance because said child had been incarcerated
for the last two years.
Okay: only 458 students to go.
Another family said, no, our girl
hasn’t been attending Chappie James, either. We’ve been living in Georgia for several years.
(Feel free to start singing: “Four hundred, fifty-seven
students enrolled in a charter, four hundred fifty-seven enrolled….”)
Yost kept prying up rocks and looking underneath—and it
turned out half of purported students had no enrollment documentation at all. Daily
attendance at General Chappie James Leadership Academy averaged…um….well …roughly
30.
(Okay, that song went unexpectedly fast: “Thirty students
actually, physically enrolled in a charter, thirty students enrolled….”)
In any case, the state auditor’s office did a little adding
and subtracting and determined that Kecia Williams, former director of the
school, probably owed the State of Ohio a cool $1.2 million.
In the wake of the auditor’s investigation the Department of Education moved to ban “Kids Count of Dayton,” the most
ironically named corporate entity one could imagine—which sponsored
the offending school—from opening up new facilities anywhere in Ohio.
It would be bad enough if this was an aberration.
Sadly, it was not. Typically, charter schools receive $6,000
per pupil from the State of Ohio annually.
So, the more students you say you enroll, the more money
you end up stuffing in your ample corporate pockets.
The Dispatch explains:
Last fall, an investigation by
Yost’s office found significantly lower attendance in half [emphasis added] of the 30 schools where auditors conducted
unannounced head counts than enrollment data the schools had reported to the
state…Yost also has complained about a number of charter schools with such
poorly-kept records that they cannot be audited.
In other words, with stunning
regularity, corporate education boiled down to one simple word. And that word was: Greed.
Why is anyone really surprised?
Many of us have written, for example, about the giant
cesspool that is the for-profit
college industry. It’s a great gig, after all, when five top
executives of Corinthian College can pull down $22 million in salary over a
two-year stretch—at the same time saddling students with high-interest
loans—providing low-quality course offerings—and finally going bankrupt this
spring.
How about
the five top executives at K-12, Inc., a
for-profit chain of elementary and secondary online schools?
They divvied up a cool $35.4 million in salaries and bonuses in 2013 and 2014.
For fun, put that in kid-centric
terms.
Those five individuals took home enough cash to hire 354 teachers (at $50,000 each),
for two years to actually work with kids
in grades K-12.
Greed is good, isn’t that
right?
We know that Pearson spent $8
million between 2009 and 2014 to lobby politicians, mainly
to ensure that the company might keep selling billions of dollars’ worth of standardized
tests every year.
We know, here in Ohio, that
David Brennan, operator of White Hat Schools, donated $3.8
million dollars to politicians over the course of eight years—know, in
turn, that Brennan rakes in tens of millions of dollars in state aid yearly
for his for-profit K-12 chain.
We don’t know how much money sticks
to Brennan’s hands, however, because White Hat Schools are a privately held corporation
and salaries need not be disclosed.
We do know that many White Hat Schools have attendance rates less
than half reported enrollment.
Don’t believe greed serves as foundation in the corporate education world? Google “charter school operator indicted” for fun.
You get Steven Ingersoll, an
optometrist, who ran a
chain of Michigan charter schools. His federal indictment says he “diverted $934,000…through several channels into his
personal bank account.”
You get the
Los Angeles charter
operator indicted on more than two dozen felony charges. On expense
accounts, he managed to bill his school for the $995 cost of a seminar on “how
to limit your personal tax bill,” and another $12.99 for a Speedo swimsuit. Not to
mention the fact he and his wife took out a ten-year lease on a building to
house the school ($18,000 monthly) and then turned around and sublet the property
to the charter for…$44,000 a month.
So much cash
to grab!
So little time!
You had the Chicago
charter
outfit charged with securities fraud.
You had the guilty
plea involving a Cleveland, Ohio charter
operation, involving $1.8 million in fraud, including $331,000 paid by the
school for services rendered to a Dayton, Ohio bar owner.
And then you
have my favorite
story for now, which carries the headline: F.B.I Tracks Charter Schools.
Go ahead, Google away yourself.
You’ll find endless examples to tickle your fancy. But let’s end with perhaps
the biggest scam of all. Let’s hear it for the University of Phoenix, a
money-making juggernaut, a company so successful at piling up $$$$ it was able
to pay the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL $154.5 million for naming rights
to their stadium! Good advertising? Sure! Too bad the school had to pay a fine
of $67.5 million, plus $11 million in legal fees, for defrauding students!
Too bad
a U. S. Senate investigation showed the school spent
a mere $892 per pupil each year to actually
educate students.
Hey, not to worry! Company
founder John G. Sperling raked in $263.5 million in a little less than a decade
in salary, bonuses and stock sales. And his son, Peter, did better still:
$574.3 million.
See?
We already know how corporate
education is meant to work. We know, in the end, it boils down to greed.
*******************
If you liked this post, you might like my book about
teaching, Two Legs Suffice, now
available on Amazon.
Or contact me at vilejjv@yahoo.com
and I can probably send you a copy direct for a little bit cheaper. My book is
meant to be a defense of all good teachers and a clear explanation of what good
teachers can do, and what they cannot do.
Two
Legs Suffice is also about what students, parents and
others involved in education must do if we want to truly enhance learning.
I believe it's also the politicians that are greedy, including state legislators. One by one, they accept "donations", thinking , "What harm can my accepting this really do?". The problem is when 50 other legislators do the same thing. When the vote comes, we then have 51 legislators basically beholden to their "donors". Politicians are not thinking cumulative effects. It's every man for himself. Basic problem: money in politics and Citizens United.
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree.
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