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arne duncan
The Federal Government Has Poured Millions into Failing Charter Schools in Louisiana
Parents in New Orleans are sick of the instability that temporary charter schools have brought to their community, calling the schools an "illegal experiment" on their children
May 19, 2019
When Arne Duncan, the U.S. Secretary of Education under President Barack Obama, said Hurricane Katrina was the "best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans," he was no doubt referring in part to how the storm and its aftermath led to the spread of charter schools across the city.
The very first charter school created in the post-Katrina era to close was Free Academy, which shuttered in early 2009... due to financial problems, lack of academic progress, and disputes with the school's for-profit management company.
But if he had looked more closely before making his remark (he eventually apologized for his poor word choice), he would have noticed some of the new charter schools being created in New Orleans were already failing.
The very first charter school created in the post-Katrina era to close was Free Academy, which shuttered in early 2009--well before Duncan made his remarks--due to financial problems, lack of academic progress, and disputes with the school's for-profit management company.
After Free Academy closed, many of the students scrambling to find new schools likely ended up in the Crocker Arts & Technology School, another charter school, which opened in the fall in the same building. But that school proved to be a false promise too when, on a Thursday evening in early December, parents learned Crocker had to close, literally overnight, due to its unsafe building.
The century-old structure was close to collapse, a condition that existed no doubt when the school was Free Academy and when Crocker decided to occupy the building. Officials at both schools either didn't know or knew but didn't bother to warn parents their children were in an unsafe building.
Duncan should have been concerned about these failed charters not only because of the potential harm the schools posed to students but also because the federal government helped to fund the schools.
Government Funds for Failed Schools
In 2006, barely a year after Katrina's devastation, Duncan's predecessor Margaret Spellings awarded $24 million to Louisiana to create charter schools, primarily in New Orleans.
The grant came from the Department of Education's Charter Schools Program (CSP), which provides grants to individual charter schools and charter school management companies, and for states to award to charter subgrantees. Louisiana used its 2006 grant to fund individual charters, mostly in New Orleans, including $283,847 awarded to Free Academy and $600,000 to Crocker.
After two more relocations, Crocker would eventually close for good in 2014.
Another reason Duncan should have been more inquisitive about how charter schools had used federal grant money in Louisiana is because his department, during the first year under his leadership, awarded the state yet another huge grant--this time totaling $25,576,222, mostly to bolster the state's existing charters and start new ones in Baton Rouge.
Since Duncan's tenure, the CSP's annual budget has ballooned to $440 million, in the current budget year, and the total amount spent by the program since inception exceeds $4 billion.
But like those early grants to charters in post-Katrina New Orleans, much of that money has gone to schools that eventually closed--and some that never opened at all.
According to a recent report, up to $1 billion of the money given out nationwide by the CSP was wasted on charter schools that never opened, or opened and then closed because of fraud, poor performance, financial mismanagement, and other reasons. The report, Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride, was published by the Network for Public Education and written by this author and Carol Burris, NPE's executive director.
In compiling our report, we found the grant program that provides federal dollars to state departments of education, or other approved "state entities," is the largest of the CSP funding streams and presents some of the worst examples of federal tax dollars being wasted on charter schools that failed. Louisiana has one of the worst records for slipshod management of its federal grants.
In a follow-up to our report, Burris looked at the grants given to create and expand charter schools in Louisiana between 2006 and 2014. She found that of the 110 charters that received the money, at least 51 (46 percent) were closed. Some may have never opened at all, but because the Louisiana Education Department doesn't provide a list of closed schools, that figure is unknown. The total amount of money given to those closed and never-opened schools is at least $23,819,839.00.
An 'Illegal Experiment' on Children
While the numbers alone are startling and a cause for concern, individual examples of charters in Louisiana that received CSP money and then closed throw into further doubt the prudence of using federal seed money to spread schools that open and close, repeatedly, and fund charter organizations that churn through districts and neighborhoods without any obvious regard for what parents and local officials want.
One of the examples I singled out from Burris' research is Benjamin Mays Prep School in New Orleans, which received a $600,000 CSP grant. Mays Prep had long-standing academic issues and persistent budget shortfalls. The school had to move to a different building in 2012 and then lost that location in 2014 when its charter wasn't renewed and a different charter moving into the space refused to enroll the Mays students. The school closed officially in 2014.
Another New Orleans charter, Miller McCoy, received a $600,000 CSP grant but eventually closed in 2014 after "a long downward spiral," according to a local news source. The charter school's two founders left in 2012 under alleged ethics allegations, and the school had a series of unsuccessful leaders after that. An "F" academic rating from the state seemed to have been the final straw.
The school had promised to be equivalent to a prestigious all-male private prep school in New Orleans, only free. Its closure left the teachers and remaining students and families with "a sense of loss, sadness, a grieving for what could have been," reported a different local news outlet.
Another New Orleans charter, Gentilly Terrace, received a $600,000 CSP grant. The school was operated by a charter management group, New Beginnings Schools Foundation, that was cited for being out of compliance with several federal laws, including misdirection of federal funds for Title I schools--money earmarked for high-poverty students. New Beginnings also had chronic problems with employee turnover in its schools and non-transparent practice by its board of directors.
Gentilly Terrace closed in 2014 with a "D" rating from the state's academics report card. Recently, the CEO of New Beginnings resigned amid allegations of falsifying public records and allowing one of its three remaining schools to engage in grade-fixing.
CSP grants that were awarded to schools in Baton Rouge often led to the same results.
When the Recovery School District that transformed New Orleans started taking over "low-performing" Baton Rouge schools in 2008, one of the first seven schools taken over and handed to charter operators was Glen Oaks Middle School. Glen Oaks received $772,750 from the CSP.
Parents in New Orleans who are sick of the instability that temporary charter schools have brought to their community are organizing to repeal the state law that legalized charters, calling the schools an "illegal experiment" on their children.
By 2013, the takeover effort was already "rebooting," and Glen Oaks was closed, supposedly temporarily, for the 2014-15 school year in order to find a different charter management group. Students were told to transfer to a different school operated by a different charter but were presumably able to return to Glen Oaks the following year.
But instead of reopening as a middle school, Glen Oaks was occupied by three new charters: a kindergarten, an elementary school, and a different middle school operated by a different charter management company.
Glen Oaks closed officially in 2016, according to state reports, and by 2018, both the kindergarten and the elementary schools had moved elsewhere too.
Today, what remains inside Glen Oaks Middle School is a much smaller middle school under a different name. That school is currently rated "F" academically by the state, which recently recommended the school be handed over to yet another charter management group.
Some Louisiana charter school CSP grant recipients that have managed to stay open seem on less than firm ground.
Baton Rouge's Tallulah Charter School, which was awarded a CSP grant of $75,000, was threatened with shutdown in 2018 for persistent low academic performance and testing errors.
What saved the school was an offer from an online learning charter school to move students to a blended curriculum that included more computer-based instruction. The online charter recently dropped its affiliation with an out-of-state for-profit company and changed its name. The school has a 54 percent graduation rate compared to the state's 79 percent.
Parents in New Orleans who are sick of the instability that temporary charter schools have brought to their community are organizing to repeal the state law that legalized charters, calling the schools an "illegal experiment" on their children.
Widespread Violations of Federal Laws
These kinds of examples eventually drew the attention of the education department's own Office of Inspector General to examine the agency's oversight of the federal Charter Schools Program in 2016, after Duncan had resigned and John King became secretary.
The audit made recommendations for improvement on the oversight of federal grants given to charters that close, but it's not at all clear how those recommendations were implemented under King's leadership, or under Betsy DeVos, who took over as secretary in 2017.
In 2018, OIG published another examination of how states with charter schools that closed accounted for federal grant funds. This time, Louisiana was included in the audit because it was the state with the highest ratio of closed charter schools to total charter schools.
The audit found charter schools in Louisiana that received federal money and then closed likely had widespread violations of federal laws and regulations for closing out their grants, disposing of property purchased with federal funds, and ensuring student information and records had been protected and maintained.
The audit found charter schools in Louisiana that received federal money and then closed likely had widespread violations of federal laws and regulations for closing out their grants, disposing of property purchased with federal funds, and ensuring student information and records had been protected and maintained.
In its comments included at the end of the report, the department did not explicitly agree or disagree with the findings but stated it "did not consider charter school closures to be a risk to federal funds" and that OIG's recommendations "would be inconsistent with the federal role in education." The department asked instead for "a single recommendation that recognizes the balance between federal and state responsibility for the oversight of charter schools."
Recently, House Democrats proposed a substantial cut to CSP grants, declaring the education department has not been "a responsible steward" of taxpayer dollars. House members cited, as part of their rationale for the cuts, evidence of financial waste and mismanagement like those Burris and I found. And the Democrats directed the education department implement recommendations from the 2018 OIG report.
Among those recommendations are for the department to determine which states receiving charter school grants pose the most risk to federal funds and help those states develop and implement effective charter school closure procedures. Should the House bill pass, you can be sure Louisiana will be on that list.
But the legacy of the federal government's charter school grants in Louisiana should not be understood just by the sheer waste of precious education funds, but also by the real human consequences of spreading makeshift charter programs that throw communities into confusion, distress, and a sense of betrayal. That's probably something you won't hear Arne Duncan apologize for.
To learn more about school privatization, check out Who Controls Our Schools? The Privatization of American Public Education, a free ebook published by the Independent Media Institute. Click here to read a selection of Who Controls Our Schools? published on AlterNet, or here to access the complete text. This article was produced by Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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3 Questions That 'Created Havoc' in Betsy DeVos' Department of Education
My latest brush with the education policy edifice's imperviousness to outside inquiry occurred while researching the Education Department's Charter School Program
Apr 07, 2019
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is famous for giving a nonresponse to fairly straightforward questions. More than one commentator has had fun with her contorted evasions, but her inability to explain the rationale for current education policies isn't confined to her own personality and ideology.
It's actually been endemic in the education policy world for years, particularly in how the federal government continues to hide its agenda to further privatize the nation's public school system by creating and expanding charter schools.
Arne Duncan, who served as secretary for the longest period of time before DeVos, was famous for being the consummate non-listener, often talking over people with his prepared remarks and ignoring the advice of teachers and education experts.
This is not a partisan issue. Teachers demanded Duncan's resignation, and Republican members of Congress have complained that DeVos' department isn't responsive to requests for information.
Of course, any comparison between DeVos and Duncan can find some very big differences, but a constant throughout both administrations has been to ignore, wall-off, or obfuscate when confronted with any inquiry aimed at the federal government's efforts to create and expand charter schools.
A History of Hiding
My latest brush with the education policy edifice's imperviousness to outside inquiry occurred while researching and writing a new report on the Education Department's Charter School Program (CSP). I coauthored the report Asleep at the Wheel: How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taxpayers and Students for a Ride with Network for Public Education executive director Carol Burris.
Burris and I found that up to $1 billion awarded by the CSP--in more than 1,000 grants--was wasted on charter schools that never opened or opened for only brief periods before being shut down for mismanagement, poor performance, lack of enrollment, and fraud.
During our investigations, we came across a previous report published by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) in 2015, during the Obama presidential administration, that found similarly disturbing results, where federal grants had gone to hundreds of charter schools that had basically taken the money and run.
To compile its report, CMD had submitted 33 Freedom of Information Act requests with the Department of Education and was told these records would be forthcoming. The promised records never came.
The department also refused to provide CMD with public records regarding communications between federal and state officials about charter school grants and oversight. The largest grants by far had gone to state education agencies (SEAs) to disburse in subgrants to charter school startups and expansions. Federal officials claimed releasing such information would "constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."
After CMD repeated its requests, the department released a list of some charter schools receiving the SEA grant money in a PDF that was "partly illegible." Other information CMD requested related to the applications for the state grants never came. CMD concluded in its report summary, "Public information about funds received and spent by charters is severely lacking."
The information CMD was eventually able to piece together came out in its report in October 2015, receiving widespread coverage by education policy blogs and community organizers.
Two months after the CMD report appeared, the Charter School Program released a dataset showing all grants awarded between school years 2006-07 and 2013-14, with information on grants given to start-up, replicate, and expand charter schools. The dataset was released on Dec. 23--just two days before the holiday break--to minimize attention.
Also in the same year, perhaps in anticipation of the CMD report, the department issued a "Dear Colleague" letter to SEAs emphasizing the importance of financial accountability for charter schools receiving federal dollars. The letter recommended SEAs conduct regular independent audits and strengthen authorizing practices. And the department provided an "Overview of the 2015 CSP SEA Review Process" explaining how the program awarding charter grants to states is administered.
Given the department's 2015 efforts to disclose information on charter school grants and provide guidance in how the grants should be administered, it seemed only fair, before issuing our report, to ask the agency what had been done since, especially under this new administration.
Three Seemingly Simple Questions
Consequently, on March 8, I sent emails to contacts provided for three CSP grant programs that were the subject of our report. The three emails repeated basically the same three questions, but the email I sent to the contact overseeing the SEA grants, now called "Grants to State Entities," follows:
This is to inquire about the current grant application review process used for the Charter Schools Program Grants to State Entities. Specifically, in 2015, the Department published an "Overview of the 2015 CSP SEA Review Process." My questions:
- Can you provide a similar document describing how the grant review process is currently being conducted for the Charter Schools Program Grants to State Entities?
- If not, can you briefly comment on how the grant review process used for the Charter Schools Program Grants to State Entities aligns with or varies from the Overview referenced above?
- Regarding a "Dear Colleague" letter sent to State Education Agencies in 2015 emphasizing the importance of financial accountability for charter schools receiving federal dollars, was there any follow-up by the Charter School Program to ascertain how many SEAs complied with this request and what was the nature of the new systems and processes put into place by SEAs to provide for greater accountability?
On March 15, I received a voicemail message from an official in the public affairs division of the department asking me to call her back. The message started out nice enough but then veered toward criticism. "Apparently you have sent his request to multiple people," she said (emphasis original), "and that just creates havoc for everyone."
When I immediately called her back, I explained I had merely sent my inquiry to the contacts provided on the relevant sections of the department's website. "That's understandable," she replied, but for "future reference" I was told to send inquiries to "a director"--though I'm not sure who that is. And I was told again my questions had "created havoc" in the office but that department staff members were "working on it" and would "take a few days."
As of this writing, I've yet to receive any other replies.
One Thing Clear
What followed my phone exchange with the department official was, among other things, a very bad, awful day for the secretary when news of our report broke on page A4 of the Washington Post on the very same day she had to appear on Capitol Hill before a House committee hearing.
During the hearing, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat of Connecticut, referred directly to our report, citing the $1 billion stain on the department's charter school grant program, and told DeVos, "This budget is full of cruel cuts to education programs, and it baffles me that you found room for a $60 million increase to the Charter School Program... especially when you consider recent reports of waste and abuse in the program."
When Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Wisconsin, asked DeVos what was being done to recover the $1 billion in alleged financial mismanagement involving charters, DeVos said she "would look into the matter."
On the issue of how a federal agency could allow charter operators to rip off American taxpayers with impunity, and generally suffer no adverse consequences for their acts, DeVos acknowledged that waste and fraud in the charter grant program had been around for "some time."
That much is true.
It was under Arne Duncan's watch that the federal charter grants program was greatly expanded, states were required to lift caps on the numbers of charter schools in order to receive precious federal dollars, and the administration Duncan served in insulted public school teachers by proclaiming National Charter School Week on dates identical to what had always been observed as Teacher Appreciation Week.
And most of the wanton charter fraud we detailed in our report that ran rampant during the Duncan years is now simply continuing under DeVos, with little to no explanation of why this is allowed to occur.
So at least we have that clear.
To learn more about school privatization, check out Who Controls Our Schools? The Privatization of American Public Education, a free ebook published by the Independent Media Institute.
Click here to read a selection of Who Controls Our Schools? published on AlterNet, or here to access the complete text.
This article was produced by Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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Backing Teachers, Sanders Says LA Strike Exposes National Need for 'Revolution in Public Education'
"What we accept as normal today with regard to education, I want your grandchildren to tell you that you were crazy to accept," said the Vermont senator
Jan 16, 2019
Tens of thousands of public school teachers and support staff with the Los Angeles Unified School District--the second-largest district in the country--continued the city's first strike in three decades on Thursday.
The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) kicked off the long-promised strike on Monday over unmet demands for higher payer; smaller class sizes; more special education staff, bilingual education instructors, nurses, counselors, and librarians; and stricter regulation of the city's many charter schools.
\u201cArleta HS is out strong on the picket line. Here we are, in the richest country in the world, in the richest state in the country, and in a city rife with millionaires \u2013 where teachers have to go on strike to get the basics for our students. #LAUSDstrike #UTLAStrong\u201d— United Teachers Los Angeles (@United Teachers Los Angeles) 1547746855
UTLA charges that district superintendent Austin Beutner--a pro-charter school former business executive with no education background--is unqualified for the job. The district has 640,000 students, and while about 500,000 are enrolled in public schools, Los Angeles has more charter schools than anywhere else in the United States.
As negotiations resumed at City Hall on Thursday, with Los Angeles' Democratic Mayor Eric Garcetti mediating between the district and union representatives, strike supporters and participants shared updates from the streets with the hashtags #LAUSDStrike, #UTLAStrong, #WeAreLA, and #RedForEd.
\u201cTeachers, parents, students, @IATSE and socialists. We\u2019re all in this together! #RedForEd #UTLAStrong #StrikeReady\u201d— DSA-LA (@DSA-LA) 1547747229
\u201cThis @UTLAnow members explains how he\u2019s striking for his students, not himself. #UTLAStrong #LAUSDStrike https://t.co/Ep1mHO3MUi\u201d— Randi Weingarten \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8\ud83d\udcaa\ud83c\udfff\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83c\udf93 (@Randi Weingarten \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8\ud83d\udcaa\ud83c\udfff\ud83d\udc69\u200d\ud83c\udf93) 1547753714
Even though California is the world's fifth-largest economy, public schools across the state have struggled for decades to adequately serve students, particularly in communities of color and regions with low incomes.
The strike--which has cast a spotlight on rifts within the Democratic Party in the solidly blue state--has garnered support from multiple Democrats in Congress, including Reps. Ted Lieu (Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.).
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in an email sent to his supporters on Thursday, expressed solidarity with the teachers, tying the protests to the broader issue of "a rigged economy" that gives major tax breaks to billionaires and corporations rather than investing in educating children.
"What we accept as normal today with regard to education, I want your grandchildren to tell you that you were crazy to accept," Sanders wrote. Calling for free, full-day, high-quality childcare for every child, starting at age three, and tuition-free public college, he concluded that "what we really need in this country is a revolution in public education."
The ongoing strike in Los Angeles follows various #RedForED walkouts and rallies that public school teachers and unions organized last year across Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.
And the push to improve L.A. schools has inspired even more teachers to protest. According to Payday Report, on Jan. 28, "thousands of teachers marching under the banner of Virginia Educators United are planning to call off from school for only one day in order to march on the state legislature."
\u201cInspired by #LAUSDStrike, Virginia Teachers to Walkout Jan. 28th \n\nhttps://t.co/f5jhNXPFr4 #RedforEd\u201d— Mike Elk (@Mike Elk) 1547685831
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