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Report: U.S. wasted $1 billion on charter schools

Grants went to schools that never opened, or opened then closed due to mismanagement, other reasons

By Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post
Published: March 26, 2019, 9:00pm

The U.S. government has wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools that never opened, or opened and then closed because of mismanagement and other reasons, according to a report from an education advocacy group. The study also says the Education Department does not adequately monitor how its grant money is spent.

The report, titled “Asleep at the Wheel” and issued by the nonprofit advocacy group Network for Public Education, says:

• More than 1,000 grants were given to schools that never opened, or later closed because of mismanagement, poor performance, lack of enrollment or fraud. “Of the schools awarded grants directly from the department between 2009 and 2016, nearly one in four either never opened or shut its doors,” it says.

• Some grants in the 25-year-old federal Charter School Program have been awarded to charters that set barriers to enrollment of certain students. Thirty-four California charter schools that received grants appear on an American Civil Liberties Union list of charters that discriminate — in some cases illegally — in admissions.

• The department’s grant approval process for charters has been sorely lacking, with “no attempt to verify the information presented” by applicants.

• The U.S. Education Department in Republican and Democratic administrations has “largely ignored or not sufficiently addressed” recommendations to improve the program made by its own inspector general.

“Our investigation finds the U.S. Department of Education has not been a responsible steward of taxpayer dollars in its management of the CSP,” it says.

The Education Department did not respond to questions about the study’s findings. The report has been given to members of Congress with education oversight authority.

Charter schools are publicly financed but privately operated, sometimes by for-profit companies, and they have become a controversial part of the “school choice” movement that has gained ground throughout the country over the past few decades.

Today, about 6 percent of U.S. schoolchildren attend charter schools, with 44 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico having laws permitting them. Some states have few charters while others have many. California has the most charter schools and the most charter students; in Los Angeles, 20 percent of children attend such schools. In D.C., almost half of the city’s schoolchildren go to charter schools.

Supporters first described charters as competitive vehicles to push traditional public schools toward reform. Over time, that narrative changed, and charters were seen by supporters as offering choices for families who wanted alternatives to troubled schools in traditional systems.

Charter backers say the 30-year-old charter school movement is an important feature of America’s education landscape, and the problems it faces are expected. They say many charters are superior to the traditional public schools near them.

Opponents say that charters are part of a move to privatize public education, that there is little public accountability over many of them and that they drain resources from the traditional districts where the majority of children attend school. They say many traditional schools are superior to the charter schools near them.

The report, subtitled “How the Federal Charter Schools Program Recklessly Takes Taypayers and Students for a Ride,” was written by Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a former award-winning New York high school principal, and Jeff Bryant, a communications expert and advocacy journalist who is now chief correspondent for the Independent Media Institute’s “Our Schools” project. The Network for Public Education, co-founded by historian and advocate Diane Ravitch, advocates for public education.

Burris and Bryant said they are asking Congress to stop funding new charter grants through this program, to conduct “thorough audits of previous grant awards” and to adopt measures to ensure that existing grant money is used responsibly.

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, an advocacy group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Several civil rights organizations have called for a moratorium on new charter schools, including the NAACP and the Black Lives Matter movement. California’s new Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has formed a task force to review the effect that charter schools have on traditional public school districts amid a growing backlash against unfettered charter expansion in some parts of the country.

Teachers who have gone on strike in recent months, including in Los Angeles, Denver and Oakland, California, have cited the spread of charter schools as one of the challenges they see for traditional public systems.

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