If Sally Builds a Charter School in New Orleans and Jimmy Builds One in Chicago, Where Did 3.3 Billion Dollars Go?

[AthenaAwakened]

The federal government has spent more than $3.3 billion over the past two decades creating and fueling the charter school industry, according to a new financial analysis and reporters' guide by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

Despite the huge sums spent so far, the federal government maintains no comprehensive list of the charter schools that have received and spent these funds or even a full list of the private or quasi-public entities that have been approved by states to "authorize" charters that receive federal funds. And despite drawing repeated criticism from the Office of the Inspector General for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls within the federal Charter Schools Program—designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools—the U.S. Department of Education (ED) is poised to increase its funding by 48 percent in FY 2016.

CMD's review of internal audits reveals that ED did not act quickly or effectively on numerous reports that state education officials had no idea where the federal funds ended up. The documents also show that ED knowingly awarded grants to states with no statutory oversight over charter authorizers and schools as the grant applications are evaluated based on how much "flexibility" from state laws charter schools have.

As a result of lax oversight on the federal level, combined with many state laws that hide charter finances from the public eye, taxpayers are left in the dark about how much federal money each charter school has received and what has been wasted or spent to enrich charter school administrators and for-profit corporations who get lucrative outsourcing contracts from charters, behind closed doors.

"The Department of Education is pushing for an unprecedented expansion of charter schools while paying lip service to accountability, but independent audit materials show that the Department's lofty rhetoric is simply not backed up by its actions," noted Jonas Persson, a writer for the Center for Media and Democracy, a national watchdog group that publishes PRWatch.org, ALECexposed.org, and SourceWatch.org, adding, "the lack of tough financial controls and the lack of public access to information about how charters are spending federal tax dollars has almost inevitably led to enormous fraud and waste."

- See more at: http://www.progressive.org/news/201...ng-charter-schools—-what#sthash.CSdJLZKs.dpuf

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The communistic Obama administration. In Ohio, one or two schools were noted as being pretty much empty, getting money and support from the State to teach students that were grossly truant.

Charter schools have potential, some are great, but in red states Charter Schools have a higher potential (acknowledged baseless claim) of being run simply for profit than to offer an alternative education path. In Ohio, some schools have gone under and just open up under a new name. It is pathetic. And the lack of oversight on these institutions is incomprehensible.

But you know, CHOICE! and all.