{"id":21903,"date":"2015-10-25T14:46:20","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T18:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=21903"},"modified":"2015-10-25T14:46:20","modified_gmt":"2015-10-25T18:46:20","slug":"the-brazen-ways-the-charter-school-industry-rips-you-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2015\/10\/25\/the-brazen-ways-the-charter-school-industry-rips-you-off\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brazen Ways the Charter School Industry Rips You Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alternet<\/em> has the article The Brazen Ways the Charter School Industry Rips You Off: Charter schools have squandered or stolen millions of taxpayer dollars<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\nThe yearlong investigation makes clear that many federal and state education officials have bought into the school privatization movement\u2019s rhetoric that an intentional lack of public oversight, reporting and accountability enables school operators to efficiently and creatively bring education innovation to underserved communities. The report points out that state after state has adopted legislation transferring the oversight of charters\u2014which are still public schools\u2014from locally elected school boards to remote and newly created state \u201cauthorizer\u201d offices. Even though this template was created and promoted by right-wing advocacy groups with deep anti-union sentiments, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council, it has been embraced by blue and red states, as well as top federal education officials under the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations.
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\n\u201cWhat has evolved as a result of the more than $3.7 billion\u2026 the feds have spent fueling charters\u2014plus other sums from states\u2014is a classic example of \u2018industry capture\u2019 of the agencies charged with oversight by the industry they are tasked with overseeing,\u201d CMD explains. \u201cWith such capture comes agency devotion to protecting funding, insulated by a lack of transparency about funding oversight and distorted through agency relationships with charter industry cheerleaders\u2026 That flexibility has allowed an epidemic of fraud, waste and mismanagement that would not be tolerated in public schools. Charters are policed\u2014if they are policed at all\u2014mainly by charter proponents.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Doing away with oversight is a classical ploy of con artists to allow then to get away with their crimes. Of course they always claim that oversight will hamper the effectiveness of their programs. What they really mean is that oversight will hamper their efforts to con you.<\/p>\n

\nThe CMD report shatters the myth that the private sector always knows best how to do what is difficult and challenging for government. Its recommendations are timid when considering that its report shows public school privatizers can be as abuse-prone as the privatized prison industry or military contractors serving in war zones overseas. CMD is not calling for a pause or moratorium on continued charter school growth, simply for every level of government involved to track where the money is going and to publicly disclose it. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis investigation reveals huge and continuing gaps in information provided to the public about federal and state tax dollars received by charters and how American taxpayer money is being spent,\u201d the report concludes, adding that to respond \u201cto these severe gaps\u201d federal and state officials \u201cshould publish\u201d annually detailed financial information about every school receiving government subsidies, as well as report any school that \u201cnever opens or closes voluntarily, or for any reason.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here is another example of moving activities from the Democratic Socialism sector of our social system to the Rigged-market Capitalism Sector. See my previous post New Terminology for Socio-Economic-Political Systems<\/a> for a definition of these terms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alternet has the article The Brazen Ways the Charter School Industry Rips You Off: Charter schools have squandered or stolen millions of taxpayer dollars. The yearlong investigation makes clear that many federal and state education officials have bought into the school privatization movement\u2019s rhetoric that an intentional lack of public oversight, reporting and accountability enables […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21903","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21904,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21903\/revisions\/21904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}