Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger
In a 2010 New York Times article titled Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers, reporters Tripp Gabriel and Jennifer Medina wrote the following about what was going on in the state of New York:
Wall Street has always put its money where its interests and beliefs lie. But it is far less common that so many financial heavyweights would adopt a social cause like charter schools and advance it with a laserlike focus in the political realm…
Although the April 9 breakfast with Mr. Cuomo was not a formal fund-raiser, the hedge fund managers have been wielding their money to influence educational policy in Albany, particularly among Democrats, who control both the Senate and the Assembly but have historically been aligned with the teachers unions.
They[hedge fund managers] have been contributing generously to lawmakers in hopes of creating a friendlier climate for charter schools. More immediately, they have raised a multimillion-dollar war chest to lobby this month for a bill to raise the maximum number of charter schools statewide to 460 from 200.
That same year—2010—Juan Gonzalez believed that he had uncovered one of the reasons why hedge fund managers, some wealthy Americans, and the executives of some Wall Street banks had become such big proponents of charter schools and had gotten involved in their development. Gonzalez said the banks and other wealthy investors had been making “windfall profits” by taking advantage of “a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.” That little know tax break, the New Markets Tax Credit, can be so lucrative, Gonzalez said, “that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.” He added that the tax break “gives an enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities, and it’s been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools.”
Gonzalez focused his research on the city of Albany—which, he wrote, “boasts the state’s highest percentage of charter school enrollments.” He provided an explanation of how lucrative investments in building new charter schools can be:
What happens is the investors who put up the money to build charter schools get to basically or virtually double their money in seven years through a thirty-nine percent tax credit from the federal government. In addition, this is a tax credit on money that they’re lending, so they’re also collecting interest on the loans as well as getting the thirty-nine percent tax credit. They piggy-back the tax credit on other kinds of federal tax credits like historic preservation or job creation or brownfields credits.
The result is, you can put in ten million dollars and in seven years double your money. The problem is, that the charter schools end up paying in rents, the debt service on these loans and so now, a lot of the charter schools in Albany are straining paying their debt service–their rent has gone up from $170,000 to $500,000 in a year or–huge increases in their rents as they strain to pay off these loans, these construction loans. The rents are eating-up huge portions of their total cost. And, of course, the money is coming from the state.
Brighter Choice Foundation
According to Gonzalez, “a nonprofit called the Brighter Choice Foundation had employed the New Markets Tax Credit to arrange private financing for five of the city’s nine charter schools.” By 2010, many of those charter schools were struggling to pay escalating rents, which were “going toward the debt service that Brighter Choice incurred during construction.”
Gonzalez gave examples of the escalating rents:
The Henry Johnson Charter School saw the rent for its 31,000-square-foot building skyrocket from $170,000 in 2008 to $560,000 in 2009.
The Albany Community School‘s went from from $195,000 to $350,000.
Green Tech High Charter School rent rose from $443,000 to $487,000.
Gonzalez reported that a number of Albany’s charter schools have fallen into debt to the Brighter Choice Foundation. He wondered why the schools’ financial problems hadn’t raised eyebrows with state regulators or caused concern for the charters’ school boards. He noted that the powerful charter school lobby had “so far successfully battled to prevent independent government audits of how its schools spend their state aid.” He added that “key officers of Albany’s charter school boards are themselves board members, employees or former employees of the Brighter Choice Foundation or its affiliates.”
Gonzalez said that the city of Albany is “exhibit A in the web of potential conflicts that keep popping up in the charter school movement.” It appears Gonzalez is correct about Albany being just one example of what’s going on in the movement. Brighter Horizons isn’t the only “foundation” or company making profits off of charter schools.
Imagine Schools Inc.
There is a national charter school company called Imagine Schools Inc., one of the biggest for-profit charter school management companies in the country. Matthew Haag of the Dallas Morning News wrote about Imagine Schools in 2008:
A national charter school company that plans to open new schools in Texas, including one in McKinney, has run afoul of an education official in Nevada and two of its former principals, and they all pose the same question.
Does Imagine Schools Inc. force its charter schools to spend too much money on complex real estate deals and not enough money on teachers and academic programs?
Virginia-based Imagine Schools has emerged as one of the largest for-profit charter school management companies, running several dozen schools in 12 states. It plans to open Imagine International Academy of North Texas in McKinney next year.
Charter schools house their students in Texas in a variety of ways, according to the former Charter Resource Center of Texas, from renting space in a shopping center to doing complex property transactions such as Imagine’s.
Typically, after an Imagine-managed charter school gets approval to open, Schoolhouse Finance, Imagine’s real estate arm, purchases a campus and charges the school rent. After the school begins to pay that rent, Schoolhouse sells the campus to a real estate investment trust, which then leases it back to Schoolhouse.
The charter school eventually sends rent payments – in one case upward of 40 percent of the school’s entire publicly funded budget – to two for-profit companies.
“The arrangement is very lucrative because it’s a direct conduit to public funds. The school [property] is paid off with public funds,” said Gary Horton, who oversees charter school funding for the Nevada Department of Education. Nevada’s charter schools include Imagine’s 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas.
Haag added that charter schools in Texas are generally exempt from the kind of financial oversight that “state education officials give school districts. The agency annually grades how school districts spend their money, but not yet for charters.”
Haag explained what happened with 100 Academy of Excellence in Nevada:
In Nevada, the state awarded 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas a charter, and the school hired Imagine to run its educational services. Schoolhouse Finance, the Imagine subsidiary, paid for the school’s property and building construction. Schoolhouse Finance then leased the property to the charter school for $1.4 million a year.
Next, Schoolhouse Finance sold the $8 million property to a real estate investment trust, Kansas City, Mo.,-based Entertainment Properties Trust. The trust then leased the property back to Schoolhouse Finance at a lower rate than the charter school pays.
Money remaining after Schoolhouse Finance pays its lease to the trust goes to Imagine Schools Inc. This tiered lease system has led to 10 percent returns on investment for owners and investors in the two companies, Sharp said.
But 100 Academy of Excellence’s annual rent, which represents 40 percent of its annual state-funded budget, leaves the school struggling to pay for textbooks, according to Nevada Department of Education records.
“My concern is that I have to make payments [to the charter school], and I know the payments aren’t going to the kids,” said Horton, a persistent critic of Imagine’s operations.
Stephanie Strom reported in the New York Times in 2010 that soon after 100 Academy of Excellence opened in 2006, the school board began documenting problems. Its bookkeeping practices were lax and it lacked a sufficient number of licensed teachers. The school had also violated regulations requiring competitive bidding when it paid Imagine “for necessities like furniture and computers.”
Strom added that the school had had three principals in four years. She said that two of the principals had been “pressured to resign after complaining that there was not enough money for essentials like textbooks and a school nurse.”
In addition, Strom reported that regulators in a number of states had found that Imagine Schools had “elbowed the charter holders out of virtually all school decision making — hiring and firing principals and staff members, controlling and profiting from school real estate, and retaining fees under contracts that often guarantee Imagine’s management in perpetuity.”
The regulators claimed that Imagine’s arrangements allowed it to use “public money with little oversight.” Marc Dean Millot, a former president of the National Charter Schools Alliance, said, “Under either charter law or traditional nonprofit law, there really is no way an entity should end up on both sides of business transactions.” He added, “Imagine works to dominate the board of the charter holder, and then it does a deal with the board it dominates — and that cannot be an arm’s length transaction.”
White Hat Management
In a 2011 Pro-Publica article titled Charter Schools Outsource Education to Management Firms, With Mixed Results, Sharona Coutts wrote about charter schools run by White Hat Management in Ohio:
Since 2008, an Ohio-based company, White Hat Management, has collected around $230 million to run charter schools in that state. The company has grown into a national chain and reports that it has about 20,000 students across the country. But now 10 of its own schools and the state of Ohio are suing, complaining that many White Hat students are failing, and that the company has refused to account for how it has spent the money.
The dispute between White Hat and Ohio, which is unfolding in state court in Franklin County, provides a glimpse at a larger trend: the growing role of private management companies in publicly funded charter schools.
Coutt reported that about one third of the charter schools in this country are now run by management companies, which can be either for-profit or non-profit, and not run locally. These companies not only have the right to hire and fire staff—they can also develop curricula and discipline students. She added that while the “shortcomings of traditional public schools” have been under scrutiny in recent years—“a look at the private sector’s efforts to run schools in Ohio, Florida and New York shows that turning things over to a company has created its own set of problems for public schools.” She said that government data on charter schools suggest that those with “for-profit managers have somewhat worse academic results than charters without management companies, and a number of boards have clashed with managers over a lack of transparency in how they are using public funds.”
The Ohio Department of Education joined the lawsuit in the fall of 2010. It asked the court to help the “group of public schools break free from dominance by private interests.” The department argued in a court motion that things had not gone well under White Hat’s management. It said, “Most of the schools have received the equivalent of D’s and F’s on their State report cards and their performance has declined during the term of the agreements.”
James D. Colner, an attorney representing the schools, said, “A big part of the argument here is being able to follow the money. We have no idea whether they’re earning a reasonable profit or not. We have no idea whether the money is being efficiently or effectively spent for our students.” That should be of great concern to citizens of Ohio. Coutt contends that oversight of the industry has lagged. She added that it has resulted “in a patchwork of state and district regulation, which experts say is failing to safeguard the interests of children and taxpayers.”
Closing
Laura Clawson (Daily Kos):
In short, education reform is a good cause. Experimentation is good — and some of the best charter schools today have experimented in what could be valuable ways. But the push, coming from Wall Street and the extremely wealthy, for this specific form of charter schools, for this specific way of funding them, is part of both short-term and long-term drives for profit that will accrue to the wealthiest while weakening the middle class. The question is not whether we should back away from the cause of education, or the cause of education reform. The question is in whose interests it should be done and who should most strongly influence the outcomes.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
Juan Gonzalez: Big Banks Making a Bundle on New Construction as Schools Bear the Cost (Democracy Now!)
Albany charter cash cow: Big banks making a bundle on new construction as schools bear the cost (New York Daily News)
Show us the money: “Master Class” for private equity investors in public education (Parents across America)
“New market tax credits” and charter schools (Parents across America)
Cashing in on the charters: Petrino DiLeo exposes a new attempt by Wall Street to make money off our schools (Socialist Worker)
Charter school company with plans for McKinney is criticized (Susan Ohanian)
The big business of charter schools (Washington Post)
Evil Ed, inc: the Wall Street-charter school connection (Open Left)
Corporations Advise School Closings, While Private Charters Suck Public Schools Away: As charter proponents aim to cash in on major investment returns, Philly braces for a massive schools shakeup. (AlterNet)
Charter Schools’ New Cheerleaders: Financiers (New York Times)
For School Company, Issues of Money and Control (New York Times)
Charter Schools Outsource Education to Management Firms, With Mixed Results (Pro Publica)
Education: follow the money (Daily Kos)
Wall Street Hearts Charter Schools, Gets Rich Off Them (FireDogLake)
Wall Street Behind Charter School Push (Huffington Post)
Charter Hype and Spin from Florida DOE
By Diane Ravitch
March 13, 2013
http://dianeravitch.net/2013/03/13/charter-hype-from-florida-doe/
Excerpt:
One of the saddest consequences of the merger of education with partisan politics is that we now no longer can trust pronouncements from many of our state and local departments of education. Instead of accurate data, we are apt to get spin, hype, distortion, and outright lies, all in the service of someone’s political agenda.
One of the worst offenders is the Florida Department of Education. For years, under Jeb Bush and now Rick Scott, the department has been incapable of impartial analysis or self-criticism. Instead, its goal is to parrot the party line of testing, accountability, charters, vouchers, and online learning.
The latest embarrassing public relations stunt from the state DOE is a “study” claiming that charter schools in Florida outperform public schools. This is intended to help the privatization movement–for-profit and nonprofit–get a bigger market share.
The latest “study” was not conducted by independent reputable scholars but by the Department itself. That explains a lot.
Consider that only four months earlier, an independent study concluded the opposite: that public schools perform the same or better than charter schools.
The key finding in that study was:
“The average charter school is doing about the same as the non-charter school when no adjustments are made for poverty and minority statuses. When the adjusted scores are considered, the average charter school performs significantly worse than the average non-charter school.”
Parents Say S. Fla. Charter School Doubles As Nightclub
September 2, 2011
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2011/09/02/parents-say-s-fla-charter-school-doubles-as-nightclub/
Excerpt:
MIAMI (CBS4) – The attorney for a Miami-Dade charter school is promising a thorough investigation after complaints that the school has turned into a nightclub on weekends with wild, alcohol-involved parties.
One such party from Saturday, August 6th titled “Lexus Dave Video Bash” is featured on YouTube and shows young men and women at the festive event. The address of that party is listed as the same location as the Balere Language Academy at 10875 Quail Roost Drive, a school for children from kindergarten through 8th grade.
Neighbors complained to the Miami-Dade school district that this was one of two such parties at the school last month.
Two flyers promote another party that is scheduled for Saturday, September 3rd.
One flyer shows a woman in a bikini with champagne bottles. Another shows a bikini-clad woman in a suggestive pose by a smiling man wearing expensive jewelry and sitting by a pile of cash.
“Actually everything bothers me about it, “ said neighbor Albert Figueroa. ”It’s completely wrong. The situation here in this neighborhood is getting worse by the day. I am very concerned about it. I would like to see the police investigate.”
“I’d pretty much like to see it not happening at all,” said neighbor Felix Guzman. “My concern is that they’re having a party in a language arts center that is trying to educate kids. There are two different churches that lease the school on weekends. And when people come in on weekends, they smell smoke and see empty beer and other alcohol bottles. It’s not right.”
Parents complained to the school district about empty beer bottles and lingering smoke from the parties.
Florida’s shameful situation on charter schools
By BRADENTON HERALD EDITORIAL
Published: October 30, 2012
http://www.bradenton.com/2012/10/30/4257940/florida-shameful-situation-on.html
Excerpt:
Plaudits are raining down on Gov. Rick Scott over his new education agenda, unveiled just last week. One of his top priorities is the expansion of charter schools in the name of parental choice.
In light of the outrage over a scandalous payment to one Orange County principal of a failed charter school, Scott should order an investigation into the compensation packages awarded by for-profit companies to charter school employees to ensure taxpayer money is not enriching a few while public schools suffer. And the Legislature should take another look at the laws governing charters and the expenditure of public money.
The principal in question not only received a $519,000 severance check, but she took home her $305,000 annual salary for a grand total of $824,000 during the 2010-2011 school year. The Orlando Sentinel also reported last week the school only spent $366,000 on teacher salaries and instruction during that school year. Nothing can justify that imbalance, especially for the leader of a charter that failed.
Public school district superintendents don’t even make that kind of unconcionalble salary. School boards would face public rage for even proposing such pay.
In mid-October, the governor ordered a review of the compensation awarded to the 28 presidents in the state college system after trustees at one agreed to a $1.2 million severance package with the school’s departing chief. Charter schools deserve even sharper scrutiny.
But this is just one example of a twisted system that fails taxpayers miserably.
Charters are operated independently of school districts by public or private entities, including out-of-state corporations and for-profit companies. Education companies are gaining power in Tallahassee with a governor and Republican-dominated Legislature friendly to their cause.
Cashing In On Kids: Investigations Raise Questions About Florida Charter Schools
DECEMBER 15, 2011
BY SCOTT FINN
http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2011/12/15/cashing-in-on-kids-investigations-raise-questions-about-florida-charter-schools/
Excerpt:
New investigations by the Miami Herald and StateImpact Florida raise serious concerns about Florida’s charter schools – including who’s profiting from them, and whether they are serving kids with severe disabilities.
That’s the topic of a one-hour radio special, “Cashing in on Kids,” by WLRN/Miami Herald News in conjunction with StateImpact Florida and WUSF Public Media.
Both stations aired the program at 2 p.m. Thursday (a first time this has happened in recent memory) and there was a great response from callers and followers on Twitter.
Two callers said they were parents of kids with disabilities who had seen charter schools rejecting students with special needs themselves.
StateImpact Florida reporters Sarah Gonzalez and John O’Connor talked about the main finding of their three-month investigation: that 86 percent of Florida’s charter schools do not serve a single child with a severe disability.
And Miami Herald reporters Kathleen McGrory and Scott Hiaasen recapped some of their major findings, including:
– State lawmakers who profit from the charter school industry and then vote on these issues
– A former state lawmaker who was secretly paid $5,000 a month as he voted on charter schools
– Conflicts of interest where charter school management companies are profiting by leasing property and equipment back to themselves
Herald investigation into charter school: cozy connections = taxpayer paid profits
The Miami Herald
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2011/12/herald-investigation-into-charter-school-cozy-connections-taxpayer-paid-profits-.html
Excerpt:
Cozy political connections, favorable tax treatment and little public oversight has allowed Miami charter school chain Academica to exploit Florida’s laws, build a successful chain of schools, and profit off taxpayer dollars, a Miami Herald investigation has found.
Charter schools have grown into a $400-million-a-year business in South Florida, receiving about $6,000 in taxpayer dollars for every student enrolled but even when charter schools have been caught violating state laws, school districts have few tools to demand compliance…
Highlights:
* The South Miami company receives more than $9 million a year in management fees just from its South Florida charter schools — fees that ultimately come from public tax dollars.
* More than two dozen other companies are controlled Fernando and Ignacio Zulueta, including more than $115 million in South Florida real estate — all exempt from property taxes as public schools — and act as landlords for many of Academica’s signature schools, records show.
* These companies collected about $19 million in lease payments last year from charter schools — with nine schools paying rents exceeding 20 percent of their revenue, records show.
* When the board of Doral Academy selected state Sen. Anitere Flores to run a new college proposed by the charter school network, she was sponsoring a bill in the Legislature to create online virtual charter schools, a new school model expected to dramatically expand the charter school industry. Since the proposal passed, Academica has applied for 19 virtual charters — including two with Doral Academy, state records show. More here.
* Rep. Erik Fresen, a Miami Republican, is the brother-in-law of Fernando Zulueta, Academica’s CEO and is a former Academica lobbyist. He now earns $150,000 a year as a land-use consultant for Civica, a Doral architectural firm that has built several schools run by Academica — including schools on land controlled by the Zulueta brothers.
Yarbrough: Charter schools may be boondoggles
By DICK YARBROUGH
March 13, 2012
Athens Banner-Herald
http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2012-03-13/yarbrough-charter-schools-may-be-boondoggles
Excerpt:
One more time, let me go over my concerns about the charter school constitutional amendment bill in the state Senate. I don’t have a problem with charter schools. My problem is that nobody seems to be talking about for-profit charter schools.
Call me cynical, but you have to wonder at the enthusiasm of legislators for charter schools, even as they continue to cut public school budgets and furlough teachers.
And, there’s the Georgia Department of Education report saying that charter schools don’t perform as well as traditional public schools and their graduation rates are no better.
Legislators have gotten downright threatening with reluctant colleagues about charter schools. But if charter school performance isn’t better than their public-school cousins, why the urgency?
A sharp-eyed reader suggested I might want to see what’s happening in Florida with their charter schools, and I think I’ve broken the code. It’s not about the kids. It’s about money and politics and influence-peddling. Now, things are beginning to make sense.
The Miami Herald did an in-depth study on charter school operations in Florida in December. There, charter schools are a $400 million business that has turned into one of the region’s fastest-growing industries, “backed by real-estate developers and promoted by politicians” and “rife with insider deals and potential conflicts of interest.”
The Herald says Florida lawmakers have chipped away at local school districts’ ability to monitor the activities of charter school managers until they are virtually without any government oversight, even though the state donates $6,000 in taxpayer dollars for every student enrolled.
Academica: Florida’s richest charter school management firm
Academica has become Florida’s largest and richest charter-school management company, running more than 60 schools just in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.
BY KATHLEEN MCGRORY AND SCOTT HIAASEN
12/14/11
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/12/13/v-fullstory/2545377/academica-florida-richest-charter.html
Excerpt:
PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas On a sun-drenched weekend in September, a group of South Florida charter school principals jetted off to a leadership retreat at The Cove, an exclusive enclave of the Atlantis resort. A Friday morning meeting gave way to champagne flutes, a dip in the pool and a trip down a waterslide. The evening ended at the casino.
Leading the toast by the pool: Fernando Zulueta, the CEO of Academica Corp., which manages the principals’ schools.
Zulueta had reason to cheer. During the past 15 years, Zulueta and his brother, Ignacio, have built Academica into Florida’s largest and richest for-profit charter school management company, and one of the largest in the country. In Miami-Dade and Broward counties, Academica runs more than 60 schools with $158 million in total annual revenue and more than 20,000 students — more pupils than 38 Florida school districts, records show.
Academica’s schools consistently get high marks for academic achievement, with some schools earning national recognition. Mater Academy Charter High in Hialeah Gardens is considered among the nation’s best high schools by U.S. News & World Report, and recently won the College Board Inspiration Award.
And despite recent cuts in state funding for public and charter schools, Academica’s schools have prospered financially: One of its chains of nonprofit schools has assets of more than $36 million, the company says.
Academica’s achievements have been profitable. The South Miami company receives more than $9 million a year in management fees just from its South Florida charter schools — fees that ultimately come from public tax dollars.
Amazing link Elaine!
The new U.S. visa rush: Build a charter school, get a green card
By Stephanie Simon
Fri Oct 12, 2012
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/12/us-usa-education-charter-visas-idUSBRE89B07K20121012
Excerpt:
(Reuters) – It’s been a turbulent period for charter schools in the United States, with financial analysts raising concerns about their stability and regulators in several states shutting down schools for poor performance.
The volatility has made it tough for startup schools to get financing.
But an unlikely source of new capital has emerged to fill the gap: foreign investors.
Wealthy individuals from as far away as China, Nigeria, Russia and Australia are spending tens of millions of dollars to build classrooms, libraries, basketball courts and science labs for American charter schools.
In Buffalo, New York, foreign funds paid for the Health Sciences Charter School to renovate a 19th-century orphanage into modern classrooms and computer labs. In Florence, Arizona, overseas investment is expected to finance a sixth campus for the booming chain of American Leadership Academy charter schools.
And in Florida, state business development officials say foreign investment in charter schools is poised to triple next year, to $90 million.
The reason? Under a federal program known as EB-5, wealthy foreigners can in effect buy U.S. immigration visas for themselves and their families by investing at least $500,000 in certain development projects. In the past two decades, much of the investment has gone into commercial real-estate projects, like luxury hotels, ski resorts and even gas stations.
Lately, however, enterprising brokers have seen a golden opportunity to match cash-starved charter schools with cash-flush foreigners in investment deals that benefit both.
“The demand is massive – massive – on the school side,” said Greg Wing, an investment advisor. “On the investor side, it’s massive, too.”
Two years ago, Wing set up a venture called the Education Fund of America specifically to connect international investors with charter schools. He is currently arranging EB-5 funding for 11 schools across North Carolina, Utah and Arizona and says he has four more deals in the works.
And that’s just the start, Wing says: “It’s going to be explosive.”
Great job Elaine. Follow the money to the greed.
This nation has become one that would do anything for a buck.
Greed has become our downfall.
That same year—2010—Juan Gonzalez believed that he had uncovered one of the reasons why hedge fund managers, some wealthy Americans, and the executives of some Wall Street banks had become such big proponents of charter schools and had gotten involved in their development. Gonzalez said the banks and other wealthy investors had been making “windfall profits” by taking advantage of “a little-known federal tax break to finance new charter-school construction.” That little know tax break, the New Markets Tax Credit, can be so lucrative, Gonzalez said, “that a lender who uses it can almost double his money in seven years.” He added that the tax break “gives an enormous federal tax credit to banks and equity funds that invest in community projects in underserved communities, and it’s been used heavily now for the last several years for charter schools.”
———————–
Sounds like a related party transaction. If you figure it out, they fire you.
Is something like this even possible in America? I’ve got a feeling the answer is a resounding “NO!”
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
Disaster Capitalists… See a problem and their solution is about how THEY can profit from THEIR solutions. If people suffer or, as is the case with charter schools, the children suffer, so be it… They have their money and THATS what matters to them.
Support the Democrats. They’re different from Republicans.
Elaine,
No, I didn’t. I don’t think I’ve watched Maher since he had Harlan Ellison on “Politically Incorrect” and then I was only watching to see Harlan. 😉
Gene,
Speaking of worms involved in education reform, Michelle Rhee was on Bill Maher’s show last night. Did you see her?
Darren,
I find it distressing too. I agree that school reform should be about improving education and not about making money for investors. This is an important part of the charter school movement story that we rarely hear discussed in the MSM.
Nicely done, Elaine. A lil’ digging in the dirt and you showed some really filthy worms in profit, er, education reform.
Great research Elaine. I am in principle supportive of charter schools but this information you have revealed is quite distressing to the cause. It shouldn’t be so much about the money, it should be about improving the education.