A recent report coauthored by Jeff Bryant, Chief Correspondent for Our Schools, has prompted Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives to take steps to intervene in the federal government's program to fund charter schools that compete with local schools for education funding. The report's findings are also reflected in recent proposals by Democratic presidential hopeful Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders who has called for an end to public funding of new charter schools until a government audit can discern how these schools handle their public funds.

 

IMPACT OF OUR SCHOOLS REPORTING ON CHARTER SCHOOL CORRUPTION

 

Congressional Leaders Take DeVos to Task on Charter School Grants and Demand Answers

Jeff Bryant

Fourteen Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives wrote to Betsy DeVos to complain about the Department of Education's failure to demand accountability from charter schools that win federal funding through her department's Charter Schools Program. The Representatives specifically source their concerns to a recent report coauthored by Jeff Bryant, Chief Correspondent for Our Schools, that found “hundreds of millions of federal taxpayer dollars have been awarded to charter schools that never opened or opened and then shut down.”

 

Privatization report: Bernie Wants to Rein in Charter Schools

In the Public Interest

"Citing harm to public schools, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) calls for a ban on new for-profit charter schools … Sanders said 'charter schools are led by unaccountable, private bodies, and their growth has drained funding from the public school system. When we are in the White House we will ban for-profit charter schools,' … For more see Jeff Bryant’s analysis of how the charter school debate will play out among Democrats."

 

The Federal Government Has Poured Millions into Failing Charter Schools in Louisiana

Jeff Bryant in Common Dreams

According to a recent report, up to $1 billion of the money given out nationwide by the federal government's Charter Schools Program was wasted on charter schools that never opened, or opened and then closed because of fraud, poor performance, financial mismanagement, and other reasons … Louisiana has one of the worst records for slipshod management of its federal grants … 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. 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.

 

Things Didn’t Go Well When Betsy Devos Was Confronted with Her Department’s Charter School Fraud

Jeff Bryant in Salon

During a series of recent congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos had to respond to a recent report I coauthored finding the U.S. Department of Education has been scammed for hundreds of millions of dollars by fraudulent or mismanaged charter schools … Members of Congress repeatedly referred to these findings when questioning the secretary’s management of charter school grants … In the most recent exchange, DeVos pivoted to attacking the report authors personally rather than disproving their findings, saying, “The study was really funded by and promoted by those who have a political agenda against charter schools.”

 

3 Questions That “Created Havoc" in Betsy DeVos’ Department of Education

Jeff Bryant in Salon

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is famous for giving a nonresponse to fairly straightforward questions … 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 Schools 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 … 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 about the current grant application review process used for the Charter Schools Program Grants to State Entities. 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.”

 

Stop Federal Funding of Charter Schools

Jeff Bryant in The Progressive

Democratic members of Congress recently grilled U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos over her budget proposing huge cuts to programs including the Special Olympics while calling for a $60 million hike in spending on charter schools. Some of their questions were prompted by a new report that I co-authored with Network for Public Education Executive Director Carol Burris. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., asked DeVos how she found extra money for charters in a budget “full of cruel cuts to education,” especially given the report’s findings of “waste and abuse.”

 

House Democrats Seek Cut in Federal Charter School Funding, Saying Education Department isn’t a ‘Responsible Steward of Taxpayer Dollars’

The Washington Post

"House Democrats are proposing a sweeping cut in federal funding for charter schools, saying they are 'deeply concerned' that the U.S. Education Department 'does not intend to be a responsible steward' of taxpayer dollars used to help the charter movement … The legislation also says lawmakers are “concerned” about a recent report issued by the advocacy group the Network for Public Education, which says that as much as $1 billion in federal money was wasted on charter schools that never opened or that closed because of mismanagement and other issues from 2009 to 2016."

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.

Jeff Bryant is a writing fellow and chief correspondent for Our Schools, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He is a communications consultant, freelance writer, advocacy journalist, and director of the Education Opportunity Network, a strategy and messaging center for progressive education policy. His award-winning commentary and reporting routinely appear in prominent online news outlets, and he speaks frequently at national events about public education policy. Follow him on Twitter @jeffbcdm.