Montini: Growing charter school rip-off revealed

The scam that is Arizona’s charter school system was plainly revealed recently in news articles about two groups of financially failing schools.

One group of failing schools belong to a traditional school district. The others are charter schools.

In the story on charters, Arizona Republic reporters Agnel Philip and Ricardo Cano describe how the auditors of 40 charter schools believe there is danger they may close within a year, much like the recent closure of a charter in Goodyear that dumped students and teachers on the street with essentially no notice.

The other article, also by Cano, describes the failing Murphy Elementary School District.

Public schools, private failures

Charter schools are public schools. They spend your money.

Unfortunately, the Republicans who control the Legislature have decided that you and I shouldn’t know HOW charter schools spend our money. So when they fail, it often comes as a complete surprise. To students and their parents, anyway.

One of the big differences between traditional public school and charters is that when charter schools fail financially there is nothing the state can do about it.

Imagine that. It’s YOUR money. Gone.

Poof!

The state has the ability to intervene if charters fail academically (although they get LOTS of chances). It can do the same thing to a traditional public school.

No intervention for failing charter

But, as Jim Hall of Arizonans for Charter School Accountability told the Republic, financial audits for charter schools are "a fairly useless exercise.”

Likewise, Curt Cardine of the Grand Canyon Institute, which has exhaustively studied charter schools, said of the state’s control of charters, "It’s really, ‘We expect you to do this, but if you don’t, we’re not going to do anything. We can’t.’”

There is an excellent chance that the Murphy Elementary School District, a traditional school district wallowing in financial trouble, will be taken over by the state. It’s terrible, but there is no chance that Murphy’s schools will close suddenly and abruptly in the middle of the week with no notice to parents or teachers.

That can – and does – happen with charter schools.

Will dozens fail this year?

And according to The Republic’s report it could happen to dozens of charters within a year.

It’s a rip-off and a scam and the Republicans who control the Legislature allow it to go on. They refuse to enact the same kind of transparency and accountability rules for charters that are imposed on other public schools.

In its report on the financial shenanigans allowed to go on within charter schools the Grand Canyon Institute pointed to things like a lack of competitive bidding, which allows self-serving charter holders to enrich themselves and their relatives on the taxpayer dime.

Dave Wells, research director for the institute told me a while back, “We think taxpayers have a right to know where their money is going.”

Your money, but no transparency 

Yes, we do.

But charter school apologists like Gov. Doug Ducey argue that charters need to be less restricted than other public so they can innovate.

Bull.

Ducey and his friends in the Legislature (some of whom make money off the charter system) simply hate traditional public schools and public school teachers (which perhaps explains why Arizona’s teachers are the lowest paid educators in the nation.)

Back in 2014 the Brookings Institution did what it called “a comprehensive look at Arizona’s charter schools.”

That study concluded: “On average, charter schools in Arizona do no better, and sometimes worse, than the traditional public schools.”

Charters do outperform tradition public schools in one very significant area, however:

Ripping off taxpayers.

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