Chartering a Course of Disaster 0
The charter school movement originated out of good will as an attempt to fix struggling public schools on the cheap by allowing charter school operators to try new things.
That was the rationale, at least. Of course, it hasn’t fixed anything. Fixes cost money and “on the cheap” is never a good strategy; you do get what you pay for.
Instead, this “movement” has mutated from a hopeful fix into a con and a scam. In the course of a longer article about legal obstacles facing Pennsylvania school districts who want to fix failing charters (in a fix over fixing the fix), Lisa Haver tells the story of such charter gone bad:
Several Philadelphia Daily News stories reported that Aspira had filed phony receipts for contractors and diverted funds from the Renaissance schools to their other charters, a clear misuse of taxpayer funds.
To ice the cake, Pennsylvania’s charter school law makes shutting down the charter cons almost impossible.
Do please read the rest.
