When I worked in the Ohio Department of Education’s charter school office, I was able to observe charter school abuses up close. Since my retirement in 2011, I’ve watched from the outside as the pace of abuse has increased. Consider these:
· The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, which leads the state in the number of student dropouts, recently received state approval to remake itself as a school that promises to help dropouts. Why? The rules for dropout recovery schools are even more lax than the already weak ones that govern other charter schools.
· The Columbus Primary Academy, part of the Imagine Schools charter chain, is saddled with a lease that requires exorbitant rent to Imagine’s for-profit real estate subsidiary. In two other states, federal courts deemed the leases “self-dealing’’ and ordered Imagine to pay $1 million fines. The latest state audit shows the academy’s current lease extends to 2033, while the latest state report cards shows the school continues to fail our kids.
· Ohio charters affiliated with the Gulen movement received mostly Fs on their report cards — a pattern too common in Ohio where charter schools have been sold as a better alternative to traditional public schools.
Charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed. Ohio has some very good charter schools, but it has more very bad ones. Even when faced with overwhelming evidence that the worst performing ones need to be closed, Ohio legislators and other policymakers have been slow to embrace comprehensive charter reform and downplay the steady parade of scandals.
A new book, Empire of Deceit, provides a look at charter schools in Ohio and 27 other states run by followers of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen.
Gulen schools in Ohio took center stage more than three years ago when a panel of teachers who worked for the Horizon Science Academy of Dayton testified before the State Board of Education about problems they personally witnessed: widespread test-tampering; a teacher who encouraged an in-class groping game; teachers who openly referred to African-American students as “dogs;’’ a “Science Academy’’ with no working labs.
The state school board launched a supposed investigation into the teachers’ allegations that found no wrongdoing. Those of us who support comprehensive reform were not surprised by the lack of action by the board in what other Gulen critics thought was a cover-up.
The new book shows how these Ohio charter school scandals, which have been well documented by Ohio journalists, are part of a national trend.
It shows there have been 833 “special occupation” visas filed by the Ohio Gulen network alone. Instead of hiring qualified Ohioans, the schools obtained visas to hire Turkish nationals to fill positions such as assistant principal, art director and even English teacher.
These statistics follow news reports showing that the U.S. State Department raised serious and repeated concerns about the schools, sending cables to the CIA, secretary of defense and the president’s National Security Council. Special attention was paid to the large number of Turkish nationals with questionable credentials seeking visas to teach at U.S. charter schools.
The book details a property lease signed by a board member of an Ohio-based school that resulted in the school paying him in rent three times the purchase price of the property. These lease payments are similar to some found in Imagine schools.
Should we mention that the board member of this school was also the landlord?
It’s time for parents, teachers, school district officials, lawmakers, charter school proponents and other concerned citizens to demand immediate reforms for a system that sends more than $1 billion annually in taxpayer funds to mostly low-performing charter schools that abuse public money.
Last year, Ohio passed a new law that improved accountability, made it easier to close some chronically failing schools and banned some conflict-of-interest business relationships. The continued scandals, poor academic performance and abusive leases show we have more work to do.
Let’s find a way to close the bad charter schools and invest in the good ones to ensure a better return on investment of our tax dollars and a quality education for all of our children. We can’t do anything less for our future.
Smith is a retired school administrator and a former consultant in the Ohio Department of Education’s charter school office.
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