The good news is, the Obama administration plans to give Arizona $54 million for charter schools. Since well-run charters add educational opportunities for Arizona's students, I'm all for creating new ones and expanding those that are successful.
The bad news is, our charter school system is an unregulated mess, and I fear too much of the money will go into the pockets of people more interested in personal profit than educational quality.
The problems with our charter schools began 15 years ago with the original legislation. The people who wrote the law had two basic goals in mind. They wanted lots of charters up and running quickly, and they didn't want them "burdened" by regulation. Good schools would thrive, they reasoned, and the bad ones would fail.
The result of the legislation is, we have more charter schools per capita than any other state in the nation. As for regulation and oversight, our charter schools might as well live in a cow town in the Wild West where the sheriff is asleep with his feet propped up on his desk.
And instead of increasing quality, the lack of regulation has allowed unscrupulous school directors to cheat taxpayers and students while they enrich themselves.
How many charter schools are misusing state funds and giving their students an inferior education? It's impossible to say, because the state's Charter School Board isn't minding the store. But here are some examples I know of, taken from an excellent article in the Star a few Sundays ago, news reports over the past few years and material I've uncovered on my own.
• In 2005, a 15-year-old girl at Morningstar Academy Charter School in Apache Junction complained to the principal that her teacher had molested her. The principal, who was the teacher's mother, called the student a liar. When two other girls went to the police with similar accusations, the teacher was arrested, then skipped bail and disappeared for two years. Though the principal was accused of failing to report child abuse, she kept her position. The Department of Education said it was powerless to remove her because she didn't have a teaching credential.
Morningstar was run by a man whose 60 charter schools in California had been closed in 2004 because he had skimmed off millions of dollars into private companies he created for that purpose, but our Charter School Board said it couldn't remove him as director because he hadn't been formally charged with a crime. Morningstar finally closed in 2008 after he was indicted in California on 112 counts of misappropriation of funds and grand theft.
• Arizona Virtual Academy is part of a string of online charter schools run by the for-profit corporation, K12 Inc. From 2006 until 2008, the school sent student essays to India to be graded while allowing parents to believe the school's teachers were doing the work. Only when the educational outsourcing was publicized in the media did the school end the practice.
• La Paloma Academy in Tucson pays its two directors $171,000 and $166,000 per year. They are husband and wife. By way of comparison, the superintendent of the Sunnyside Unified School District makes $150,000.
• In 2008, the director of North Star Charter High School in Phoenix decided she no longer wanted the position. She had the school pay her $32,000 to broker the transfer to another director. Then she wrote herself a seven-year contract to consult and teach a few classes, and she wrote similar five-year contracts for her husband and her daughter. The total value of the three contracts is about $800,000.
Before Arizona puts an additional dollar into our charter schools, let alone $54 million, we need to add some teeth to the 15-year-old legislation. The schools' books must be audited for possible misuse of state funds, and trained observers must visit the schools regularly to be sure they are fulfilling their educational missions.
Dave Safier is a regular contributor to Blog for Arizona.
