David Safier

by David Safier

If this were a random theft by one bad actor, I wouldn't be writing about it. But one of the dirty little secrets — not much of a secret, actually, and not so little — is that there are all kinds of ways, legal and illegal, to profit from taxpayers' money when it flows to charter schools. The prefered method: set up a company that sells goods and services to charters at inflated prices.

Nicholas Trombetta created Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, which brought in $100 million in taxpayer dollars in 2012 to educate 10,000 students. According to a grand jury, he set up dummy companies, diverting about a million dollars for his own personal use.

Mr. Trombetta, the grand jury said, used diverted funds to pay for houses, a Florida condominium and a $300,000 twin-engine plane as well as more mundane items such as groceries and restaurant tabs.

The indictment alleges that the former wrestling coach and school superintendent formed businesses that billed for doing no work; masked his control of a corporation by naming straw owners; hid income from the IRS; took $550,000 in kickbacks on a laptop computer contract with Virginia-based NCS Technologies Inc.; and even "caused" employees to make $40,000 in individual payments to his favored political candidates before reimbursing them through one of his companies.

Lax oversight of charters is one reason this kind of misuse of government funds is so common. Arizona compounds the problem by allowing its charters to use no bid contracts, unlike school districts which are required to take bids on large contracts. Another reason this kind of profiteering is so easy is that charters often take the money they get from the state and send most of it up to CMOs — Charter Management Organizations — which are basically in charge of the schools. There's very little accountability for that money once it leaves the schools.

A WE-DON'T-KNOW-HOW-BASIS-SPENDS-ITS-MONEY NOTE: I have no reason to believe that BASIS charter schools are scamming the state. But if they are, there's no easy way for me — or the state of Arizona — to find out.

by David Safier

Here's a great idea: a bill in Michigan that would make everyone in the state lege take an elementary level standardized test. Oh, and the results would be posted online.

I would love to see that happen in Arizona with the soon-to-arrive Common Core-based exams. I've looked over some of the sample test questions for 6th and 7th graders in math and English. They're not only tough. They're confusing, expecting the test taker to go through a two or three step mathematical or conceptual process to arrive at an answer than agrees with one of the multiple choices. The reading passages, by the way, are long, reasonably complex and very boring. Even kids who have the skills to arrive at the correct answers could become so stressed out by the complexity of the tasks, their brains would freeze. Unless, of course, they were given practice test after practice test after practice test, which both invalidates the results and robs students of valuable class time.

by David Safier Since 2011, the annual PDK/Gallup Poll on American attitudes toward public schools has asked this as one of its questions: Do you favor or oppose allowing students and parent to choose a private school to attend at public expense? The answer is, Americans oppose the concept of vouchers, and the numbers are … Read more