Imagine Schools: “On the lookout for a quick buck, seemingly focused more on flipping property than educating children”

by David Safier

I could have written those harsh words in the headline, but I didn't. They're from an editorial in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Here's the complete paragraph.

The for-profit company [Imagine Schools Inc.] always was on the lookout for a quick buck, seemingly focused more on flipping property than educating children. The charter's sponsor waited too long to pay attention. Conservative state lawmakers, intent on pushing competition for public schools in any way possible, ignored pleas to make sure that charter schools were accountable.

The editorial is referring to the closing of two St. Louis charter schools run by the for-profit Imagine Schools, with four other schools run by Imagine on probation.

Here's more from the editorial.

The Imagine schools effort started with well-meaning [local] people trying to create new opportunity for children who need hope. Instead, the kids found themselves stuck in schools that were, by most objective standards, performing worse than the public schools the students fled.

[snip]

Anger rises up like bile when contemplating the real damage done to families by putting profits above progress.

[snip]

St. Louis failed miserably in allowing Imagine and Paideia Academy and other poorly performing charters to operate too long without proving that they were worth the effort.

The editorial is not a jeremiad against charter schools, by the way. It praises charters, and private nonprofit schools, which focus on children's educational needs. It even compliments the city's public schools for gettting better, albeit not quickly enough.

The editorial singles out the for-profit Imagine Schools for contempt, something we have seen in papers in Indiana and Texas as well. Both Florida and California have refused to allow Imagine charters in some cities, indicating there is something questionable about the whole Imagine Schools enterprise.

In Arizona, however, no journalist has seen fit to pull back the curtain and find out what's going on in the state's 18 Imagine charter schools. I'm not a journalist. I lack the training, and I don't have the investigative heft of a newspaper behind me, so I can't go much beyond what I find in public records. The children of Arizona deserve a thorough airing of the conditions in the state's Imagine Schools, based on the for-profit corporation's record elsewhere. I guess that will have to wait until one of our papers — probably a Phoenix-based publication, since that's where most of the Imagine charters are located — takes a look, or a current or former Imagine employee steps forward with information.