Two St. Louis “Imagine” charter schools to close. Four others on probation.

by David Safier

Not exactly local news, but significant nonetheless. Two charter schools in St. Louis run by Imagine Schools (ironically named Imagine Academy of Academic Success and Imagine Academy of Cultural Arts) are being closed after a long probationary period granted them by Missouri Baptist University’s Education Division, which was in an oversight position. Four other Imagine Schools in the city are on life support. They have shown some improvement, so they have a few months to indicate they have made sufficient educational progress to remain open.

Imagine Schools is the largest Charter School Organization in the country — over 70 schools, 18 in Arizona. It is run on a grow-or-die model which values expansion over quality. Basically, the schools send all their government funding up to the Virginia headquarters where all the hiring and firing is done, all the rent on buildings is paid and the supplies are bought. I have easily a hundred articles on file from around the country about actions in clear violation of the schools' supposed educational mission.

I should say, I have no indication the schools in Arizona are poorly run. However, no investigative reporter here has seen fit to follow the lead of their counterparts elsewhere and look into the Imagine Schools in Arizona, so I don't know if the schools are doing an adequate job, or no one has yet blown the whistle.

Imagine is a for profit enterprise, run by an ex-CEO of an Enron-style energy company. It is the poster child for what's wrong with mixing profits and education. Unfortunately, that is the direction more charter schools are heading — away from the mom-and-pop, or teacher-and-teacher, concept and toward the McDonalds franchise model. ("Would you like fries with that diploma?") It's a dangerous direction for public education to head: more privatization, less accountability.