Look who's operating charter schools

Source: Mike Klonsky's blog

Look who's operating charter schools

Taking the plunge

January 7th [2007]

Right-wing think tank "dragged into it"

Is this legal? I guess that's a foolish question here in the heart of the Ownership Society. But I still can't help wondering how the Fordham Foundation, with close ties to the Bush Dept. of Education, can be both a charter school authorizer and operator of a chain of charter schools. I guess I've already answered my own question.

As privately-managed charter schools increasingly become the answer to the question "where does school reform go now that school reform is dead?" the conservative think tank led by Checker Finn has obviously been doing some thinking. Why sit around and complain, as Finn often does, about the failure of charter school accountability under NCLB? Why not get into the business ourselves?

So, as Edweek's Eric Robelen , who makes private management seem almost heroic, puts it, Fordham has "taken the plunge" and will operate nine charter schools in southwest Ohio, which has become charter school's version of Mecca.

According to Robelen's account, the nine schools serve some 2,700 students, mostly from low-income and minority families. They run the gamut from two charters operated by the for-profit Edison Schools Inc. to a school started by a Baptist minister.

A national authority on charters and an unabashed champion of the idea, the Fordham Foundation appears to be the only think tank in the country to serve as a charter school authorizer. Called sponsors in Ohio, authorizers are responsible for issuing charters to the independent but publicly funded schools, monitoring them for performance, and deciding whether their charters should be renewed or revoked.

How convenient! The authorizers are authorizing the authorizers to operate for-profit charters. Now that's what I call "accountability."

But you can't blame Finn for the conflict of interest. After all, he was forced into it. By whom, we don't know. But, according to Robelen's account:

“We were almost dragged into this originally,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., Fordham’s president and an assistant U.S. secretary of education under President Reagan.

Poor thing.