New for-profit ed management company won't pull Ohio charters out of the muck.

Few states rely so heavily on for-profit management companies as does Ohio. Lately, corporate reformers at the Cambridge Education Group, have formed a new charter school network in to try and clean up the mess created by their former notorious company, for-profit White Hat charters. But Cambridge's new name is not enough to pull them from the muck and corruption of "free market" education.

The company was formed in 2012, founded by Marcus May, a former White Hat executive.

Beacon Journal staff writer, Doug Livingston writes:

The Akron company and the 20 Ohio charter schools it manages are seeking to disentangle themselves from the likes of White Hat Management, a primordial force in Ohio’s charter school movement.

 But Cambridge claims to be different. It has no interest in owning school assets or signing property leases that make it hard for school boards to fire the management companies they hire.

But, writes Livingston, "Cambridge, for all its promise, can’t shake a past rife with questionable business relationships."

Summit Academy, White Hat, Concept Schools of Illinois and Imagine Schools of Virginia and other for-profit charter networks, all like to buy the school buildings they manage, drawing revenue from rent and putting school boards at a disadvantage if they wish to shop around for a new operator. Cambridge school boards — starting with Towpath Trail High School on Market Street — are collecting property deeds, eliminating their use as bargaining chips.

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Ohio’s charter schools ...

Drawing state dollars from local school districts, charter schools presented a cheaper, market-driven alternative to government-run schools.

■ Ohio law allowed for the first charter schools in 1998.

■ Nearly 40 percent of the 595 charter schools that ever opened in Ohio have closed. Financial difficulty is cited three times as often as academic failure. More than half the time, closure is voluntary, according to a state directory of shuttered charter schools.

■ Ohio’s charter schools rank among the lowest in the nation in advancing student learning.

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May founded Rearden Capital and d’Anconia Development to provide financing and line up private investors to purchase school property, often with an option for the schools to buy the property later. “Rearden” and “d’Anconia” are the neoliberal protagonists in Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand’s ode to an unfettered free-market capitalism. Such is the philosophy May and others bring to public education.

A grand jury in Florida indicted School Warehouse and Newpoint Education Partners, May’s version of Cambridge in Florida, on charges of grand theft, money laundering and aggravated white-collar crime.

And so it goes. It's White Hat without the hat.

THE FALLOUT... The Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, one of Ohio’s leading charter-school lobbying and advocacy organizations is disbanding after a decade of shaping the state’s charter-school policy. Some say its demise stems from Ohio’s poor charter-school record, which is causing national funders to pull their support.

Ohio charters leading in the race to the bottom with a little help from their friends

David Brennan, White Hat Charters

As I posted here three years ago, to get a charter in Ohio, all you need it seems, is lots of money for local Republican campaigns and a white hat.

When it comes to crappy, low-performing, and mismanaged charter schools, Ohio certainly leads the race to the bottom. Columbus alone, had 17 charter school failures in the past year. Nearly 30% of all Ohio charters have closed since 1997. The median life of an Ohio charter school is four years.
According to the Raw Story:

A handful of large corporate charter school operators appear to be responsible for wide swaths of the problem. For example, The Talented Tenth Leadership Academy for Boys and the Talented Tenth Leadership Academy for Girls closed in October after inspectors at the schools discovered that students faced unsanitary conditions and poor management. Both schools were operated by the North Central Ohio Educational Service Center. 

 The North Central Ohio Educational Service Center also sponsored 21 other community schools in Ohio. In 2013, the firm attempted to open 16 community schools, including six schools that failed to open or closed within a few weeks of opening. 

Among the largest charter school authorizers in the state is the Fordham Foundation (connected to the Fordham Institute), currently headed by Michael Petrilli. They oversee 11 Ohio charters and have been among the loudest advocates for the expansion of privately-operated charters, vouchers, and so-called "choice".

Here's a list of the others.

Now that so many Ohio charters are closing, Fordham and several other operators have turned on each other, pointing their fingers and calling each other "weak authorizers." But it's hard for any of them to cast the first stone.

For example,  it was Petrilli's mentor at Fordham, Chester Finn who wrote a  letter to the Columbus Dispatch explaining why Ohio children should be grateful to Finn's pal and White Hat Management founder David Brennan for “rebutting those who would keep them trapped in crummy district school.”

Brennan and White Hat Management are known as being the most corrupt of the charter operators. He has been accused of bribing public officials and corrupt financial practices. In May 2010, the boards of ten White Hat-managed charter schools in Ohio filed suit against their parent company.

"Brennan was helped along by the intellectuals of the Buckeye Institute and Fordham Institute. They provided valuable cover for free-market "education" plans, and eventually these institutions proliferated in Ohio more than in any other state in the union." -- Progress Ohio 

According to former White Hat teacher Amy Rankin:

It's no secret that Brennan's schools are failing -- at rates far worse than the abysmal public schools they're meant to replace. White Hat's 20 Ohio Life Skills Centers, for example, are all on either academic watch or emergency. Not one meets the federal standard for yearly progress.

Sorry Chester, the state's children aren't grateful.