It surprises no-one, not even the racist and
religious Republican base that the
Republican cabal exists first and foremost to
advance the interests of the rich and corporations at the expense of the
American people; including the Republican racist and religious base.
Over the past decade Americans have learned that there is no program or
agency Republicans will not steal funding from to enrich their corporate
masters. Although Republicans have not had as much success transferring
taxpayer funding for public education to corporations at the federal
level, Republican governors have made raiding public education a bonanza
for corporate charter and private religious schools.
It is true that Republican governors such as Brownback, Christie, and Walker were giddy appropriating
public school money for tax breaks for corporations and the rich, but
their robbery pales in comparison to Republicans like
Jindal and Kasich. Now, it appears that pretender candidate and
Ohio's idiot John “corporate” Kasich’s lust for corporate-run charter
schools is not only the nation’s leading privatization failure, its
“beyond belief” corruption prompted mass evacuations of Ohio education
officials fleeing Kasich’s corporate education corruption.
In the four years that corporate agitator Kasich has been in office, funding for traditional public schools has been
slashed
as far too costly and a burden on the rich and corporations. All while
corporate charter schools have seen a very significant funding increase
as a result of the public school funding cuts. In what has to be an epic
understatement, many education advocates in Ohio and nationally have
remarked that the public school funding being transferred to corporate
charter schools in Ohio not only “appears to have been misspent,” it is a
scam to enrich a corporation loyal to Kasich and Ohio Republicans. It
is also a plot to make predominately poor minority students uneducated
because nothing on Earth guarantees Republican electoral success than an
uneducated populace.
This corporate corruption sweeping through
Republican states’ education sectors is happening all across America,
but particularly so in Ohio. Kasich has been heavily promoting the
primary components of corporate school reform that include primarily
increasing the number of vouchers that use public money to pay for
private religious schools, and heavily expanding corporate “managed”
charter schools. Kasich is so enamored with, and driven to expand,
charter schools that he has protected a blatantly corrupt corporate
privatization scheme that produce the greatest charter school system
failure in America. Instead of scrapping the school corporatization
agenda, Kasich’s devotion to his corporate cohort drooling to take over
all education has driven him to pledge more funding and support for
corporate-controlled charter schools at the expense of impoverished
minority students and public education.
The level of corruption in Kasich’s corporate charter school scam became exposed nationally this winter after a
report
from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes
revealed that achievement in Ohio’s charter schools was significantly
below Ohio’s regular public schools. Anyone familiar with Republicans’ love affair with charter schools would not be
surprised that yet another
study found one of the largest and “
most successful”
charter schools in America underperformed even underperforming public
schools. However, in Ohio’s case besides achieving performance grades of
“
F” across the board, Kasich’s corporate charters are robbing
the state blind and Kasich’s “education experts” are rigging performance
results and attendance reports to steal more Ohio taxpayer money. In
fact, the corporate corruption is so abominable and achievement scores
are so bad that an education policy analyst rightly noted that, “
Our charter schools have become a national joke.” They have also become a money laundering enterprise for the corporation running Kasich’s charter school program.
When a Kasich education appointee, Leon Sinoff was
asked to sign off on a building lease for Imagine Columbus Primary
Academy, he was unaware that the corporate-run school
received
an F grade for achievement on the 2013-14 state report card, only three
teachers returned after summer break, and two principals and one vice
principal had stepped down. Sinoff then discovered that the school
served
a predominately high-poverty, low-income community and lacked arts,
music, and foreign language classes. When he inquired about the poor
performance and lack of adequate teachers and classes, the corporation
running the charters, Imagine Schools, complained there was not enough
funding due to the high expense of the building lease agreement. Sinoff
soon discovered that the $58,000-a-month
lease
negotiated and entered into by Imagine Schools consumed half the
school’s operating budget for a building that was owned by Imagine
Schools Finance LLC.
To understand the corruption of a corporate charter
school renting a building from itself, the national standard for school
building leases is between 8 and 15 percent of operational budgets, not
50 percent. The corporate rigging is just one reason an epic failure
like Imagine Schools is one of the largest for-profit charter school
management corporations in America. After finding the corruption,
Sinofff promptly resigned, along with other stunned board members, and
announced, “This is self-dealing. That’s why we are massively
overpaying for the lease. Imagine is perfectly happy cranking out
low-quality schools and profiting off them. They don’t care about the
quality of the kids’ education.”
That was only a small part of the corporate Kasich’s corruption. When Ohio State Auditor, David Yost, made unannounced
visits
to 30 charter schools around the state, he found that the real
attendance was drastically lower than what the schools reported to the
Department of Education. Inflating classroom numbers meant extra
taxpayer dollars for the corporate charter schools because states
dispense education funds based on the number of students enrolled. It
still gets worse.
After one of Imagine’s corporate charters was forced
to close due to being caught paying Imagine enormous sums for rent
while languishing on the state’s “academic emergency” list reserved for F-rated schools, Kasich appointed one of its failed corporate board members, David Hansen, as “executive director” of the entire state’s Office of Quality School Choice and Charter Funding.
Kasich assigned Hansen to oversee the expansion of
Imagine’s failed charter and virtual schools; virtual schools are online
charters used by homeschoolers to produce uneducated citizens as
crucial to Republicans’ electoral survival as racists and religious
fanatics. In July Kasich’s hand-picked corporate education executive
resigned after admitting he regularly rigged evaluations of charter
school sponsors that authorize and oversee the schools in exchange for a
handsome taxpayer-provided fee. Hansen also admitted he deliberately
concealed the failing grades of F-rated schools operated by for-profit
corporations because they are owned by major Republican donors in the
state. Kasich’s response to the deception and corporate fraud is
expanding corporate-run charters with more money appropriated from the
state’s public schools.
One would like to say that what is happening to
education in Ohio under Republicans is a cautionary tale, or a portent
of the coming disaster for education if Republicans are allowed to
fulfill the Koch brothers’ dream of corporate control of the education
system in America. Sadly, not only is it not a cautionary tale, the
disaster is unfolding in every Republican state across the nation to the
detriment of students, public education, and taxpayers who are seeing
even more of their tax dollars funneled directly into corporate coffers
under the guise of school choice.
Most Americans are completely unaware that charter schools typically underperform public
schools, and they are not beholden to report to any agency how they
spend money stolen from public education. They are also not required to
teach students anything, or follow national or state standards, and they
regularly insert religion as science and prayer as part of the
corporate charter school day. It is precisely that lack of oversight and
accountability that allowed Kasich’s charter schools to successfully
misspend taxpayer dollars, rig attendance reports, and conceal
drastically underperforming corporate charters.
This country owes its children a decent education;
something President Obama has advocated since his tenure in the White
House began. However, charter schools, particularly corporate-run
charters, are not providing even a basic education and there are myriad
studies revealing that they typically underperform even underfunded
public schools. In Ohio’s case, instead of scrapping the corporate
charter catastrophe and restoring funding to public schools, John
“corporate” Kasich is promising more charters and running for president;
like every Republican he wants to impart his corporate corruption on
the entire nation and he will not stop at education.
