The fact that authorizers enjoy almost complete autonomy – not only from state regulations but also from public control through elected school boards – is a feature of the anti-regulatory environment in which charters have grown, rather than a bug.
Arne Duncan is calling for a 48% increase in the US Department of Education’s (ED) quarter-billion-dollar-a-year ($253.2 million) program designed to create, expand, and replicate charter schools – an initiative repeatedly criticized by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for suspected waste and inadequate financial controls.
The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) has issued a series of Freedom of Information Act requests for information about charter spending from ED as well as from states, and the findings shed new light on the deep flaws in the design, implementation and oversight of the federal program.