History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
Reports on charter schools expose new problems
- 11-09-2011
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Blog by Valerie Strauss/Washington Post
Two new reports about public charter schools expose serious issues about the way they are run and their effectiveness. The first was a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Imagine Schools Inc., the nation’s largest for-profit charter school network, which is based in Arlington, Virginia and which operates more than 71 schools in more than a dozen states — including Maryland — and the District of Columbia. The story detailed complicated real estate deals through which the six Imagine schools operating in St. Louis with public dollars “are generating millions of dollars” for Imagine and a Kansas City-based real estate investment company. Essentially, Imagine sells its buildings to a company that leases them back to Imagine, which pays extremely high rent with public dollars. The paper reported that Imagine’s 2010 annual report shows that revenue grew to $265 million that year from $95 million in 2006. (more...)
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