Colorado's state education commissioner has ordered a financial audit and independent audit of the Cesar Chavez charter school network for allegations of financial fraud, improper testing, testing abuse and improper student recruitment.

Blackwell aide close to charter. Chief of staff receives income, gifts from school even as it overcharges state millions of dollars

Brenda L. Belton’s signature once dispatched millions of dollars and affected the education of thousands of children in District of Columbia charter schools. This afternoon, Belton is expected to put her signature on another government document — this time, a guilty plea.

The Techworld Public Charter Schools in DC

COLUMBUS - Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell's chief of staff has had an ongoing relationship with the state's largest charter school, receiving income and gifts from the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow while the school at times overcharged the state millions of dollars.

Corruption in charter schools in Florida.

In Florida, last month, Wyche and O.J. Rembert, the land trust's treasurer, were charged with aggravated white-collar crime and conducting unlawful financial transactions. They are accused of transferring some $494,000 in state dollars earmarked for the charter school to pay for their other personal and business ventures.

Philadelphia charter schools offers another classic (and sad)example of corruption. Gardiner, founder and former chief executive officer, and O'Shea, his handpicked successor, secretly paid $34,000 to Rosemary DiLacqua, the school's board president. She approved raises for both men, and signed off on a 20-year consulting contract for Gardiner, giving him more than $100,000 annually for 90 days' work or less.

Despite her checkered history, Hey became principal of the South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures & the Arts, which was founded in 2005 by the powerful Arroyo political clan.

Does this event happen randomly? Data from 2007-08 show that 6.9 percent of charter school students have identified disabilities, compared with 9.7 percent in all schools.

Cheating doesn't happen only at school? Read this strange case and judge by yourself.

Are charter schools public or private? Private when it comes to spending public funds. The Delaware County school, the state's largest charter, and Charter School Management Inc., a private, for-profit management company, have repeatedly denied requests by the newspaper for details about how millions of dollars in public money were spent and how much the company and its owner, Vahan H. Gureghian, were making.

Charter schools and vouchers work just great as long as only a minority of families chose to exercise their choice. If we make all schools charter schools, or make vouchers truly available, it will further split our educational system into two unequal parts. These parts will be even further apart from each other, but this time the segregation by class will be done with parents’ consent.

Two of the state's top education officials defended a 2009 charter school approval process described as a "farce," "fiasco" and "insult" by local residents and officials last night at an oversight hearing at City Hall.

Sharing the (government providen new) wealth with relatives? The state investigation found that since Agora's founding in 2005, its board has been dominated by Brown's relatives and people who either worked at the three traditional charter schools she founded or who served on the boards of those schools.

Charges have been filed against the former head of a Minneapolis charter school, accusing him of embezzling more than $1.3 million from the school's funds.

Chester Community Charter School, the state's largest nonprofit charter, must make public a wide range of information about pay and profits going to its for-profit management company, the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records has ruled. The decision by the new state agency created to hear Right-to-Know Law cases came this month in response to an appeal The Inquirer filed after the Delaware County school with 2,150 students denied a request for the information.

In Ohia, according to an analysis by the Columbus Dispatch of audits conducted under a new law, White Hat makes about $1 million a year for each of the 34 charter schools it operates in Ohio. Altogether, the firm got $109 million in tax dollars, including 97 percent of the schools' state aid last year. How much is profit is somewhat unclear, since charter schools typically refuse to divulge details of their management contracts. A new state law requires that some details be made public through audits but the state's position has been that the information is a private matter, even though the money - about $450 million in total state aid this year - comes from the public.

Various states in this report. The organization Parents Advocating School Accountability collected a long list of charter schools corruption in 2007. If this list of cases is not enough to make a case to defend public education (and taxpayers money) and take a stand against charter schools, I would conclude that this is the end of public education as we know it.

In Florida, For nearly half a decade, Escambia Charter School hired out a group of students to cut roadside grass and weeds during class time for about 32 hours per week.

In Florida, A yearlong investigation by the Orlando Sentinel found that the state's lack of oversight has allowed students to fail academically and charter operators to profit from their relationships with the schools. This series looks at student performance, charter-school spending and what the state is doing - or not doing - to hold the campuses accountable. The privately run high school made about $200,000 by paying the children less than required under a state Department of Transportation contract. Meanwhile, it continued accepting tax money from the state Department of Education to teach the children five hours a day.

Donald L. Jones, a former public school teacher, opened the state's first charter school in 1996. He touted the Irving campus, called Renaissance, as a "model school." Four years later, Renaissance and an affiliated school, Heritage Academy in Dallas, closed their doors.
They owed the state $4.5 million that has never been recovered, according to Texas Education Agency records.

Texas has 206 charter schools, and 93 of them are in hot water for bilking the state out of millions of dollars by overcounting their enrollment.

Brenda Belton had some gall, by her own admission. As charter school oversight chief for the D.C. Board of Education, she repeatedly stole from the school system, arranging about $649,000 in illegal school payments and sweetheart contracts to herself and her friends.

Washington School officials who’ve run afoul of the law this year: Charles Emor, founder of the publicly funded SunRise Academy: Sentenced to one year and one day in prison for his role in a stolen-computer ring. Brenda Belton, former executive director of the Board of Education’s charter schools: Sentenced to 35 months in prison for helping herself to hundreds of thousands of public dollars. Eugene P. Smith, former director of schools’ internal audit: Pleaded guilty to stealing tens of thousands of dollars from a defunct charter school.

The pastor at the center of a Houston charter school scandal was arrested last Thursday along with three family members on charges of misappropriating $3 million in state and federal education funds, reports the Houston Chronicle.

In Ohio, State Sen. Teresa Fedor (D., Toledo), who for years has claimed the state's charter school system is rife with corruption, said the public money to the companies is being wasted. "The mismanagement and abuse of the sponsorship and then the schools would have never been tolerated under a traditional school structure," Ms. Fedor, a former public school teacher, said.

Clarence Edward Dixon, principal of Options Public Charter School on Capitol Hill, was rejected by D.C. public schools as an applicant for a school administrator position in 2000 because of an extensive criminal record, a school official said.