From insider deals to real estate flips, the problems with charter schools run by for-profit corporations can’t be ignored. And growth in this sector is accelerating as operators use lax regulations and complicated corporate schemes to harvest public dollars from publicly-funded charter schools.
Those are the findings of a new report, Chartered for Profit II: Pandemic Profiteering, from the Network for Public Education (NPE), the organization I lead. We determined that for-profit corporations operate nearly 17% of all charter schools. And because many are online schools with high enrollments, one in five charter school students attended a for-profit run charter during the 2021-2022 school year.
In some states, the percentage of students in for-profit-run schools is staggering. More than 50% of all Florida charter school students are in schools run by for-profit companies; in Ohio, the percentage tops 60%. In Michigan, a startling 72% of all of the state’s charter school students attend a school run by one of 45 corporations.
