Valerie Strauss writes here about the abject apology by Tom Torkelsen of the IDEA corporate charter chain for his company’s lavish spending.
Tom Torkelson, chief executive of IDEA Public Schools, issued a letter (see in full below) to the IDEA community saying he has sometimes “pushed us to a place that’s hard to defend” in his effort to be “entrepreneurial and different from traditional education systems.”
“I’m sorry I put IDEA and our friends in that position,” he said.
Charter schools are publicly funded but privately operated. Supporters say they offer valuable alternatives to families that do not like their neighborhood schools. Critics say they drain resources from traditional public school districts that educate the vast majority of students and that they are part of a movement to privatize public education.
IDEA was started in Texas by two alumni from Teach for America and has nearly 100 campuses in that state and Louisiana serving nearly 53,000 students. According to its audit for 2018 and 2019, IDEA has more than $1.13 billion in assets. It has received more than $200 million from the federal Charter Schools Program over the past decade and has plans to expand rapidly in the next few years.
The chain markets itself as having a 100 percent college acceptance rate. It doesn’t mention that acceptance to a four-year college is a requirement for graduation, which would presumably be a disincentive to enroll for students who do not want to attend college.
Torkelson recently backed off a plan to lease a private jet for $2 million a year — for six years — after the Houston Chronicle and a state teachers union raised questions about it. Torkelson had said the lease would allow IDEA executives to fly to states where the network is expanding.
After Torkelsen’s apology, IDEA bought an ad during the SuperBowl, which cost millions. Big spenders gotta spend bigly!
This past year, Betsy DeVos gave IDEA over $100 million from the federal Charter Schools Program (aka, her private slush fund).
How does a chain of schools amass over $1 billion in assets?
If anyone can answer that question, please post it here as a comment.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Abject apology? Sorry, that doesn’t cut it for what amounts to fraud, financial chicanery and theft of funds. The parents should be filing a class action law suit against the executives of this company.
“fraud, financial chicanery and theft of funds”
Standard Wall Street business practice and what they teach at the top business schools these days:
“If you can get away with it, it’s yours. If you can’t, don’t fret. No one will ever prosecute you. Just try another angle”
How? With a lot of help from people in high places and parents who send their children to these schools, but do not question the school or policies that have created it it. For Torkelson, franchising education is not different from any other corporate venture with perks for the CEO.
“Torkelson had said the lease would allow IDEA executives to fly to states where the network is expanding.”
That’s very grass roots and local, I must say. The executives then lobby our legislatures – if they’re in Ohio they shouldn’t bother- Ohio lawmakers will give them anything they demand, at any time. There is no ed reform scheme or plan this state won’t purchase sight unseen, at any price.
Huge charter chains have a competitive advantage over public school systems. Ed reformers who supposedly love market theory never mention this, but it’s obviously true.
I’m also wondering why the teachers aren’t paid more, given the lavish executive compensation. They really are using the modern corporate model! All the salary goes to the top. They love teachers- they just don’t love them enough to give them a raise.
Tangential- the Walton-funded Massachusetts Parents Union (headed by Keri Rodriguez, who was mentored by SEIU’ s Andy Stern- now in the charter school machine) has a “contact us” page at its site. The photo is of two kids with screens on their laps. Their heads have been chopped out of the frame. Pictures are worth a thousand words.
Is there a single person from a public school in the “Parents Union”?
Another ed reform venture that inexplicably excludes all public school students and families from their work on “public education”
It’s not just that public school students don’t exist in this movement- their parents don’t exist either.
It’s about concentration of wealth. The lower 4 quintiles have very little.
The lowest has a negative net worth of $6000. The next quintile up shares crumbs. Insurers have schemed to force that group, the working poor, off of Obamacare and into Medicaid which Trump plans to starve of funds.
Preceding comment belongs after Human Beings at 9:59
“Tom has been widely recognized in a variety of publications, including being featured in 2009 by Time magazine as Wendy Kopp’s pick for the 100 most influential global citizens. Tom is the recipient of the prestigious Peter Jennings Award for Civic Leadership (2009), University of Michigan Ross Business School’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year (2010), the Freddy Fender Humanitarian Award (2008), and served as Chairman of the 2007 National Charter Schools Conference. In 2018, Tom was inducted into the National Charter School Hall of Fame. Tom is often called upon to provide expert testimony to state and local officials on issues of education policy and school choice.”
“Expert testimony”. Let me guess- his expert testimony consists of promoting his charter chain.
Wouldn’t it be great if legislators heard from public schools occasionally? It doesn’t seem fair to public school students that all education policy is directed by people who don’t support public schools or the students who attend them.
If ed reformers are advocating for charter schools, and they are, it’s all they do, shouldn’t there be someone advocating for public schools?
i think the human race has receded to lower levels of humane behavior due to many reasons but probably because of human over population and the survival of the fittest. Today human beings have become more animal like in protecting them over the good of the overall society for which we all share.
As another spiritual type, I agree it’s about over-population– or at least about the human response of anxiety and tribal aggression that is whipped up by power-hungry leaders raising this threat. But I’ve always thought the “go forth & multiply” thing was God’s plan for humans to increase to the point where they had to work together to survive. “Survival of the fittest” is just a theory. Read “Overstory” by Richard Powers to see how trees have worked together for millennia to overcome environmental threats, through physical communication spurring chemical deterrents to predators– even through colonizing and migrating to more beneficial climates. Casts a different light on Darwinism.
How does a chain of schools amass over $1 billion in assets?”
Don’t rightly know (I can guess) but the mere fact that they were able to tells you all you need to know about the motivation behind
“The Charter Rush”
The charter is a gold mine
A hedge-fund schemer’s trick
Like golden rush of forty-nine
It’s offer: “Get rich quick!”
But Gold of fools is our return
For buying into plot
And picks and spades and “lessons learned”
Are all we ever got
One thing is clear: the $1 billion in assets was transferred from the public treasury to IDEA’s bank account. Privatization at work.
IDEA’s Tom Torkelson has occasionally posted comments here.
Maybe he will write and explain.
The other important thing to note about IDEA is it’s claim that 100% of its students are accepted into four-year colleges.
What they don’t say out front is that you cannot graduate unless you have been accepted into a four-year college.
Fortunately for their students, there are colleges that accept every applicant.
Presto!
“1 billion in assets was transferred from the public treasury to IDEA’s bank account. But all we the public got was one lousy T shirt” (T for Torkelson, of course)
A Grand IDEA
A grand IDEA
Whose time has come
And let’s be clear
The public’s dumb
So lease that plane
And buy that ad
‘Twill never rain
On charter fad
One-percent class
Astroturf “grass”:
Dollar-clouts pass
Legal morass–
Public harrass!
Assets amass.
Craven and crass
Pain in the ass!
“After Torkelsen’s apology, IDEA bought an ad during the SuperBowl,”
This is why privatization of services always works so much better than public institutions. What would society be like if we did not have to support the advertisers of the world? My school certainly can afford an add during the most expensive time on TV. All that money going to public schools is going into the banks of the teachers, I suppose.
You could put up a Superbowl ad that insulted 99% of the people watching and as long as people thought it was entertaining, they would love it.
Which is very fitting, because the Superbowl itself is the pinnacle of stupidity.
A bunch of grown men beating the living daylights out of one another over a little ball.
A bunch of grown men who will have brain damage and chronic pain in every joint of their bodies for the rest of their lives when they retire after a few short years of beating the living daylights out of one another over a little ball.
IDEA gets $495 million of Texas taxpayer funding per year. In comparison to the statewide average, IDEA spends $1,000 less per student on instruction and $470 less per student for C/Tech and Extracurricular. At 50,000 students, that is an additional $75 million banked each year. Throw in the Fed Funds and Gates, Walton, Arnold donations of over $400 million. Throw in the $1 billion of “non-voter” approved debt that IDEA has saddled the State with and it will be $2 billion pretty quick.
Fun Fact: $1 billion in assets and they employ 1,064 non-certified teachers (55.8% of their teaching staff).
Fun Fact: $ 1 billion in assets and the “College for All” charter has produced 298 students that have gone on to receive a 4-year college degree over the 8 year period of 2007-2014.
Thanks for all of this detail. It helps to explain how the students and parents and teachers are being used to make those huge profits. Betsy, Trump and others are sure to smile. Torkelsen ought to be ashamed, but the charter franchise operators have no shame.
The tax-exempt churches who have action networks designed for political activity to achieve privatization have no shame. But then, we’re talking about religious leaders guilty of cover-ups of widespread child sex abuse.
To quote Alexandria Ocasio Cortes, one doesn’t make a billion dollars, one takes a billion dollars.