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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.
Scott Elliott is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He writes about education, city and suburban issues, politics, business, workforce and consumer issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > July > 19 > Entry
Scott Elliott: DuBois story shows how charters can go wrong
The first time I met Wilson Willard, he was whisked into the room at a Thomas B. Fordham Foundation event, surrounded by Fordham folks who were giddy for people to meet him.
Willard was the founder of an extraordinary Cincinnati charter school called the W.E.B. DuBois Academy which, in 2004, Fordham had just taken over as sponsor.
The school had outstanding test scores and state report card ratings, despite being located in the inner city and serving mostly very low-income students.
People who visited DuBois came away raving about Willard, his teaching staff and the quality of instruction.
Fordham was thrilled to have the school in its stable and used Willard and DuBois as examples of all that was good about the charter school movement.
Then, suddenly, it all went to pieces.
Willard, it turned out, had so botched the school’s financial record-keeping that the state couldn’t even audit its books. But things got worse. Fordham began to hear horror stories — that Willard could be explosive and inappropriate, that he sometimes used students to do work around his house during school hours.
Then the big bombshell: Willard was charged with theft of school funds. In 2008, he pleaded guilty, was sentenced to four years in prison and was ordered to pay $179,000 in restitution to the state, and the now shaky school’s state rating had fallen to “academic emergency.”
The DuBois Academy story is the most stunning and fascinating chapter in a new book written by Fordham’s Chester E. Finn Jr., Terry Ryan and Michael Lafferty. How could Fordham, the nation’s foremost advocate for charter schools and a consistently strong voice for tough school accountability, be taken in by a fraud like Willard?
In “Ohio’s Education Reform Challenges: Lessons from the Frontlines,” the authors say they were fooled much the same way Bernie Madoff’s investment clients were fleeced in his Ponzi scheme. Like Madoff, Willard was dynamic and had an unimpeachable reputation. Unlike Madoff, Willard was also the real deal, at least when it came to academic results.
In the book, the authors describe how Willard’s fans recounted repeated examples of his heroism. The guy worked incredible hours at the school and was personally involved in nearly every aspect of the operation, they said. He hired great teachers and carried the school’s successful curriculum mostly in his head. What he did — build a high-performing school full of very poor kids from scratch — is a rare feat.
Among the last to believe the charges against Willard was the governing board that employed him. The board was made up of Willard’s friends and supporters, who had been with him from the school’s beginning. Despite Fordham’s increasingly harder nudges, the board resisted taking action against him for far too long, which helped seal the school’s fate.
Ohio has gotten much better at screening new charter school applicants. In the early days of the charter movement, the Akron Beacon Journal reported how the Ohio Board of Education approved stacks of charter applications, sometimes without even reading them. That put state money in the hands of too many people with agendas that had more to do with their own personal gain than with educating kids.
Those early charters were often overseen by boards hand-picked by the school operators. Sponsors were, by design, kept at arm’s length to allow charters freedom to innovate. In too many cases, such schools still exist today.
Deregulating schools in this way was supposed to unleash creativity and encourage reforms. But it also gave cover to the ill-intentioned.
Oddly, Willard was on both sides of that fence. His creativity and academic success made it that much harder to spot his sinister side.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Post your comment | Categories: Education, Ohio government, Ohio politics, Scott Elliott
Comments
By Brian
July 21, 2010 7:39 AM | Link to this
Only the pinhead, union pandering likes of the DNN can exploit an extremely rare and unfortunate debacle of a charter school and use such a headline to bash charter schools. Why don’t you take a look at the number of sex crimes involving children by the typical city public schools, IT’S AN EPIDEMIC!!! For your information DNN most charter schools pay the same wages as rank and file Teacher’s Union Jobs. The big difference is they can get rid of an ineffective or abusive, bad teacher, and do so quickly. Its a blood shame you support substandard teachers through a substandard union. Then you use the “power of the pen” as your “bully pulpit.” Charter schools have been a blessing to millions of children and their families to escape the status quo of failure your so staunchly support.
By fortressdayton
July 21, 2010 10:39 AM | Link to this
Oh, and now I am supposed to dis-enroll my kid from charter school and rush to safety and sanity of DPS?? Such fear-mongering and blatant partisanship. Just replace DuBois with DPS and see how that sounds. Is it a resounding vote of confidence for DPS? I think not.
By Max
July 22, 2010 10:18 AM | Link to this
Scott, in last week’s focus you were favoring TFA - placing untrained college graduates in the classrooms for 2 years to pad their resumes of urban ‘experience’ - and now, you are using inductive reasoning and implying the charters have a dark side because of a few bad apples. Perhaps backing up a bit and looking at all the grand fixes that have been tried, and, cumulatively failed -ALL figures show, nationally, test scores are dropping -have one common philosophical component; DE-REGULATION. Education’s mandate is not ‘business’ oriented. It based upon LAW. To speak of ‘de-regulating’ education is the same as ‘de-regulating’ marriage and whatever that may imply. Scott, you are nibbling at the edges of the larger picture using points of views which have nothing to do with public education’s mission and goals. It’s NOT a business; it’s an investment with long term returns.