- Charter schools are taxpayer-funded but privately run schools
- They have gained popularity and celebrity backing
- Some charter schools have had success in student outcomes, but critics argue they overstate their successes
- Charter schools have a varying quality across states and schools
- Some charter schools have closed down abruptly, raising concerns about screening and approval processes
- Instances of fraud and mismanagement have been found in some charter schools
- Pennsylvania and Ohio have been criticized for having weak charter school laws

- The piece criticizes the flaws and lack of oversight in Ohio's charter school system.
- It highlights cases of mismanagement and misspending of public money in charter schools.
- The piece also discusses the issue of for-profit educational management companies running charter schools.
- It points out the problem of conflicts of interest in the oversight of charter schools.
- The piece mentions the problems with online charter schools, including lack of attendance monitoring and poor academic performance.
- The need for better accountability and regulation in charter schools is emphasized.

Charter schools are privately run, publicly funded, and irregularly regulated. John Oliver explores why they aren’t at all like pizzerias.

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If Pink Floyd had gone to 1, they'd have known it's, -"We don't need any education." -$1,000,000.

Now, it is, it's currently back-to-school season, and for millions, the school they'll be attending will be a charter school.

The things the politicians love to praise.

I called for a doubling of our investment in charter schools.

Charter schools are so successful that almost every politician can find something good to say about them.

Yes, charter schools unite both sides of the aisle more quickly than when a wedding DJ throws on hey-ya.

We can never let her know what this song is about.

Charters are basically public schools that are taxpayer-funded, but privately run.

Now, the first ones emerged 25 years ago as places to experiment with new educational approaches, and since then, they've exploded.

There are now over 6,700 charter schools educating almost 3000000 students.

And some have celebrity backers, like Puff Daddy, Andre Agassi, and even Pitbull, who helped launch Miami's Slam Academy.

He was a keynote speaker at a charter school conference in 2013, and his speech has not aged well for reasons that will become painfully clear.

They told me that, Bill Cosby has spoken here before, which...

But to be fair, it was not commonly known at the time that Jell-O was responsible for dozens of cases of sexual assault.

And look, when Pitbull has a charter school, it seems like it might be worth taking a look at them.

And first, let me acknowledge, this is a controversial area.

Charter proponents will point to positive news stories like this 1 about the KIPP Charter Schools Network.

Most KIPP students are chosen by lottery, regardless of prior academic record.

Almost all meet federal poverty guidelines.

I think 1 thing that I learned at KIPP really well is that a lot of your effort doesn't reap any, success until way later in the future.

Now, honestly, any philosophy that can get those kind of results might be worth considering.

In the same way that if we found out they boosted our immunity, we'd seriously consider eating koalas.

But critics, critics, argue charters overstate their successes, siphon off talented students, and divert precious resources within a school district.

Now for this piece, and I know this is going to make some people on both sides very angry, we're gonna set aside whether or not charter schools are a good idea in principle, because whether they are or not, in 42 states and D.C., we're doing them.

So instead, we're gonna look at how they operate in practice.

1 group found on average charters had a slight edge over traditional public schools in reading and did about the same in math, but acknowledged charter quality is uneven across the states and across schools, and that is putting it mildly.

Because around the country, there have been charter schools so flawed, they don't make it through the school year.

This charter school suddenly closed its doors in the middle of the day.

An Orange County charter school suddenly closed its doors without notice.

The local charter school is suddenly and unexpectedly closing its doors.

On our dining room table, my son left these 2 notes to us.

1 says, Dear Mom, is the school going out of business?

That kid spelled business, biz-nose, which I'd argue is a much better way to spell it.

Now, that school was actually shut down just 6 weeks into the school year, so to be honest, they probably should have been much better at Bizno's.

And charters in some states can have an alarming failure rate.

2 years ago, a Florida paper found that since 2008, 119 charter schools had closed there, 14 of which had never even finished their first school year.

So, 14 schools in Florida were outlasted by NBC's Mysteries of Laura.

A show which once ended an episode like this.

♪ ♪ Cause that's what I make of it ♪

That's a threesome joke about her fucking children!

It was in the first season, and they gave her another 1!

-...but the point is, when schools close that fast, it's shocking because you would assume someone would rigorously screen a school before it was allowed to open, making sure it was financially and academically sound.

Take Florida's Ivy Academies, which shut down after just 7 weeks due to a lack of, among other things, a school.

The schools were repeatedly kicked out of their buildings, shuttled students among multiple sites including the signature Grand Reception Hall in Davie, 2 local churches in Fort Lauderdale and Holiday Park.

They also bus students on daily field trips because they didn't have enough classrooms.

Surely by day 10, you've run out of ideas and are taking kids to Marshall's to return a belt.

I'll probably get store credit, so put on your adventure hats, we're about to go on a magical $12 scavenger hunt.

Well, Florida's charter process begins with a lengthy application, and Ivy Academy's was 400 pages long.

And their founder, Trayvon Mitchell, included passages like this 1, beginning, "'Instruction is scaffolded to provide targeted support with the goal of increasing independence." It goes on, and it sounds great, but weirdly, we found this application by a school called Franklin Academy in Fort Lauderdale, which predates that by 2 years, and which features this passage, which begins, "'Instruction will scaffold,' and then continues in almost exactly the same way.

It's basically identical, but for a few small differences.

I mean, you know, you know 1 of them came first, and then Mary-Kate plagiarized her face.

-...plagiarized her face." -..."plagiarized her face." Now, that behavior might not be illegal, but it's certainly unethical.

Or, if I may quote from the Ivy Academy handbook, you will not plagiarize works that you find on the Internet.

Plagiarism is taking the ideas or writings of others and presenting them as if they were yours.

So the application for Mitchell's school would also have been grounds for him getting thrown out of that school.

And incidentally, that's not the only thing he may have stolen.

He has since been accused of spending funds for students on himself and is awaiting trial for grand theft.

And the problem with the approval process being too easy is, there is a lot at stake in charter schools.

On average, that's about $7,000 for every enrollment, and that adds up.

Take Philadelphia's Harambee Charter School.

I know, I know, they named it a long time ago.

And it's spelled differently, you f**king monsters.

Now, That school, that school received more than $5 million in taxpayer money the same year that this story emerged.

By day, the Harambee Institute Charter School looks like any other, educating some 450 students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

fighter, I'm a fighter ♪ -♪ I'm a fighter, I'm a

fighter ♪ ...the cafeteria turns into Club DeMonte, a bar that authorities say is unlicensed and illegal.

A nightclub in an elementary school is a recipe for disaster.

Because those are the 2 most vomit-prone populations in the world.

They must have had to Febreze the shit out of that place.

Now, you'll be glad to hear that that school's under new leadership now, although that might be because its CEO pled guilty to fraud for embezzling nearly $80,000 from the Harambee Institute.

And look, you can say that's an isolated incident, but it isn't.

In Philadelphia alone, at least 10 executives or top administrators have pled guilty in the last decade to charges like fraud, misusing funds, and obstruction of justice.

Which may be why Philly Magazine advises parents, don't forget to Google any schools you're looking at to make sure they weren't once unexpectedly shut down or run by a CEO who pleaded guilty to theft.

All of which speaks to a general atmosphere perhaps best articulated by the state auditor.

I've said it before, and I will say it again.

Pennsylvania has the worst charter school law in the United States.

Because it is not like having the worst something is new for Pennsylvania.

Remember, this is a state that has the worst football fans, the worst bell, and the worst regional delicacy.

If I wanted Cheez Whiz on my steak sandwich, I'd eat at Kiddie Cafeteria, the restaurant run by six-year-olds.

And I'm not even sure Pennsylvania deserves to be called the worst, because Ohio's charter law was for decades so lax, even charter advocates have called it the Wild West.

The state has around 360 charters, and their governor, John Kasich, speaks often about how much he loves choice and competition in schools.

We will improve the public schools if there's a sense of competition.

It's just like a pizza shop in the town, if there's only 1 and there's not much pepperoni on it, you can call till you're blue in the face.

But the best way to get pepperoni, more pepperoni on that pizza, is to open up a second pizza shop.

And that's what's gonna improve our public schools.

First, no 1 has ever called it a pizza shop.

Second, it's a little hard to hear the man who just defunded Planned Parenthood talk about the importance of choice.

There is such a thing as paying for extra pepperoni like a normal person.

And finally, the notion that the more pizza shops there are, the better pizza becomes is effectively undercut by the 2 words, Papa John's.

But, but Ohio's charters have had huge problems with lack of oversight.

A review of 1 year's state audits found charters misspent public money nearly 4 times more often than any other form of taxpayer-funded agency.

Like that of Lisa Hamm, a school superintendent who was accused of spending money for her school on spas, jewelry, luggage, plays, veterinary care, and trips to Europe and to see Oprah.

She took a plea deal without admitting guilt, but not before delivering this fantastic explanation.

Proverbs says, without vision, people perish.

And it's very important for people to have a vision for their own lives.

And in order to do that, they need to experience what's possible in life.

And in order to transfer that to the children, they have to experience it themselves.

She's just spouting a bunch of vague bullshit about inspiration, crossing her fingers, and hoping people will buy it.

When you put it like that, I feel like she has learned a lot from Oprah.

Oh, and incidentally, for the record, when she quoted Proverbs saying, where there is no vision, the people perish, she's leaving out the very next line, which is, but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." And that's a fucking important caveat.

There are ways to profit off of charter schools perfectly legally in Ohio, and there have been for years.

Look at this episode of Frontline from 2000.

By law, charter schools must be non-profit.

But the schools can hire an educational management company, or EMO, to run the school.

Brennan calls his EMO White Hat Management.

Education is first, last, and always a business.

Yes, education is first, last, and always a business.

Take the L off the word learning, and what do you got?

Yeah, sure, that's not a word, but it could be in 1 of our English classes.

Now, that man's company, White Hat Management, worked on the contracts where each charter would pay 95 percent or more of its government funding to White Hat, which as a private company, isn't obligated to provide the same level of transparency as say, a school district.

So taxpayers could have little idea how that money was being spent.

And who can say if that's a good system or not?

All I know is White Hat ran 32 of the lowest performing schools in the state.

And if you do essentially the same terrible thing more than 30 times in a row, you're not a management company, you're basically Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Volumes 2 and 3.

And at this point, you may be thinking charters were completely unmonitored, but that is where you would actually be wrong.

Because they are approved and overseen by what are called authorizers.

And while some states sharply limit who can be an authorizer, Ohio allowed many different groups, including non-profits, to do it.

Meaning, well, let's say I wanted to open the John Oliver Academy for Nervous Boys.

And let's say I had a pre-existing non-profit called Johnny's Kids.

That could potentially have overseen my school.

Take the Richard Allen chain of schools in Ohio, whose president was a woman called Jeanette Harris.

They were overseen by Kids Count, a non-profit founded by Jeanette Harris, which oversaw the schools as they spent a million tax dollars on management and consulting firms founded by, wait for it, Jeanette f-ing Harris.

Now, Harris denies a conflict of interest because she claims she wasn't directly involved in decision-making.

And maybe, maybe the schools just chose Kids Count because it had a proven track record of great oversight.

So let's just check in on 1 of the other schools they oversaw.

A local charter school padded its attendance records, resulting in more than a million dollars in extra money.

State auditors interviewed students and staff.

Their findings show that on any given day, there would only be about 30 students in the building, a fraction of the reported 459 enrolled there.

Oh, it gets worse, because when an auditor looked into it, they found Kids Count had done the legal minimum oversights required, which I would argue suggests a problem with the legal minimum.

Because 30 kids showed up, and the school claims they had 450, which doesn't speak well of an oversight group calling itself Kids Count.

Now, Ohio has passed a new law to try and clean up some of the problems you've seen, but serious damage has already been done.

And incredibly, there is 1 more way that charter schools around the country have been allowed to run wild.

Because we haven't even mentioned online charters yet.

They serve 180,000 students, and Even if they just get the average $7,000 per student, that's over a billion dollars in taxpayer money going to cyber charters annually.

And some have an attendance system you would not f**king believe.

Sometimes kids aren't counted absent until they have failed to log on for 5 days in a row.

And some are never required to attend class.

But the state still requires the schools to report attendance.

So most just report 100 percent, even though that's not what's really going on.

You're basically giving kids a box containing video games, pornography, and long division, and claiming 100% of them chose the right 1.

And look, some kids might need online education, But it has got to be monitored better, because 1 major study found, compared to kids in traditional public schools, students in online charters lost the equivalent of 72 days of learning and reading, and 180 days in math, during the course of a 180-day school year.

And 180 minus 180 is, as those kids might put it, 3.

--LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE --Now, charter advocates will tell you that even they are concerned about online schools.

And they'll argue some states have much better oversight than the ones that we've seen, and that is true.

Though for the record, some may even be worse.

1 charter researcher told Ohio, be very glad that you have Nevada, so you are not the worst.

Which I believe is the motto on Nevada state license plates.

But the point is, we don't even have time to get into Nevada.

And advocates will argue all these closings show accountability in action.

Just like in business, bad schools close.

But there's a fucking problem there, as 1 former charter school employee explains.

This isn't just a regular business, this isn't a restaurant that you just open up, you serve your food, people don't like it, you close it and you move on.

This is education, this is students are getting left in the middle of the year without a school to go to.

So, I just think that there needs to be some filter as to who's opening up these charter schools.

The problem with letting the free market decide when it comes to kids is that kids change faster than the market.

And by the time it's obvious a school is failing, futures may have been ruined.

So if we are going to treat charter schools like pizza shops, we should monitor them at least as well as we do pizzerias.

It's like the old saying, give a kid a shitty pizza, you f-ck up their day.

Treat a kid like a shitty pizza, you could f*** up their entire life.


Speaker 0: We'll be right back. -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪

Speaker 1: School. If Pink Floyd had gone to 1, they'd have known it's, -"We don't need any education." -$1,000,000. You undermined your point. Now, it is, it's currently back-to-school season, and for millions, the school they'll be attending will be a charter school. The things the politicians love to praise.

Speaker 2: I called for a doubling of our investment in charter schools.

Speaker 3: I'm a big believer in charter schools.

Speaker 4: I believe in public charter schools.

Speaker 3: Charter schools work and they work

Speaker 0: very well.

Speaker 3: Charter schools are so successful that almost every politician can find something good to say about them.

Speaker 1: Yes, charter schools unite both sides of the aisle more quickly than when a wedding DJ throws on hey-ya. Oh, look at Nana dancing. We can never let her know what this song is about.

Speaker 0: -♪

Speaker 1: You're my... -♪ You're my... Charters are basically public schools that are taxpayer-funded, but privately run. Now, the first ones emerged 25 years ago as places to experiment with new educational approaches, and since then, they've exploded. There are now over 6,700 charter schools educating almost 3000000 students.

And some have celebrity backers, like Puff Daddy, Andre Agassi, and even Pitbull, who helped launch Miami's Slam Academy. He was a keynote speaker at a charter school conference in 2013, and his speech has not aged well for reasons that will become painfully clear.

Speaker 0: They told me that, Bill Cosby has spoken here before, which... I think is amazing. Someone that I really relate to. I also love jello, you know? -...Yes.

Speaker 1: Yes. -...Jello! That does look bad now. But to be fair, it was not commonly known at the time that Jell-O was responsible for dozens of cases of sexual assault. Turns out Jell-O is a monster.

I think I'm legally okay to say that. The point is, fuck Jell-O. And... And look, when Pitbull has a charter school, it seems like it might be worth taking a look at them. And first, let me acknowledge, this is a controversial area.

Charter proponents will point to positive news stories like this 1 about the KIPP Charter Schools Network.

Speaker 2: Most KIPP students are chosen by lottery, regardless of prior academic record. Almost all meet federal poverty guidelines. And yet, 82 percent go on to college.

Speaker 5: I think 1 thing that I learned at KIPP really well is that a lot of your effort doesn't reap any, success until way later in the future.

Speaker 1: Now, honestly, any philosophy that can get those kind of results might be worth considering. In the same way that if we found out they boosted our immunity, we'd seriously consider eating koalas. But critics, critics, argue charters overstate their successes, siphon off talented students, and divert precious resources within a school district. Now for this piece, and I know this is going to make some people on both sides very angry, we're gonna set aside whether or not charter schools are a good idea in principle, because whether they are or not, in 42 states and D.C., we're doing them. So instead, we're gonna look at how they operate in practice.

1 group found on average charters had a slight edge over traditional public schools in reading and did about the same in math, but acknowledged charter quality is uneven across the states and across schools, and that is putting it mildly. Because around the country, there have been charter schools so flawed, they don't make it through the school year.

Speaker 3: This charter school suddenly closed its doors in the middle of the day.

Speaker 6: An Orange County charter school suddenly closed its doors without notice. The local charter school is suddenly and unexpectedly closing its doors. On our dining room table, my son left these 2 notes to us. 1 says, Dear Mom, is the school going out of business?

Speaker 1: Yes. Yes. You are right. That kid spelled business, biz-nose, which I'd argue is a much better way to spell it. Now, that school was actually shut down just 6 weeks into the school year, so to be honest, they probably should have been much better at Bizno's.

And charters in some states can have an alarming failure rate. 2 years ago, a Florida paper found that since 2008, 119 charter schools had closed there, 14 of which had never even finished their first school year. So, 14 schools in Florida were outlasted by NBC's Mysteries of Laura. A show which once ended an episode like this.

Speaker 0: I have a hot date tonight. With who? Threesome, actually. ♪ ♪ Cause that's what I make of it ♪

Speaker 1: That's a threesome joke about her fucking children! It was in the first season, and they gave her another 1! -...but the point is, when schools close that fast, it's shocking because you would assume someone would rigorously screen a school before it was allowed to open, making sure it was financially and academically sound. But that is not always the case. Take Florida's Ivy Academies, which shut down after just 7 weeks due to a lack of, among other things, a school.

Speaker 7: The schools were repeatedly kicked out of their buildings, shuttled students among multiple sites including the signature Grand Reception Hall in Davie, 2 local churches in Fort Lauderdale and Holiday Park. They also bus students on daily field trips because they didn't have enough classrooms.

Speaker 1: Daily field trips? How's that even possible? Surely by day 10, you've run out of ideas and are taking kids to Marshall's to return a belt. Hey, pretty great, right kids? I'll probably get store credit, so put on your adventure hats, we're about to go on a magical $12 scavenger hunt.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 1: So how did those schools get approved? Well, Florida's charter process begins with a lengthy application, and Ivy Academy's was 400 pages long. And their founder, Trayvon Mitchell, included passages like this 1, beginning, "'Instruction is scaffolded to provide targeted support with the goal of increasing independence." It goes on, and it sounds great, but weirdly, we found this application by a school called Franklin Academy in Fort Lauderdale, which predates that by 2 years, and which features this passage, which begins, "'Instruction will scaffold,' and then continues in almost exactly the same way. It's basically identical, but for a few small differences. Like the Olsen twins.

I mean, you know, you know 1 of them came first, and then Mary-Kate plagiarized her face. -...plagiarized her face." -..."plagiarized her face." Now, that behavior might not be illegal, but it's certainly unethical. Or, if I may quote from the Ivy Academy handbook, you will not plagiarize works that you find on the Internet. Plagiarism is taking the ideas or writings of others and presenting them as if they were yours. So the application for Mitchell's school would also have been grounds for him getting thrown out of that school.

And incidentally, that's not the only thing he may have stolen. He has since been accused of spending funds for students on himself and is awaiting trial for grand theft. And the problem with the approval process being too easy is, there is a lot at stake in charter schools. They get paid on a per-student basis. On average, that's about $7,000 for every enrollment, and that adds up.

Take Philadelphia's Harambee Charter School. I know, I know, they named it a long time ago. And it's spelled differently, you f**king monsters.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪

Speaker 1: -Rest in peace. Now, That school, that school received more than $5 million in taxpayer money the same year that this story emerged.

Speaker 8: By day, the Harambee Institute Charter School looks like any other, educating some 450 students from kindergarten through eighth grade. But by night... -♪ I'm a

Speaker 0: fighter, I'm a fighter ♪ -♪ I'm a fighter, I'm a

Speaker 8: fighter ♪ ...the cafeteria turns into Club DeMonte, a bar that authorities say is unlicensed and illegal.

Speaker 0: Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. I had a couple of shots of Ciroc. I'm drunk on that. Wow!

Speaker 1: A nightclub in an elementary school is a recipe for disaster. Because those are the 2 most vomit-prone populations in the world. They must have had to Febreze the shit out of that place. Now, you'll be glad to hear that that school's under new leadership now, although that might be because its CEO pled guilty to fraud for embezzling nearly $80,000 from the Harambee Institute. Rest in peace.

And... And look, you can say that's an isolated incident, but it isn't. In Philadelphia alone, at least 10 executives or top administrators have pled guilty in the last decade to charges like fraud, misusing funds, and obstruction of justice. Which may be why Philly Magazine advises parents, don't forget to Google any schools you're looking at to make sure they weren't once unexpectedly shut down or run by a CEO who pleaded guilty to theft. All of which speaks to a general atmosphere perhaps best articulated by the state auditor.

Speaker 3: I've said it before, and I will say it again. Pennsylvania has the worst charter school law in the United States.

Speaker 1: That is not good. Because it is not like having the worst something is new for Pennsylvania. Remember, this is a state that has the worst football fans, the worst bell, and the worst regional delicacy. Yes. If I wanted Cheez Whiz on my steak sandwich, I'd eat at Kiddie Cafeteria, the restaurant run by six-year-olds.

And I'm not even sure Pennsylvania deserves to be called the worst, because Ohio's charter law was for decades so lax, even charter advocates have called it the Wild West. The state has around 360 charters, and their governor, John Kasich, speaks often about how much he loves choice and competition in schools.

Speaker 4: We will improve the public schools if there's a sense of competition. It's just like a pizza shop in the town, if there's only 1 and there's not much pepperoni on it, you can call till you're blue in the face. But the best way to get pepperoni, more pepperoni on that pizza, is to open up a second pizza shop. And that's what's gonna improve our public schools.

Speaker 1: Okay. Okay. That doesn't work on any level. First, no 1 has ever called it a pizza shop. Second, it's a little hard to hear the man who just defunded Planned Parenthood talk about the importance of choice.

Third, there's such a thing... There is such a thing as paying for extra pepperoni like a normal person. And finally, the notion that the more pizza shops there are, the better pizza becomes is effectively undercut by the 2 words, Papa John's. But, but Ohio's charters have had huge problems with lack of oversight. A review of 1 year's state audits found charters misspent public money nearly 4 times more often than any other form of taxpayer-funded agency.

And some cases are incredible. Like that of Lisa Hamm, a school superintendent who was accused of spending money for her school on spas, jewelry, luggage, plays, veterinary care, and trips to Europe and to see Oprah. She took a plea deal without admitting guilt, but not before delivering this fantastic explanation.

Speaker 9: Proverbs says, without vision, people perish. And it's very important for people to have a vision for their own lives. And in order to do that, they need to experience what's possible in life. And in order to transfer that to the children, they have to experience it themselves.

Speaker 1: That is amazing. She's just spouting a bunch of vague bullshit about inspiration, crossing her fingers, and hoping people will buy it. And You know what? When you put it like that, I feel like she has learned a lot from Oprah. Money well spent.

Oh, and incidentally, for the record, when she quoted Proverbs saying, where there is no vision, the people perish, she's leaving out the very next line, which is, but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." And that's a fucking important caveat. And what's crazy is... There are ways to profit off of charter schools perfectly legally in Ohio, and there have been for years. Look at this episode of Frontline from 2000.

Speaker 10: By law, charter schools must be non-profit. But the schools can hire an educational management company, or EMO, to run the school. And the EMO can try to make a profit. Brennan calls his EMO White Hat Management.

Speaker 3: Education is first, last, and always a business.

Speaker 11: If it's run like a business,

Speaker 3: it can be done profitably.

Speaker 1: Yes, education is first, last, and always a business. Take the L off the word learning, and what do you got? Earning. Take the E off it, what do you got then? Earning.

Yeah, sure, that's not a word, but it could be in 1 of our English classes. -...earning. -...earning. Now, that man's company, White Hat Management, worked on the contracts where each charter would pay 95 percent or more of its government funding to White Hat, which as a private company, isn't obligated to provide the same level of transparency as say, a school district. So taxpayers could have little idea how that money was being spent.

And who can say if that's a good system or not? All I know is White Hat ran 32 of the lowest performing schools in the state. And if you do essentially the same terrible thing more than 30 times in a row, you're not a management company, you're basically Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Volumes 2 and 3.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪

Speaker 1: And at this point, you may be thinking charters were completely unmonitored, but that is where you would actually be wrong. Because they are approved and overseen by what are called authorizers. And while some states sharply limit who can be an authorizer, Ohio allowed many different groups, including non-profits, to do it. Meaning, well, let's say I wanted to open the John Oliver Academy for Nervous Boys. And let's say I had a pre-existing non-profit called Johnny's Kids.

That could potentially have overseen my school. And that basically happened. Take the Richard Allen chain of schools in Ohio, whose president was a woman called Jeanette Harris. They were overseen by Kids Count, a non-profit founded by Jeanette Harris, which oversaw the schools as they spent a million tax dollars on management and consulting firms founded by, wait for it, Jeanette f-ing Harris. Now, Harris denies a conflict of interest because she claims she wasn't directly involved in decision-making.

And maybe, maybe the schools just chose Kids Count because it had a proven track record of great oversight. So let's just check in on 1 of the other schools they oversaw.

Speaker 0: A local charter school padded its attendance records, resulting in more than a million dollars in extra money. State auditors interviewed students and staff. Their findings show that on any given day, there would only be about 30 students in the building, a fraction of the reported 459 enrolled there.

Speaker 1: Oh, it gets worse, because when an auditor looked into it, they found Kids Count had done the legal minimum oversights required, which I would argue suggests a problem with the legal minimum. Because 30 kids showed up, and the school claims they had 450, which doesn't speak well of an oversight group calling itself Kids Count. --LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE --Now... Now, Ohio has passed a new law to try and clean up some of the problems you've seen, but serious damage has already been done. And incredibly, there is 1 more way that charter schools around the country have been allowed to run wild.

Because we haven't even mentioned online charters yet. They serve 180,000 students, and Even if they just get the average $7,000 per student, that's over a billion dollars in taxpayer money going to cyber charters annually. And some have an attendance system you would not f**king believe.

Speaker 6: Sometimes kids aren't counted absent until they have failed to log on for 5 days in a row. And some are never required to attend class. But the state still requires the schools to report attendance. So most just report 100 percent, even though that's not what's really going on.

Speaker 1: That's just crazy. You're basically giving kids a box containing video games, pornography, and long division, and claiming 100% of them chose the right 1. And look, some kids might need online education, But it has got to be monitored better, because 1 major study found, compared to kids in traditional public schools, students in online charters lost the equivalent of 72 days of learning and reading, and 180 days in math, during the course of a 180-day school year. And 180 minus 180 is, as those kids might put it, 3. --LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE --Now, charter advocates will tell you that even they are concerned about online schools.

And they'll argue some states have much better oversight than the ones that we've seen, and that is true. Though for the record, some may even be worse. 1 charter researcher told Ohio, be very glad that you have Nevada, so you are not the worst. Which I believe is the motto on Nevada state license plates. But the point is, we don't even have time to get into Nevada.

And advocates will argue all these closings show accountability in action. Just like in business, bad schools close. But there's a fucking problem there, as 1 former charter school employee explains.

Speaker 12: This isn't just a regular business, this isn't a restaurant that you just open up, you serve your food, people don't like it, you close it and you move on. This is education, this is students are getting left in the middle of the year without a school to go to. So, I just think that there needs to be some filter as to who's opening up these charter schools.

Speaker 1: Exactly. The problem with letting the free market decide when it comes to kids is that kids change faster than the market. And by the time it's obvious a school is failing, futures may have been ruined. So if we are going to treat charter schools like pizza shops, we should monitor them at least as well as we do pizzerias. It's like the old saying, give a kid a shitty pizza, you f-ck up their day.

Treat a kid like a shitty pizza, you could f*** up their entire life.

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Charter Schools: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)