The Ben Chavis / American Indian Public Charter School saga continues

Ben Chavis’s crooked charter school reign is finally being exposed. A preliminary investigation into his management has found evidence of fraud and multiple violations of state laws. As a result, the Oakland Unified Office of Charter Schools is recommending a denial for the renewal of one of Chavis’s three Oakland American Indian Model charter schools. The school board is scheduled to vote tomorrow night (April 4, 2012).

Chavis has been held up as a hero by Washington Post columnist George Will and rabid charter school advocate Whitney Tilson. He's been promoted by the Los Angeles Times, John Stossel on 20/20, the Cato Institute and many others. Chavis was on a Education Nation panel called "About our Children" with Michelle Rhee and Ben Austin. Watch him raging on MSNBC here.

Then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger called Chavis’s work an “education miracle.” The National Review described Chavis as “undeniably one of the country’s finest educators.” Chavis’s school was one of six "no excuses"-type schools featured in a book written by David Whitman and promoted by Chester Finn, “Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism.” Chavis even wrote his own book, “Crazy Like a Fox: One Principal's Triumph in the Inner City.

Chavis was brought to Oakland in 2001 to take over American Indian Public Charter School which was created in 1996 with the mission of improving the dismal performance of Native Americans in the Oakland schools. He imposed a combination of strict discipline, long school hours, compliance requirements, cherry-picked students – along with driving out the unwanted ones – to produce exceptionally high state test scores. Low income or not, only the most compliant students, and their highly compliant parents, are willing to stick around at this school.

Along the way, the student population at the school changed drastically – a feat of demographic engineering (see graph below). And as far as Chavis improving the performance of Oakland's Native American students goes, that never happened. In 2000-01, the year before Chavis took control, the school was 64.7% American Indian. By 2010-11, only six of 493 students (1.2%) claimed American Indian as their primary ancestry.

There are three American Indian Model Schools in Oakland:

1. American Indian Public Charter School, the original school established in 1996 (AIPCS, Code 6113807)

2. American Indian Public High School, opened in 2006 (AIPHS, Code 0111856)

3. American Indian Public Charter School II, opened in 2007 (AIPCS II, Code 0114363)

All three schools have a majority of Asian student enrollment, ranging from 55% at the original school, to 62% at the high school, to 87% at AIPCS II. Oakland Unified is 13% Asian.

Other things to know:

• At AIPHS, super high state test scores have produced good, but not comparably exceptional, SAT scores.
• Chavis's application for a fourth charter school was denied in October 2008 for problems relating to enrollment processes, recruitment, special education, and arts education.
• In 2010, Jorge Lopez, executive director of the Oakland Charter Academy schools (two other OUSD charter schools) and a close associate of Ben Chavis, was tapped by then-Governor Schwarzenegger to sit on the California State Board of Education. Before confirmation, Lopez suddenly resigned when questioning started about his “interlocking series of business arrangements involving his schools” and Chavis.
• In an attempt to hold Ben Chavis accountable for his practices, a teacher concerned about conflict of interest filmed the goings-on at a AIPCS board meeting and posted it on YouTube. She wrote:

After a successful 2.5 year stint at AIPCS, I felt like I needed to quit. When Dr. Chavis was elected to an executive position in the summer of '11, several other strong staff members and teachers quit or were fired. If no one is around to question him, he can remain in control of the finances... Thanks for watching; there is no other outlet for accountability...

• John Glover, who worked as a teacher, executive director, and chief operating officer at AIPCS for six years, broke away in 2011 to start his own charter management organization in order to open a charter school in San Jose, CA (Alpha Public Schools).  
• An attempt by the American Indian Model group to start a charter school in Tucson failed in January 2012. The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools wrote, “...for the reason that the applicant is not sufficiently qualified to operate a charter school due to the financial and operational performance of the applicant in operating other charter schools [i.e. those in Oakland]." Listen to the fascinating interview with AIM applicants during this ASBCS meeting, see Item N-1.

Stay tuned.

Updated 4/5/2012: The OUSD school board voted to renew the schools charter. Per Katy Murphy: "Alice Spearman, Noel Gallo, Chris Dobbins and Jumoke Hinton-Hodge approved Spearman's motion to keep the school open on the condition that it tighten its financial controls and provide training to its governing board (returning to the OUSD board in two years to prove that it had done so); David Kakishiba, Jody London and Gary Yee voted against it."

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Be sure to note the dip in Asian enrollment in 2006-07 with a simultaneous spike in the enrollment of students categorized as "Multiple or No Response." This was around the time that complaints were being made about Chavis's demographic engineering, and perhaps suggests that the school was making an attempt to disguise its true enrollment figures.