Texas Already Gives Public Ed Dollars to Private Operators. Here’s How That Worked Out.

At an April committee hearing in a meeting room tucked away in the Capitol s underground extension state Senator Paul Bettencourt a bespectacled Houston Republican touted a proposal of his then called Senate Bill The bill was meant to turn around citizens schools the state had deemed failing by tapping nonprofit charter school operators to take over and implement innovative practices Bettencourt promised The new system would be a model of efficiency New Braunfels Republican Donna Campbell added to a chorus of bipartisan patronage Co-author Jos Men ndez a San Antonio Democrat later stated the Texas Observer that he aimed to tap into charter operators highest expertise At the hearing one inhabitants school advocate warned of the proposal s high cost and lack of accountability and another requested more protections for constituents school employees but their testimonies were largely ignored and SB passed Since then school districts across Texas have struck deals under the statute allowing nonprofit organizations and a limited general universities to collect taxpayer dollars to operate society schools Various cash-strapped school districts were entirely motivated to participate by extra funding made available under the plan while others avoided impending state takeovers by inking their contracts Under a law strengthened in the Texas Teaching Agency TEA can depose an elected school board and take over a district if even one of its schools receives a failing rating F D or Improvement Required for five consecutive years in the state s A-F Accountability system SB created an escape hatch for districts if they turned over their failing schools Jos Men ndez right on the Senate floor in Sam DeGrave So far charter operators which are required to be nonprofits governmental entities or higher teaching institutions have received at least million in state and federal funds passed through the school districts under the initiative SB inaugurated which came to be called Texas Partnerships These operators largely control the budgets and operations of the populace schools they helm Per apprentice Texas ranks among the bottom states for average society guidance spending around in - roughly less than the national average according to evidence from the National Mentoring Association The state s basic allotment the core building block of that per-student spending remained stagnant from to at just The Legislature now looks poised to increase this figure somewhat But Texas Partnerships unlock additional per-student funding from the state Since districts have collectively received and mostly disbursed to charter operators million more for students in these partnership schools than they would typically get for the same number of students TEA records show Seven years into the costly experiment that is Texas Partnerships the Observer has carried out a wide-ranging research into whether these state-backed charter arrangements have in fact benefited Lone Star State kids in struggling schools Overall the Observer uncovered that school districts have so far ended contracts covering campuses a third of Texas Partnership schools with the contracts covering of those schools being terminated early The Observer obtained and examined contracts school evaluations financial reports and tax filings relating to all operators whose contracts have been terminated early or were non-renewed From through these operators collectively ran schools in Austin Beaumont Dallas Ector County Fort Worth Grand Prairie Hearne Lubbock Midland San Antonio Snyder Victoria and Waco school districts These entities received at least million in state and federal funds more than half the total awarded to all operators under the Texas Partnership scheme so far based on district records The stated mission of Texas Partnerships is to help turn around struggling schools But the operators have achieved mixed results Of those campuses are preschools which are not subject to the same state ratings system as K- schools Twelve of those preschools also lack complete academic performance records since they only operated during the COVID- pandemic when the state did not enforce end-of-year academic assessment requirements Of the remaining schools ended their time under private management with failing state overall accountability ratings according to an Observer analysis of TEA ratings and academic performance reports Eleven posted worse ratings in at least one of their two final contract years than those schools did in the year before the private partnerships began And including the two preschools with complete academic records did not meet ratings goals set by school districts in their partnership contracts in at least one of the final two school years of those contracts according to constituents records and interviews with district authorities Chosen operators also had financial issues For example four did not submit annual financial reports to school districts as required by their district contracts for one or more years Three ended at least one of their contract years in the red despite contractual language requiring them respectively to operate within available funding to retain a positive net asset amount or to ensure total expenditures does not exceed total revenues One operator was accused by a district of diverting funds to a campus it operated in another district Particular school district executives described the Observer that they voted to end contracts after seeing lackluster results Thomas Sigee a board member of Beaumont ISD which has already terminated partnerships with three different operators early recounted the Observer that he doesn t understand why the district would partner with private operators when the results are not any better Sigee added Charter schools have not proven to be better than traditional population schools Other experts expressed broader doubts about the state s assets in the partnership charter plan at a time when other population school funding has been flat Paul Colbert a school finance expert and former Democratic state representative described the Observer We re giving populace dollars to institutions over which we don t really have oversight as to how the dollars are going to be spent whether or not it s a necessary amount of money to give them to spend whether or not they re being used wisely and there s no particular recourse on it because there s nobody looking over their shoulder As part of this inquiry the Observer sought comment from all school districts where partnerships ended Eight school districts validated the Observer s findings regarding their partnership schools Five other districts provided limited information or did not respond A Victoria ISD spokesperson advised the Observer the district did not collect information on academic or financial goals for its preschool partnership because the enrollment projections triggered the clause to terminate the partnership A spokesperson for Waco ISD explained the district was unable to confirm the information because Transformation Waco operated the school and a spokesperson from Snyder ISD revealed that current district leaders did not have knowledge of the details of the partnership The spokesperson for Lubbock ISD did not respond A spokesperson for Dallas ISD which signed contracts in July with five operators to run preschool partnerships declared that operators were not paid under SB because in December the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees voted to switch the payment method to utilize district and federal funds Comment from private school operators was also sought and is included where applicable Advertisement Only one of the operators examined for this story continues to run partnership schools in Texas Third Future Schools-Texas TFS-Texas the nonprofit previously run by current state-imposed Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles A TFS-Texas contract with Ector County ISD was not renewed and the nonprofit has announced it plans to end its partnership with Beaumont ISD for three schools there at the end of the school year but it still operates four other schools in Midland Jasper and Austin ISDs In total organizations including private nonprofits and citizens universities still operate more than partnership schools in Texas in contemporary times As legislators this year approved a proposal to send even more funding to private entities through school vouchers inhabitants training advocates say that the issues with Texas Partnerships offer a glimpse of what happens when state dollars are handed to private operators with inadequate strings attached Patty Quinzi legislative counsel for the Texas American Federation of Teachers a union representing teachers and other school staff and a former state Legislative Budget Board analyst was the only person to officially testify against SB at the committee hearing and she worries that the problems with the partnership project will only get worse We re giving away hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars without any real accountability she recounted the Observer then it s no surprise that performance isn t going to improve and that there s going to be financial improprieties After SB took effect in June districts were slow to contract partners for struggling schools Following the undertaking s second year the Texas Tribune stated that only five had inked partnerships Austin Ector County Hearne San Antonio and Waco The start was rocky Seven of the first participating campuses stated lower state accountability scores in the - school year than they did in the - school year based on published ratings But San Antonio school district leaders continued to dive in headfirst The San Antonio ISD SAISD school board gave private operators -year contracts for five campuses in plus more the next year Over time the district granted nine private entities and two society colleges control over campuses more than a third of its schools and the most of of any district Two smaller districts have ceded control of more than half their community schools to private operators or a community university Longview ISD in East Texas has of schools participating and Edgewood ISD a poor district within San Antonio known for a landmark development calling for an equitable state school funding system has of Statewide a third of the total Texas Partnership organizations which include out-of-state charter management organizations college mentoring programs and homegrown nonprofits were nonprofits incorporated shortly before taking over campuses In San Antonio ISD five of the operators running partnership schools were brand new Jake Kobersky a TEA spokesperson narrated the Observer that in the - school year the guidance agency began requiring that Texas Partnership operators must have existed for at least three years have managed multiple campuses for multiple years and demonstrate a track record of managing campuses to academic success or have significantly improved the academic performance of campuses In a written announcement TEA added of all partnerships have experienced selected form of academic advance or maintained acceptable performance By choosing systematically selected partners to operate schools through a rigorous vetting process and quality authorizing practices districts can leverage external expertise and introduce innovative practices and targeted supports which shows improved aspirant performance Sarah Sorensen a San Antonio ISD parent and now a school board trustee became alarmed when she first heard that the board was planning to sign a raft of private partnership agreements She started doing research and she was astonished to see so various new nonprofit groups freshly incorporated in Texas and with no prior experience apply for the complex job of running a citizens school Literally these were created almost overnight she stated the Observer Then-SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez who had pushed for SB urged board members to approve partnerships Martinez now CEO of Chicago Community Schools did not respond to the Observer s request for comment San Antonio Shutterstock Teachers fought back when the district revealed it was contracting Democracy Prep a -year-old New York City-based charter management organization that runs more than a dozen schools in New York and Nevada to operate Stewart Elementary Stewart which had previously received failing ratings from TEA had not long ago met standards and been recognized by TEA as among the top percent of Texas schools for academic rise in when the school was handed to Democracy Prep That same year San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Endorsement Personnel a union representing employees including teachers at Stewart sued San Antonio ISD leaders over the takeover Alejandra Lopez a guide at Stewart who is now the union president recounted the Observer she and others had been hired by the principal to turn around the school and were working incredibly hard to get the school up to standard Employees represented by the San Antonio Alliance alleged in the lawsuit that the district violated SB by contracting with Democracy Prep without consulting with the campus staff But the union lost its occurrence In April the Texas Fourth Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit ruling that SB s consultation requirement applies only to an open-enrollment charter school a category that excludes nearly all Texas Partnerships which are a legally distinct type of charter school Martha Owen the attorney representing the San Antonio Alliance explained the Observer she didn t believe the ruling reflected the intention of the law but rather sloppy drafting in the legislative process It was clear that they intended that particular requirement the consultation requirement to apply to everybody Texas has several older open-enrollment charter schools like KIPP or IDEA which are governed by a subchapter of the state training code that outlines numerous financial and academic requirements Texas Partnerships generally fall under a different subchapter for in-district charter schools which contains limited guardrails regarding hiring or finances and minimizes state oversight instead these partnerships are largely governed by individual contracts between districts and charter operators as verified in a modern TEA assessment In March Democratic state Senator Borris Miles filed a bill that would make in-district charters subject to the same financial requirements as open-enrollment charters but the bill has not received a hearing Open-enrollment charters typically own or rent their own school buildings and are open to students across the district through a lottery system Texas Partnership operators typically run existing residents schools and particular have a district-wide lottery system while others enroll only zoned students like traditional neighborhood schools The lack of regulations allows for things to get worse than they might just under a traditional ISD or an open-enrollment charter school mentioned Monty Exter director of governmental relations at the Association of Texas Professional Educators adding that a lack of state control means that problematic operators can try to totally jump from district to district You see these contracts getting closed but it doesn t stop the entity from going somewhere else and running a campus in the state Under the greater part Texas Partnership contracts school districts retain the responsibility to maintain facilities furniture and equipment offer transportation and meals to students and provide special mentoring services but they give up control over administration curriculum and budgets After the San Antonio teachers sued in San Antonio ISD began writing more protections into its Texas Partnership contracts including that the district would pay employees at partnership campuses directly rather than passing payment through the operators Spokespeople from a sparse other districts including Waco and Fort Worth recounted the Observer their districts also directly pay teachers and staff at partnership schools Chosen districts however use contracts based on TEA s boilerplate contract which includes no such provision SIGN UP FOR TEXAS OBSERVER EMAILS Get our latest in-depth reporting straight to your inbox Sign Up In San Antonio Sorensen continued to protest what she considered the district s giveaway of inhabitants schools and funds to private operators and won her school board seat in She noted she doesn t believe there s much difference in the academic performance of partnership schools The test scores at these schools are not any better The experience s of students at these schools aren t necessarily any better she mentioned adding Sometimes the partners are indeed performing more poorly than our district-managed schools At a time when shrinking tax revenue inflation and flat state funding have left population schools in dire financial straits Sorensen questions whether any private operator should receive population money to experiment with the district s schools We just need every penny that we get Sorensen revealed In SAISD shuttered schools in order to close budget gaps Still the district projected a million deficit by the end of the current school year Meanwhile it s disbursed million in populace funding to private partnership operators since SAISD has already terminated Texas Partnerships early for nine campuses for various reasons including failure to submit a financial audit failure to meet academic goals and misuse of funds according to an Observer review of board meeting minutes district records and interviews Our charter partners receive more funding and therefore they are expected to outperform district-managed schools We hold our charter school partners to a greater accountability standard for scholar achievement and outcomes If a partner-run school is not performing we do have the framework in our contract agreement to pursue probation and or revocation Laura Short an SAISD spokesperson explained the Observer via email The idea behind Texas Partnerships was that charter operators with the help of extra funding would lift struggling schools with failing state ratings up into passing territory But the Observer revealed that of K- schools where partnerships have ended concluded their time under private control with failing state accountability ratings In addition partnership operators entered into district agreements with specific academic goals including promising to improve state accountability ratings and students standardized test scores often with specific benchmarks The Observer uncovered that schools including two preschools did not meet their contractual academic goals in at least one of the last two years of their agreements Twelve preschools where partnerships ended lack academic performance records In Beaumont ISD four campuses concluded their Texas Partnerships with failing state ratings and three of those partnerships were launched when the district was already under state control In TEA took over Beaumont ISD appointing a state conservator to replace the superintendent and a board of managers to replace elected trustees after a TEA review located district leaders mismanaged funds By TEA started to phase in elected board members Under state control the district had cleaned up its finances but a few schools in high-poverty communities were still failing or had dropped in ratings including Martin Luther King Middle School a -year-old campus in the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood known as The Avenues In a year before the state takeover fully ended Beaumont ISD leaders contracted Phalen Leadership Academies to run two campuses and Responsive Mentoring Solutions to run another We chose charter schools based on what TEA communicated us we could use We made decisions based on what they allowed us to do noted Sigee who was permitted by TEA to join the board as a locally elected trustee in When you bring on a charter school to take over or partner with a inhabitants school and you have limited options it kinda puts us in a corner In December Beaumont ISD s then-fully elected board also voted to sign a contract with the Los Angeles-based charter management organization Green Dot Masses Schools to run Martin Luther King Middle School But Sigee advised the Observer that he and other board members got a list of prospective partners from TEA and lacked time to vet them Kobersky the TEA spokesperson insisted that districts have reliably been in charge of selecting operators While the agency can t speak to individual board members comments there may be chosen confusion around the discussions TEA had with the superintendent about operating partners he explained In the early days of these partnerships TEA would facilitate connections between districts and operating partners who met the specific criteria outlined in rule at that time but again the decision-making authority has consistently rested with the district For SB partnerships TEA does not approve who the district selects but the manner in which they approved the operating partner function use strict window addEventListener message function a if void a figures datawrapper-height var e document querySelectorAll iframe for var t in a statistics datawrapper-height for var r i r e i i if r contentWindow a source var d a content datawrapper-height t px r style height d Under its contract the district gave Green Dot s affiliate Green Dot Southeast Texas initial final and sole authority over all matters involving academic curriculum and the instruction campaign and related expenditures similar language to that uncovered in preponderance partnership agreements reviewed by the Observer Green Dot s deal stated it would receive about in state and federal money annually for each of its roughly students while local dollars still separately covered other expenses including maintenance and meals Prior to incorporating its Texas nonprofit Green Dot Inhabitants Schools had a history of proposes of problems in other states including accusations of high staff attrition rates in California and school closures in Washington according to press reports and an online post written by a former Green Dot instructor Sigee reported he was unaware of those statements at the time of his vote Green Dot did not respond to the Observer s requests for comment After two years under Green Dot control Martin Luther King a campus that serves mostly Black and brown students was still failing according to projected ratings the district circulated in The board terminated its contract early in June Board members then felt forced into closing the school Sigee mentioned Had we not closed it with having failed for seven years in a row then we would have run the liability of having the state take over our district again In response to an Observer question about the Beaumont school s academic performance a spokesperson for Green Dot Inhabitants Schools noted via email that its related organization Green Dot General Schools Southeast Texas ran the school and was dissolved in June adding We do not have additional background or context that we can provide Beaumont ISD s leaders chose a different path for their other three Texas Partnership schools As of this trio still had failing ratings after three years under private control reviving the possibility of another state takeover In March the school board chose to hand the schools over to a different private operator TFS-Texas earning another two-year reprieve from sanctions TFS-Texas is part of a architecture under a Colorado-based parent nonprofit Third Future Schools that operates schools in four states In August Beaumont ISD announced its projected ratings for the prior school year revealing that two of the three campuses TFS-Texas runs Fehl-Price and Jones-Clark Elementary were still failing which meant it could still face the threat of another state takeover if test scores didn t improve Despite the failures of previous partners I was hopeful that TFS would succeed where others had not Superintendent Shannon Allen wrote in a March op-ed On March Third Future Schools stated it was ending its partnership with Beaumont ISD early at the end of the - school year saying the district was not passing along enough revenue to the nonprofit In her op-ed Allen wrote that the charter arrangement was demanding million more this school year and million more the next when the district had already made financial concessions after entering into an agreement to pay the organization million She wrote Beaumont ISD will not be pressured Instead we embrace the opportunity to take back control strengthen these schools and build a future that is in the best interest of our society Per its contract with the nonprofit Beaumont ISD pays at minimum for the costs of building maintenance pupil transportation food services certain special guidance services guard and accounting personnel for the three district campuses that TFS-Texas runs In a announcement Third Future Schools wrote These high revenue holdbacks prevent TFS from delivering its educational programs to the excellent standard that the students and teachers expect Selected charter operators struggles to turn around schools may stem from the same challenges faced by residents school districts to begin with systemic inequalities a lecturer shortage and the system of high-stakes testing that determines ratings For years parents and teachers have protested the state s accountability rating system which Quinzi called an oversimplification based entirely on the test total With the threat of state takeover tied to these scores several district leaders have been pushing back on how the state grades schools TEA paused ratings in and during the height of the pandemic then distributed numerical ratings in but did not assign an official letter grade for failing schools Later several districts sued TEA blocking the agency from releasing ratings for the - and - school years though specific districts have published their own projected ratings for those years After a state appeals court ruled the - ratings could be circulated TEA issued those ratings on April Shelly Haney a longtime educator turned Midland ISD s Goddard Junior High from an F-rated to a C-rated school as principal from to That s why in then-superintendent Orlando Riddick solicited her while she was still Goddard s principal to start a nonprofit and apply for a Texas Partnership contract to run the school in addition to Bunche Elementary School and later other elementaries Haney disclosed The charter organization would be called the REACH Infrastructure That s money that s not being spent on the students Bunche Elementary had gone through ups and downs since the campus reopened in a new building in to accommodate a growing low-income Hispanic population in southeast Midland In its first year it failed state standards It improved but it was failing again by the time Riddick approached Haney according to state accountability reports The idea was to apply Haney s achieving methods from Goddard which included providing small-group sponsorship for struggling students Haney brought in a full-time family liaison a dilemma counselor reading interventionists and chess and mariachi programs for students efforts that helped increase attendance Haney reported But Haney ran into the same obstacles that her predecessors at Bunche had faced population poverty low instructor retention and then COVID- There were early signs of trouble when Bunche s new principal quit in September four weeks after the school year started Three more principals left during the four years REACH was in operation Amid facilitator shortages that got worse during the pandemic Midland ISD waived certification requirements as allowed under state law and there were fewer experienced teachers available in the district s hiring pool to help carry out reforms Haney narrated the Observer Standardized test scores didn t improve enough to stave off Midland ISD s fears of a state takeover Haney reported the Observer that certain other Texas Partnership schools have a process of weeding out your students through applications while hers admitted all students zoned to the school which made bringing scores up more tough The goal was just to serve the neighborhood students I don t want it to sound like excuses Ultimately we didn t meet our goals In the - and - school years Bunche received an F based on TEA and district ratings Even Goddard which Haney had boosted to a C-rated school under district control declined receiving a D and F in those years Midland ISD did not renew its contract with REACH after the - school year Texas Partnership agreements are typically light on financial requirements often requiring little more than that operators supply annual financial statements and unqualified audit opinions clean audits free of adverse comments or disclaimers about the organization s finances in addition to operating in the black Still four operators did not provide any financial statements or audits in one or more contract years as their agreements required according to populace records requests and districts emailed responses Three operators finished at least one year with a deficit according to their tax forms even though their agreements required them to operate within available funding ensure statements reflect a positive net asset amount or maintain expenditures that do not exceed total revenues for the fiscal year Colbert the school finance expert and former legislator commented that school districts aim to ensure that organizations operate without a deficit because You have to have enough money to be able to do what you contractually promised you were going to do And if you don t have enough money to be able to do that we don t have the confidence that you can fulfill your contract Prior to being contracted by SAISD in to run two preschools the Caroll and Tynan Early Childhood centers the Michigan-based nonprofit HighScope Educational Research Foundation focused on research and progressing preschool curriculum As first disclosed by the San Antonio Review HighScope failed to submit a financial declaration to the district in the - school year a requirement in its partnership agreement for its preschool operations The organization s contract also required the campus to maintain a balanced budget and stable cash flow HighScope began its San Antonio partnership with an unrelated operating deficit of and it did not come out of its deficit until two years into the partnership in according to its IRS Form s At a December school board meeting San Antonio ISD Chief Strategy Officer John Norman stated board members that HighScope did not meet any of their goals and was below district average for both parent and mentor satisfaction for Carroll TEA records shows the percentage of students proficient in literacy had declined at both schools In SAISD terminated the contract early The Observer also could not find incorporation filings for HighScope in the Texas Secretary of State database of entities doing business in Texas and the state comptroller s taxable entity database indicates the organization never registered with the secretary of state Darren Moore a nonprofit lawyer and Baylor Law School professor reported that Texas law requires nonprofit corporations that do business in the state to register HighScope s president Alejandra Barraza did not respond to the Observer s request for comments School Innovation Collaborative which was contracted by San Antonio ISD in to run four schools formed as a nonprofit in but was required to forfeit its existence for failure to pay taxes in before being reinstated in and forfeiting existence again in per the secretary of state There s also no record that School Innovation Collaborative applied for federal tax-exempt status in the Internal Revenue Amenity database San Antonio ISD terminated its contract early with the organization in CEO Doug Dawson did not respond to the Observer s request for comment Colbert described those kinds of paperwork issues as red flags These are general tax dollars that are going to pay these people and there are requirements of the law that they re not meeting he mentioned Statewide masses school districts spend an average of percent on administrative or non-program expenses according to the Texas Association of School Boards The Texas Partnership operators whose contracts ended generally communicated spending more than that on their overhead But because certain operators ran other programs besides partnership schools and particular districts paid the bulk of project expenses for partnership campuses directly it s complicated to determine an average overhead expense rate HighScope broadcasted on its Form s spending more than half its total expenses on overhead costs during the three years it operated the two San Antonio preschools but it did not separate out its Texas Partnership spending from its unrelated operations Its president Barraza received a salary of over a year in both and according to the s TFS-Texas also revealed spending more than half its expenses on administrative costs in its s from to Mike Miles CEO of the Third Future Schools structure for most of of that time was paid an annual salary between and by the Colorado parent organization For fiscal year TFS-Texas communicated a negative million year-end balance in net assets even though its contracts with Ector County ISD and Austin ISD required a positive net asset amount or positive cash flow at the end of the year TFS-Texas only runs Texas Partnership schools and has no other operations in the state That s money that s not being spent on the students Colbert explained of TFS-Texas high administrative costs Mike Miles in September in Houston Karen Warren Houston Chronicle via AP A spokesperson for Third Future Schools declined in November to explain the source of the deficit to the Observer and did not respond to the outlet s questions for this story about the source of its deficit and high overhead TFS-Texas faced media scrutiny last year from the Observer and other outlets over out-of-state fund transfers though the TEA cleared the nonprofit of wrongdoing in an analysis and the Observer in the last few days broadcasted on accusations the organization failed to teach required classes in Midland Quinzi who reviewed a summary of the Observer s findings in this story believes the Texas Partnership operation is failing These charter operators are not proven turnaround models Regarding Texas Partnership operators in general Quinzi the teachers union legal counsel declared They re going to put as much money into their pockets and the least amount of money in the classroom She stated the state has rigged the system by forcing school boards to choose between closing schools or contracting private operators to avoid state takeover It s the TEA that decides the A-F ratings It s the TEA that determines what the standardized test scores have to be to get those ratings Quinzi noted Then it s also TEA that takes over masses school districts because they re low-rated So it s just a self-interested circle The intent was never on improving schools In SB co-author Men ndez filed another bill attempting to make partnership operators more accountable to the constituents by requiring districts to consult with campus personnel and to get percent of parents to approve a contract before it was signed But the bill never received a committee hearing This legislative session Democratic Senator Nathan Johnson and Republican Representative Gary VanDeaver introduced what could be an alternative to the Texas Partnership campaign Instead of handing off a failing campus to a private operator Senate Bill and its House companion bill would give school districts a two-year reprieve from state takeover if they turn the campus into a area school Under that model parent campus and school district representatives would work together to create a turnaround plan Both bills are languishing in committee The findings on SB partnerships highlight serious concerns regarding financial accountability transparency and educational outcomes Johnson reported the Observer Despite what may have been the best of intentions and assumptions that appeared reasonable at the time the SB outcomes clearly indicate the need for a different approach Men ndez informed the Observer that the Texas Partnerships venture has deviated from his original goal We seem to be building a duplicate masses school system with charter schools which I don t think was ever the intention he disclosed I don t believe that this system has worked What I think it s been doing it s been taking already very limited information because the state has refused to expand its expenditure in our community-based community schools and it s just dividing it further The post Texas Already Gives Community Ed Dollars to Private Operators Here s How That Worked Out appeared first on The Texas Observer