Lance T. Izumi, K. Lloyd Billingsley and Diallo Dphrepaulezz
Pacific Research Institute
November 2002
Those who have kept an eye on the California charter school landscape over the past few years are used to hearing stories of school mismanagement followed by cries to reform or even abolish charter schools in that state. Now the Pacific Research Institute has issued an analogous warning about public schools. This report describes a wide variety of horrendous financial abuses in California's public school system, such as the $600,000 in travel expenses incurred by one superintendent over a three-year period and the $200 million Los Angeles has spent building a high school on an unsafe site. The authors suggest that these troubles are symptomatic of a larger problem: lack of oversight throughout all levels of this bureaucracy. Audits are rarely performed, those that are performed are reviewed too slowly, bond revenues are misspent, and the red tape has grown thick. They conclude that the proper solution is to provide school choice - through vouchers - in order to induce reform through competition. The authors are critical of the system's ability to fix itself, noting that many efforts, such as smaller class sizes, have failed. For Californians, this report may provide some useful information on excesses in their public school system. For those outside the Golden State, it serves as further evidence that any large organization must have robust financial controls. Still, it's sensationalistic and so heavy-handed that one cannot help but wonder about the other sides of the stories they report. And its voucher remedy is argued too briefly to convince a skeptic. To find your own copy, visit http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/educat/grand_theft_education.pdf.
