Voucher School Gone Bad: An edu-Enron?

February 21, 2004

One of the criticisms of voucher programs (or other ways of privatizing schooling which is currently done by the government) is the invitation to corruption.

Here, in a series of articles by Sarah Carr in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, it would seem the critics are right.

January 20, 2004:

Officials at Mandella School of Science and Math inappropriately cashed almost $330,000 worth of state voucher checks made out to families, many of whose children never attended the school.

Moreover, eight families said that they did not understand that the school would be applying for vouchers on their behalves.

The school cashed voucher checks for about 234 students who didn't attend Mandella, worth about $1500 each.

January 28, 2004:

A Milwaukee County circuit judge denied Mandella School of Science and Math access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in state funds Wednesday - at least for now - saying he smelled "skulduggery."

Mandella's lawyer said the action could force the school to close soon.

Mandella administrators were suing the state for their current round of voucher payments, even though they admit they improperly cashed about $330,000 in earlier voucher checks.

February 12, 2004:

Last week at Mandella School of Science and Math, strewn papers covered the floor, desks were overturned and paint splattered the hallway.

Administrators said students had run through the building causing the mess and shouting "Mandella's gonna close! Mandella's gonna close!" And although some former employees of the school say they doubt this account, the incident speaks to the chaos at Mandella.

Ms. Carr reports on the educational atmosphere at the school, writing that students were "hanging out" and that the principal came in to teach an impromptu "combined math and civics lesson," in which he made an algebra mistake.

February 13, 2004:

Former staff members and parents rallied outside Mandella School of Science and Math Friday, pleading with families to pull their students out of the troubled school.

The group chanted, "Free Mandella students!" and carried signs reading "The students deserve better," and "Slavery ended in 1862, pay your employees!"

Ahh, slavery, that old standby. Cute--but misguided--reference to South Africa's "Free Mandela" (the principal is a native of Sierra Leone).

Three days later we learn just what became of some of that ill-begotten voucher money.

February 16, 2004:

The principal of the troubled Mandella School of Science and Math used proceeds from state voucher payments last October to buy two Mercedes-Benz cars for about $65,000.

David A. Seppeh, who started the school two years ago, bought two used Mercedes less than two weeks after Mandella officials picked up a stack of checks in Madison totaling about $642,000, state documents show.

Amazingly, Principal Seppeh defends his two Mercedes purchases. We don't think he's fooling anyone. The YWCA, which owns the building in which the school is located, has placed locks on the doors.

Again, opponents of vouchers may well point out to the Mandella debacle and say, "See?"

We draw a different conclusion: Even though the school's been open for two years, it just took four short months from the moment of impropriety for the school to be shuttered. In other words, sure, the school may have illegally cashed those checks, but they didn't get away with it, and now they're closed.

We'd say the system is working pretty well.

Contrast this with the public school system. We've worked at schools where the twin concepts of educational malpractice and intellectual bankruptcy orbit a building where all kinds of financial skulduggery abounds, and little, if anything is done. The school stays open year after year, jeopardizing legions of children's futures.

Try to shut down one of these public schools and you'll have a firestorm on your hands.

Via Joanne Jacobs, we learn The Gantelope has made this point a bit more eloquently, saying "markets force failing schools to either improve or go out of existence, whereas government school monopolies keep their failing schools in operation for year after year" with little hope of change (emphasis in original).

In our title we made reference to Enron. Some people criticize capitalism because of corporate misdeeds, when instead the net effect is a positive one.

In their slim volume Put Parents Back in Charge! in support of school vouchers, Joseph Bast and Herbert Walberg write about the lessons of Enron and Worldcom:

By engaging in corporate fraud, these corporate executives violated the laws that make capitalism possible. The stock market moved quickly to reduce the value of their companies' stock, pushing them into bankruptcy in a matter of months following disclosures of wrongdoing.

Just as with the Mandella School.