Tuesday, July 19, 2016

Are public schools truly 'accountable'?

All sorts of problems occur in many of our state's traditional public schools, The Oklahoman points out today in a house editorial. "The penalty for those failures is negligible, and in some cases such failures are even used to demand greater taxpayer funding."
Last year, it was revealed an auditing firm used by more than 100 Oklahoma school districts did not typically record irregularities in the official audit provided to the state, which is made available to the public. Instead, irregularities were noted in separate letters to the districts, evading public scrutiny and allowing districts to falsely report “clean” audits to state officials. In some instances, it appears this practice facilitated embezzlement of school funds. ... 
In traditional public schools, even the coexistence of poor financial management and poor academic results rarely leads to sanctions. This year, a state House committee considered legislation to simply combine poor-performing dependent districts with larger districts. No schools would have been closed, but a few high-paid administrative positions might have been eliminated. The bill was killed in committee, giving a green light to continued financial waste and leaving children trapped in poorly managed, substandard schools.

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