New NYC Charter Schools Suffer Huge Setbacks

President of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Tom Vander Ark, is walking away from a multi-million dollar project to open new charter schools in NYC

The New York Times is reporting that after spending more than $1.5 million of investors’ money on consultants and lawyers, Tom Vander Ark, president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has walked away from the project to open new charter schools in New York City.  As a result, the new schools will not open as planned this fall.  This shocking move has left many frustrated.

From Anna M. Phillips’ article in The Times:

After years spent directing the distribution of more than $1 billion from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation into hundreds of schools across the nation, Tom Vander Ark set his sights on the New York area, with a plan to create a network of charter schools of his own.

Vander Ark, who has been a national leader in the online learning movement, was granted charters in 2010 to open a high school in Brooklyn and Newark, NJ.  The New York school, Brooklyn City Prep, also got space in a public school building, hired a principal, and welcomed applications from 150 eighth graders this spring.  When the dust had settled from Vander Ark’s decision, many involved were not pleased and voiced their disdain.

“If we had plotted a worst-case scenario, no one could have constructed the current situation,” said Mr. Vander Ark, saying the weak economy and the difficulty of establishing charters in New York and New Jersey “led to less success than we had hoped for.”

In an e-mail to the board members he had recruited, Mr. Vander Ark added, “I have a lot more sympathy for nonprofit leaders now that I’m on this side of the table.”

Those he has been working with had a harsher assessment.

“He’s flying 30,000 feet on the air, but can’t do it on the ground,” said Joshua Morales, a former official with the New York City Education Department who was hired by Mr. Vander Ark to develop the schools.

Vander ark, who is a former businessman and superintendent of a Washington State school district, was in charge of divvying up more than $1.6 billion in Gates Foundation money from 1999 to 2006.  Most of that was used to create and support small high schools. In 2008, he founded City Prep Academies, a for-profit organization intended to create and operate charter schools that combined traditional classroom teaching and online learning. He said the group was financed by $1.5 million from Revolution Learning, a venture fund where he is a managing partner.  But the school in Brooklyn (City Prep Academies) immediately ran into problems. Its first application for a New York charter, made in summer 2009 as a close copy of the NYC iSchool that opened in SoHo the year before, received a tepid response from the city’s Education Department. Like the iSchool, Brooklyn City Prep promised to blend traditional classroom teaching with online learning, but many who read the application found it lacking in details.

The full column can be read here.