Amy, Cincinnati

I worked at a major for-profit company that runs charter schools – and I witnessed things like falsification of records (it was called “corrections”) when it was discovered that not a single requirement for a major source of funding had been completed. I was laid off shortly after I questioned the news that my pay was going to start coming from a tax-funded account when the work I was doing was entirely for the for-profit branch of the company. I also worked for a single charter school and was let go when I discovered that attendance and grade records for one of my students had been falsified (I reported the discovery because I assumed I had made some sort of mistake in my own reporting). I had extensive paper documentation of the problems I discovered, and tried in vain to find anyone on the board of directors or at the state who was interested to know – but nobody cared. I kept the records for a few years and finally just threw them away. For my own safety, I’m not including my last name on this form. I love the potential that charter school laws represent – I really, really loved being able to help students whose lives simply didn’t fit into the public school system – but the rampant dishonesty and the violent opposition to truth-telling I encountered was heartbreaking.