Eric Mahmoud charter schools

“Georgia file connects Twin Cities charter school, fraud scheme.” Star Tribune (MN), 3/22/2013

When the news broke last summer that charter school entrepreneur Eric Mahmoud had entered a guilty plea to a mortgage fraud charge in Georgia, Mahmoud had a ready comeback for the Minneapolis school district, under whose authorization he was opening another charter school.

“I assure you that this was a personal, residential matter in Georgia and had nothing to do with Seed Daycare, Harvest Prep or any other educational institution,” Mahmoud told Sara Paul, the district’s liaison with charter schools, in an Aug. 16 e-mail.

In that case, Mahmoud has some explaining to do.

According to an investigative file compiled by Georgia authorities, there are at least two connections involving the school with the deal...

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“High Performing Charter Schools: Beating the Odds, or Beating theTest?” National Education Policy Center blog, 8/30/2012

...In Minnesota, birthplace of the charter school movement, one charter school operator labeled an “odds beater” has put a new twist on the concept. Eric Mahmoud, a former engineer and convicted mortgage fraudster, operates a group of segregated charter schools targeted at black, inner-city poor children that employs longer school days and years, strict discipline, and an unabashed strategy of beating state achievement tests.

For his success in raising math and reading scores, Mahmoud has been given rock-star status among charter proponents and recently was inducted into the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools hall of fame. In return, the Minneapolis school board recently awarded him the right to open four more charter schools sponsored by the city's school district, all presumably to be run in what a local conservative columnist laudingly called his “drill and kill” style. News stories and opinion pieces from traditional to the alternative press have nonetheless sung his praises, so desperate is the reform community to raise test scores. Meanwhile, almost no one has questioned the efficacy or morality of deliberately segregated schools, nor ones so focused on improving specific test scores. It seemed that, until very recently, Mahmoud could do no wrong.

Three weeks ago that might all have changed with a series of investigative stories in the Minneapolis Star Tribune by veteran reporter Steve Brandt highlighting fiscal and management questions that, given the lax controls on charter schools and Mahmoud's previous mortgage crime are unsurprising. Among Brandt's cumulative reporting is the following:

• Mahmoud's combined salary for his duties running charter schools (which total 900 enrollment) and their parent organization amounted to $273,000, more than any other superintendent in the state. In addition his wife, whose occupation is listed as “secretary,” took home $105,000, and his daughter got $28,000 as an “administrative aide.”

• Three of the four board members of the schools' parent organization, called “Seed Daycare,” which leases property to the school and provides administrative services, are Mahmoud family members.

• A letter from the charter school's authorizer “asserts that teachers whom Harvest (one of Mahmoud's charter schools) paid as contractors clearly fall under the IRS definition of employees.”

• The school's authorizer, Audubon Center of the North Woods, sent a “letter of deficiency” to Mahmoud asking for clarification of the organization's finances and for an explanation of “frequent payments among Mahmoud's organizations and Mahmoud himself,” and that “it's unclear what they are for and whether state money that supports Harvest and related entities is being used appropriately.”

• The Minnesota Department of Education is seeking to recoup money it granted to Mahmoud for an earlier, failed charter school used for its construction and to equip it. The MNDOE turned this issue over to the state auditor.

• Mahmoud, who operates deliberately segregated schools, is claiming racial discrimination, a claim disputed by the state, in the revocation of a $300,000 grant to one of his schools. The grant was to be used for a federally funded program called Reading First, which required the school to hire a full-time literacy coordinator and to use licensed teachers in the program, neither of which Mahmoud did.

But more important than the financial and management problems at Seed schools is the nature and structure of the educational pedagogy. The schools teach to the tests. Not just teach to them, but engineer high test scores with frequent testing, 100 minute blocks of reading and math each day and other methods...

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“Mahmoud, MDE clashed over pulling grant.” Star Tribune (MN), 8/20/2012

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“State inquiry focuses on failed north Minneapolis school.” Star Tribune (MN), 8/15/2012

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“Mahmoud's 273K salary raises eyebrows.” Star Tribune (MN), 8/15/2012

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"State examining finances of charter founder's schools.” Star Tribune (MN), 8/10/2012