One of the major initiatives of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) has been pushing for is the expansion of for-profit and privately managed schools in K-12 education. As part of this push, Christie has been championing a school voucher expansion that would cost the state $825 million to funnel tax dollars to private schools, while at the same time slashing spending for public education, cutting $820 million last year alone.

Last week, Christie announced a new “public-private school pilot program” which would allow “local school boards [to] hand control of some so-called ‘transformation schools’ to education management organizations, possibly including for-profit firms.” Christie designed the new program with Acting Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf, the “former president of the world’s largest for-profit operator of public schools, Edison Schools Inc.”

The New Jersey Star-Ledger notes that Christie actually has a very strong financial tie to Cerf’s for-profit company. The private law firm at which Christie worked as a lobbyist between 1999 and 2001 actually lobbied New Jersey’s government on behalf of Edison Schools:

From 1999 to 2001, Christie was a registered lobbyist at a law firm that lobbied New Jersey government on behalf of Edison Schools, according to filings with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission. While the firm was representing the multinational education company, Chris Cerf was its general counsel.

The firm, Dughi, Hewit and Palatucci, also represented Mosaica Education, a for-profit charter school operator, and the University of Phoenix, a for-profit online university. At the time, the firm listed two lobbyists, Christie and William Palatucci, a longtime political ally of the governor who is a named partner in the firm.

“Many people support their public schools and they are reacting with anger to the idea they should be privatized,” said state Sen. Dick Codey (D), in response to Christie’s proposed education policies. (HT: BlueJersey)

Last week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) — buoyed by legislators who received hundreds of thousands of dollars of special interest cash — signed into law legislation that would dramatically expand access to school vouchers, which funnel taxpayer dollars into private schools. Scott is doing this despite proposing nearly $3 billion in cuts to public education, meaning that he is essentially transfering money from public education to private education.

On the same day that Scott signed into law his latest attack on public education, Gus Garcia-Roberts of the Miami New Times published a story looking at the case of InterAmerican Christian Academy, a private school located in Doral, Florida. Garcia-Roberts amazingly enrolled at the school and earned a diploma after only eight days of schoolwork and $399:

It began with a poster on a streetlight in downtown Miami: “High School Diploma. (305) 716-0909.” I dialed, and a chipper female voice answered, “Hello. High school.” Eight days and $399 in cash later, at the school’s Doral “campus” — a cramped third-floor office next door to US Lubricant LLC and across the hall from a hair extensions company — I was grinning widely, accepting a framed diploma and an official transcript sporting a 3.41 GPA.

The diplomas that the school is offering are actually getting students admitted to local colleges. The paper found that at “least 88 graduates have used its diplomas and bogus transcripts to gain admittance to Miami Dade College, according to that institution’s registrar.” Remarkably, the state’s Departmenf of Education (DOE), when asked about the school, said that it is powerless to stop it from rewarding diplomas. “If a school like that exists,” said Cherry Etters of the Florida Doe, “we might know about it, but we can’t really do anything.”

As Garcia-Roberts concludes, “There’s no telling how many of Florida’s 1,713 private schools — which educate a third of a million students — are run like InterAmerican. Even as Gov. Rick Scott leads a charge to privatize education on a historic scale, our state’s private schools are among the least regulated in the nation.” Indeed, Florida currently leads the country in “school choice” programs that include tax credits for private schools, voucher programs, and privately managed charter schools. The case of InterAmerican Christian Academy provides a cautionary tale about some of the pitfalls of the proliferation of lightly-regulated or unregulated private schools.

In March, two states — Delaware and Tennessee — won the first round of the Obama administration’s Race to the Top program, an initiative in the stimulus package that awards competitive grants to states that put together ambitious education reform efforts. Now that the competition is moving into its second round, states that didn’t win are retooling their education laws, in an attempt to better their applications.

For instance, New Jersey’s teacher’s union, “after several days of marathon negotiations,” reached an accord with Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) to support the state’s application, complete with reforms to “merit pay, teacher seniority, evaluations and tenure.” New York City officials and the State Assembly have also reached a tentative deal “to more than double the number of charter schools,” to bolster that state’s Race to the Top chances. This week, Maryland’s State Board of Education “endorsed a proposal for common academic standards in math and English” that’s been drafted by the National Governor’s Association, which “could help Maryland win points on its application.”

However, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) decided that he’d rather quit:

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell pulled Virginia out of President Obama’s Race to the Top school reform derby Wednesday, a turnabout after he had pushed hard for the state to get a share of the $4 billion in federal funding…“The problem is that the way they have structured this program to mandate that we adopt a common core of standards to replace the Standards of Learning is unacceptable,” McDonnell told reporters in Richmond. [...]

“Our standards are much superior. They’re well accepted. They’re validated. All the education leaders have a comfort level with those. So once again, a federal mandate to adopt a federal common core standard is just not something I can accept, nor can most of the education leaders in Virginia, nor can most of the legislators.”

From the beginning, it’s been no secret that adopting the governors association’s common standards would provide a boost to applicants. And Virginia had no problem with the rules when it applied for money in the first round. “Of course I think we’re deserving of any funding,” said state Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia Wright at the time. Virginia’s application didn’t garner much support, however, as the state came in 31st out of 41 applicants.

While McDonnell claims that Virginia’s standards are “much superior,” the truth is that they leave a lot to be desired, particularly in math. According to the Fordham Institute, “in the upper grades, progress in algebra is slow, with students not introduced to the concept of slope by the end of eighth grade,” and “there are serious deficiencies in the Algebra I and II and Geometry requirements, especially in the latter’s development of mathematical reasoning.”

Virginia’s charter school law is also lackluster, as it only allows local school boards to act as authorizers, which has severely limited the number of charters in the state. This year there were only 4 charter schools operating in Virginia, serving 250 students. And instead of addressing these problems — and attempting to receive federal money to push reform along — McDonnell is simply taking his ball and going home.