Even though they make up only 8% of schools in the country, crimes, scandals, and arrests take place at a robust tempo in the nation’s privately-operated charter schools.
These non-stop wrongdoings usually include fraud, embezzlement, harassment, and a range of sex crimes.
This is not surprising given the weak accountability, transparency, and background checks that have plagued the crisis-prone charter school sector for more than 30 years.
A small sample of headlines from just this year speaks volumes:
- Cedar Rapids Prep Charter principal terminated this week as second harassment charge is filed (The Gazette, April 3, 2026).
- Las Vegas charter school assistant principal arrested on child abuse charges (FOX5, March 23, 2026).
- L.A. charter school teacher accused of assaulting 6-year-old girl (2UrbanGirls, March 21, 2026).
- Little Elm charter school teacher arrested for child sex crimes (FOX 4, January 30, 2026).
- $25M swindled by fraudulent charter school recovered for San Diego K-12 students (City News Service, January 30, 2026).
- Owner of Newark charter school accused of stealing wages from teachers (NBC Bay Area, January 21, 2026).
- Former New Orleans charter school may have improperly spent more than $600,000, audit says (NOLA, January 21, 2026).
- Former Midlands charter school teacher arrested for allegedly assaulting student (WIS, January 14, 2026).
- North Carolina charter school teacher charged with multiple child sex crimes, including against a student (FOX 8, January 3, 2026).
Do such horrible things happen in traditional public schools and private religious schools? Yes they do, but when looking at scale, scope, frequency, and proportionality, they are considerably more rampant in charter schools, which are deregulated businesses governed by unelected private persons.
The privatization and marketization of education lends itself to such phenomena on a broad scale. Privatization increases corruption and lowers standards across a broad range of operations, roles, and services. Converting public programs and services into capital-centered programs and services usually enriches a handful of people while harming the public interest in the process. When programs and services focused on uplifting people and society are transformed into profit-maximizing entities, the majority suffers.
See here for more examples of charter school crimes and scandals.