Arise! Academy
Jamie Treece
Charter schools are relativity new in the United State. As will all new institutions, there is an
opening, in the lack of established regulations, that allow for many different types of fraud to occur.
Charter schools are considered public schools, as they are federally funded. However, the school itself
can pick and choose the students that are accepted. In the typical set up for a charter school, the school
is a non profit, obtaining funds from the federal and state government, while being operated by an
affiliated but independent for-profit company. Often times the person or persons operating the school
also has a personal percentage in the company that is running the school. This leaves these school with
little to no independent oversight or regulation.
The first charter school to be established in the United States, in 1991 was in Minnesota. There
are around six-thousand eight-hundred charter schools in forty-two states. In the past year four-hundred
new charter schools opened around the United States, while tow-hundred seventy where closed. Most
charter schools focus on a subject area, such as, math, arts, or science, and others focus on a type of
teaching, like the Latin style of learning. There are both progressive and conservative charter schools.
To receive federal and state funding the students at these schools are required to take the same
standardizes tests as other student in that district.
Arise! Academy (Arise) in Dayton, OH opened in 2004. The goal of Arise was to provide
education to children in the Ohio foster care system, taking on high school age students about to age
out of foster care. Uniquely Arise did not employe a grad structure. Arise closed its door to students in
2010 due to financial problems and the unsatisfactory academic progress of the students, meeting only
four of the twelve state markers for performance.
Arise was exploited for four-hundred twenty-thousand, eight-hundred dollars in the form of
kickbacks. There were four people involved in a kickback and conspiracy to defraud the federal
government; Rev. Shane K. Floyd, 42, of Strongsville, Ohio, who served as superintendent of Arise,
Arise board chairman Christopher D. Martin, 44, of Springfield, Ohio, Carl L. Robinson, 47, of
Durham, North Carolina, and Kristal N. Screven, also known as Kristal Allen, of Dayton, Ohio. Floyd
and Martin were officials of Arise, Robinson operated Global Educational Consultants And Screven
was on the board for the school. Arise was paying out a fifteen month contract to Global, while teachers
