Nationwide Assessment of Charter and Education Management Organizations

we determined that that charter school relationships with charter management organizations posed a significant risk to Department program objectives. Specifically, we found that 22 of the 33 charter schools in our review had 36 examples of internal control weaknesses related to the charter schools’ relationships with their charter management organizations. These included instances of financial risk, lack of accountability over Federal funds, and performance risk. We also found that that the Department did not have effective internal controls to evaluate and mitigate the risk that charter school relationships with charter management organizations posed to Department program objectives.