Charter Schools are all the rage in Texas, garnering $1 billion (with a b) a year in taxpayer money.

Charter schools are the gateway drug to vouchers.  I don’t know about you but I’m not real excited to see Rick Perry’s friends do to public education what they did to cancer research.

So, it came to nobody’s surprise that charter school applicants were copying off each other.

Four groups seeking to open charter schools in Texas turned in applications last year that had sections copied from other applications and even claimed parts of another school’s public hearing summary as their own, The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday.

The newspaper reported that, despite the copied portions, the aspiring charter operators signed the applications attesting to their accuracy with the hope of winning approval from the State Board of Education and gaining millions of taxpayer dollars.

The board largely dismissed concerns about the copied material. However, the head of the public integrity unit of the Travis County district attorney’s office said such practices could be fraudulent, though that office hasn’t been asked to investigate.

Of course they haven’t been asked to investigate.  These were charter schools for future mid-level management.  You know, where you learn to take credit for other people’s work.  Or to train future Texas Governors to go steal jobs from other states and call it “job creation.”

Thanks to Julie for the heads up.