LWVeducation
Duval County has 35 charter schools serving nearly 20,000 students. Superintendent Vitti said charters bring down district average scores on state assessments. In the Florida Times Union article, Vitti said “I do want to raise a concern about charter school performance”.
There is more to this story.
The New York Times ran a story about Detroit. The city is recovering from bankruptcy, but school choice has bankrupted its schools. The story is told in human terms. Your learn about a family trying to find a good fit for its four children. They move from charter to charter, full of disappointment as hopes are dashed. They are besieged by hype and gifts for recruiting, but the realities of too many schools from which to choose means that no school is very good. This is a cautionary tale. Detroit has the lowest achieving children in the nation. Ten percent of its children graduate at ‘college ready’.
Michigan has less charter regulation than Florida. Charters proliferate whether or not they succeed academically. Eighty percent of its charters are run by for-profit companies. The fight with each other to get students. By last winter, Detroit schools were bankrupt. The legislature agreed to help, but it refused to support regulations to manage charter growth.
All the money pouring into school choice helps hire professionals to give a positive spin to a poor idea. What can be wrong with giving parents choice and take state dollars with them to charter and private schools, spin masters say.
Some parents cannot resist the allure of a selective quasi ‘private education’ even if it is not high quality. Today the Supreme Court provided a compelling ruling that can change the conversation.
For some reason, not published, the State Board of Education will not review the proposed rules for allocating capital outlay money to charter schools, according to the Tampa Bay Times. The rule was to be considered at the June 22nd meeting at Palm Beach State College.
Provisions included in the proposed rule were:
The fall out from the school funding train wreck bill in the last legislative session continues. The Florida State Board of Education will consider newly drafted rules to make charter facility funding easier.
When is it a conflict of interest for a district school board member’s campaign to be financed by a charter school management company and its associates?
The Tampa Bay Times reports that one third of a Hillsborough school board member’s 2016 election campaign is financed by the charter sector. Contributions to local school board candidates from charter advocacy groups is becoming a national strategy. Is this democracy in action or something more sinister? The issue is complicated by questions about the meaning of public education.
Palm Beach County Schools say ‘NO’ to Charter Schools USA (CSUSA) and duplicative, inefficient school choice. This is more than an anti charter complaint. It is a call to enforce the original legislative purpose for charter schools in Florida.
Criminal charges of grand theft, money laundering, fraud and aggravated white collar crime hit four Escambia and Pinellas charter schools. Now even more are involved in Duval. Why?
Following Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans public schools were in disarray. Thousands of people who had the resources to do so had left New Orleans. No one was watching the store, and the State took over 52 poverty stricken schools. Ten years later, the Louisiana legislature is finalizing a bill to return the Recovery District charters to local control by district school boards. Did the great experiment work?
In this repost from Diane Ravitch, one of the most troubling aspects of privatizing our schools is underscored…we do not know what is going on. The business practices on charter management companies have always been hidden in a cloak of secrecy. Why this is so in many states raises alarms. Incidences of charter fraud, waste and abuse have been documented across the country.
Now we learn that the federal government is complicit in hiding information that most public schools must disclose. Ravitch cites a report from the Center for Media and Democracy about disclosure protection for KIPP schools. Under an arrangement with the U.S. Department of Education, KIPP does not have to report its student attrition and graduation rates. Why not? Based on older reports, the data are too revealing. KIPP lost 40% of its students between middle school and high school graduation.
You can read more on KIPP in this blog. KIPP is one of the largest charter chains. A member of the Florida State Board of Education has brought two KIPP charters to Duval County.
Are KIPP Charters the Answer? Depends upon the question…